Cobb

Bionic Intervention

Possibilities

Beeswax

Back To Life

Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr

Roland Fryer appears to be one of those brothers that I wished I had some way to keep up with. But I think any number of us are going to have some difficulty as he chips away at the convenience of the largely accepted. You see Fryer is aiming for DuBois, and people think he has a shot.

It's difficult to tell whether or not it's important to know what Fryer is trying to discover, a grand unified theory of... well what is it exactly? Blackness? Economic differences between blacks and whites? Implications of social patterns of behavior? But whatever it is, Fryer comes with street cred from the hard side of the tracks as well as all the props from the academic powers that be. And he looks to be assembling his drop squad at Harvard. Do you hear me? Homey from the hood is an economist at Harvard. Enough said.

I first heard about Fryer last week from a surprising email I got personally from Steven Levitt. Yes, that Steven Levitt. He gave me a little sideways intro and told me to watch out for the Sunday NYT Magazine. Having read it this morning and just (lazily) 40% done with Levitt's new book, certain things are starting to click. A little background.

The other night, when I took a picture with Sharpton and also met a young brother who considers himself one of the luckiest men in the world (Lahore, Karachi?), I was chilling with Spence and some very cool academics. One of them, Harwood, who teaches at Ohio State espied my galley proof of Levitt's new book Freakonomics. Spence was already jumping up and down when I showed it to him not two minutes after we first met. Harwood, who'll take Strata over SPSS anyday, practically snatched the book out of my hand and read it all night. When Spence talked about Levitt, he mentioned that it was difficult to believe he didn't have some black in him. I think perhaps we've found the answer, Fryer is a catalyst.

More accurately, Spence said of Levitt's work that he had to be white to do this - to ask the hardball questions and formulate them into the notable paper which became Chapter Three: Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms? Why? Because brothers in the 'hood are already deeply immersed in those economics, and it simply doesn't occur to any of them that this drug economy is worthy of study. The very act of asking all the dumb questions an outsider needs to was Levitt's advantage. Now consider this:

Fryer well appreciates that he can raise questions that most white scholars wouldn't dare. His collaborators, most of whom are white, appreciate this, too. ''Absolutely, there's an insulation effect,'' says the Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser. ''There's no question that working with Roland is somewhat liberating.''

Glaeser and Fryer, along with David M. Cutler, another Harvard economist, are the authors of a paper that traffics in one form of genetic theorizing. It addresses the six-year disparity in life expectancy for blacks versus whites, arguing that much of the gap is due to a single factor: a higher rate of salt sensitivity among African-Americans, which leads to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, stroke and kidney disease.

Fryer's notion that there might be a genetic predisposition at work was heightened when he came across a period illustration that seemed to show a slave trader in Africa licking the face of a prospective slave. The ocean voyage from Africa to America was so gruesome that as many as 15 percent of the Africans died en route, mainly from illnesses that led to dehydration. A person with a higher capacity for salt retention might also retain more water and thus increase his chance of surviving.

So it may have been that a slave trader would try to select, with a lick to the cheek, the ''saltier'' Africans. Whether selected by the slavers or by nature, the Africans who did manage to survive the voyage -- and who then formed the gene pool of modern African-Americans -- may have been disproportionately marked by hypertension. Cutler, a pre-eminent health economist, admits that he thought Fryer's idea was ''absolutely crazy'' at first. (Although the link between the slave trade and hypertension had been raised in medical literature, even Cutler wasn't aware of it.) But once they started looking at the data, the theory began to seem plausible.

That's what I'm talking about. Fryer is a catalyst and as such will be able to bring down to cases those things that we think we know but don't. This is about applying a curiousity abetted by the need to make sense of the African Experience in this land which may finally get the attention of harder science. How many times have I had to explain the lack of hypertension in my family to doctors? We're from Connecticut - we don't eat salty slave food. And yet it was only in the 90s that medical researchers first isolated diet from race in looking at hypertension in blacks. I think we stand at the beginning of a long series of discoveries about how African Americans really do live that stands outside of the accumulated pile of wobbly theory, idiot conspiracies and dismissal.

A while ago, Cornel West stunned me with an idea. He essentially posited that blackfolks don't do 'enlightened self-interest' and don't fit into economic models because we have a psychic hunger for things other than the fungibles of the American economy. In other words, African Americans were receptive to two kinds of economies, the one for everyone, and our own unique afro-psychic one. It was a difficult argument to counter at the time so I accepted it. But ultimately it was my acceptance of Loury's economic view that I think set me right. It is also the difficulty I have in sustaining any discussion about Ujamaa vs Capitalism that gets me steamed, but simply looking at things from an economist's perspective, that of incentive, we're right back into economy. (And yes I do pay my kids to get good grades). Fryer is going to have plenty opportunities to start knocking back old ideas and finding interesting new sets of facts about African American life, but not only Fryer himself, but a new generation of researchers who are not Andrew Hacker, Manning Marable or Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That is a change that is long, long overdue. Who knows which way he's going, but stick him and McWhorter in a room and you've got enough thoughtful dynamite to inject some science into what has too long been speculative (Not to mention well.. how exactly do you describe this?)

I've not studied the economics of the ghetto enough to be surprised to learn much new, but I've been around enough people who've lived there and elsewhere to know much that we do hear ain't right. So much of it is tied to the interests of a dumb national debate that rarely does anything that sounds like truth shine through. I have a good feeling that scholars like Fryer will make a difference.

Now there are the existentials.

I suppose it's rather intriguing that anyone who grows up in close proximity to scary things, like drug dealers and violent knuckleheads, ends up at Harvard. I would expect a certain amount of 'hair touching' in any profile of an up and coming academic star. However I do have some concerns that young Fryer get the blunt end of gratuity. According to the story, Fryer is a phenomenon of self-discipline whose work ethic propels him through. Like a sea lion, he can hold his breath while fishing. I've lived in Boston too, and I've called it the coldest city in the world - a place so white that even the Nike basketball shoe commercials don't have brothers in them. But I am wishing upon Fryer an existential network that keeps the flavor alive (whatever flavor he desires, whatever oxygen he needs). It's impossible to tell, through Dubner's eyes how Fryer might consider his own place or his ability to breathe freely. He may be dreading that he grows gills, he may be perfectly comfortable. All of us 'exceptionals' have some degree of a strangeness about our blackness given our individuality and rareness, and none of us are immune. To this day people aren't quite sure how to take Sowell or Loury, and the more we hear about their own personal demons (speaking of Loury) the more we leap to conclusions about the political spin given their economic work. No matter where Loury goes or what he does, it's always Loury vs D'Sousa or Loury vs Drugs. America doesn't treat black academics well, period. We don't know them, they don't know us. It's a strange relationship. Me personally, I hate on 'em because they don't blog or otherwise show up anywhere they can't get paid or gather up brownie points for their strange rituals and rites of passage. Hmmm. Maybe I ought to join the forces of evil and hack LexisNexis too.. or maybe that's just journalists. (On the other hand, everybody loves Skip - mostly)

Still in all there is much good news in that Fryer gets to grow up and do in a nation that's much better for him to air whatever laundry we've been hiding under the bed. And I'm betting that he won't hesitate. For a gadfly like me, there are worlds to be spun and a great deal of my Socratic needs the kind of ammo I believe he is likely to provide. And yet I do wonder whatever happened to Brent Staples.

What do I do? I do business intelligence - so I know myths about 'corporate America' are overbroad and simply don't apply. I have the numbers and computer models to show it. If the China Deal had worked, on the other side of that I would have built XRepublic and then sat down to study some economics. I've always wanted to know what I believe that men like Fryer and Levitt seem poised to present, which is some juicy detail at the micro. How do the numbers work in this neighborhood, that neighborhood? And is that neighborhood like my neighborhood? And I just did that geek thing out of curiosity and a little bit of myth-questioning over the question of the 'black mecca'. Imagine what we're going to get when the pros come with the hardline. (Damn, this reminds me of an email I haven't responded to..sorry Kevin G.)

The Return of Conservation

I've been hearing that word again, and not just from the usual suspects. Conservation is what is on my mind. It is only conservative to conserve, and what chastens us all is a brush with defeat. I wonder what it will take for the word to become deed.

It has been said enough times: ANWR isn't the answer. And yet the very idea that we can pull a billion acres out of our hat suggests that there is a huge amount that conservation could give us. The problem with conservation is that I'm not certain that we can be priced into it. I wish an economist could help me out a little, but I think the term is elasticity. Europeans are chugging along only slightly less extravagantly than we, and yet they are paying $5 a gallon for gasoline. If Americans were to put up with the same, and I have no doubt that we would, what is going to change the nature of the business model of oil companies? They'll be laughing all the way to the bank for another decade. Will that be necessary to bankroll investment in energy diversification? Duke Power may be looking at next generation nuclear, but who will actually make the guarantees?

Somewhere hidden is an energy budget for the United States. I know it's out there because several years ago, I built a database for a big northeastern power company. They had 20 year oil price hedges. Enron wasn't the only company trading in energy futures. There is money to be followed, and things we might consider to be outrageous have most certainly already been planned around. The trick is not to let the very phrase 'peak oil' mislead us into believing that these same energy companies will go broke and suddenly become insignificant.

Michael Powell likes to talk about his son's XBox which is '17,000 times more powerful than the mission computer that went to the moon. And we paid $140 for it.' I think Powell plays the game himself, although he won't admit it. If the world's oil supply can be cut in half in 30 years and the world's supply of digital broadband and computing power can be increased 1000-fold in the same period of time, how can the collapse of our economies be imminent? All we need is a dislocation. There is a massive capacity for us to pull economies out of our digital hat, we simply need to price the bits right.

There are so many efficiencies we already know. It's just a matter of changing priorities. Sadly, Americans will need a wake up call, but once we wake up it will be easy. Just open up the conversation, and stop talking about a 'carbon tax'. Environmental architects are talking about using mirrors and fiber optics to cut down the daytime energy costs of electric lighting in buildings. I like that, but even if we just focused on transportation we could make strides.

We could dump the second car and make videoconferencing real. We could stop delivering pizza. We could lighten packaging in order to increase fuel efficiency in the shipping business. What about 55 gallon steel drums? If they were plastic instead, how much oil could be saved, given the extra spent making plastic? Has there been an energy efficient lighter weight advance in rail car design in the past 30 years? I know car rental agencies have no compunction whatsoever in charging you double the retail pump price for gasoline when you return the tank empty. You could really whomp them on energy inefficient fleets. Frequent fliers will pay the premiums, for a while.

Speaking of premiums. I'd bet that any offroader or watersporto would pay 10 bucks a gallon for two stroke mix, if they had to. Cheap gas is not necessary at the docks. Or, going the other way, make 'em run gasohol. OK, I'm sounding rather Hobbesian, I know, but I think I'm right on that elasticity thing.

As much as I hate the Prius and can't stand the self-congratulatory air of people who hate Hummers, I do believe that thinking our way forward is the way to go. Good ideas, efficient ideas are the way to go, yes. But at some point certain habits are going to have to die, and if it comes down to it, maybe the second car is one of them. But we're going to have to endure a crisis of the sort we had here in California four years ago. We're going to have to see the lights go out and told we don't have a choice. Because as long as we do, we're going to take the easy way out.

How can I be so sure? Because Americans have a choice to eat more tasty fatty food at the expense of our very lives, and we choose poorly. We've had Segways on the market for years, and nobody is buying. There will always be another diet, another dip in the price of gas, another wildlife preserve to sacrifice.

Too Quiet

Million Dollar Baby & Assisted Suicide

I finally understand why Terri Schindler Schiavo's story has such ridiculously long legs. It's Morgan Freeman's fault.

Million Dollar Baby, in case you haven't seen it, is a multileveled parable about living and dying. Depending on whom you are, the central moral of the story is about forgiveness, the meaning of sacrifice and family or the moral dilemma of euthanasia. It is the story of an over-protective boxing trainer who, at the urging of his ex-boxer partner, takes on a new fighter, a not-so-young woman with nowhere else to go.

It's a brilliant film in many ways. Let's talk about the movie. The first thing that struck me about this flick is that Eastwood has managed to make it timeless. It has a look which is so different and out of place among Hollywood films that you have to look closely at the automobiles to find out what year it's supposed to be. It succeeds by only being vaguely contemporary, it's a classic American story. Its characters look each other up and down, they stand in shadows, they talk around each other. They are their bodies and their voices in ways that we are not often presented. It is a close and intimate film empty of pretense. It isn't weighty and it didn't make me cry.

Watching Eastwood is making me want to take movies seriously again, something I haven't done for many years. For me, it has all been about converting bits that challenge my home electronics and assault my senses. For inspiration, I'd be happy with reading, thank you. But films like this, if they are not as rare as they seem, might turn that about. In this, the characters speak, not the writers. So emotional impact is not a target - there aren't engineered impact moments. Maybe it's the lighting, maybe it's the music, maybe it's the pace or some combination, but in the end you live through it. I felt as though I have been told a good story, and not had a 'moviegoing experience'. There were no women in faded white dresses with British accents awakening inner feelings somewhere in Africa. There were no broken men finding transcendent moments of redemption. It was something unusual, and perhaps unique: an honest film.

The story might end here, but that would be too simple. There is politics and moral posturing to do in a nation of infidels, and no rest for the weary symbol jockeys of the blogosphere. So I'm obliged to offer the suspicion that a goodly percentage of Terri's 'pro-life' fans are stung by the courageous transgression of Clint Eastwood's Frank. In order to make the following clear, note that there are two kinds of do-gooders in the Florida fracas. There are people who think Terri should live on. There people who think Mrs. Schiavo has lived long enough. Both claim to be friends looking out for hers and the best interests of the nation. Who's right? I think Clint Eastwood was right.

If Eastwood is right, it is because he created family where none truly existed. He grasped the unflinching truth of the danger and risk of skilled competition, and half-heartedly at first, yet finally with conviction and soul, he dedicated himself to bringing to fruition the passionate dream of someone who trusted him to. It is not selfless mentorship. It's investment of self. And if I might pontificate for a moment, this is all the difference between mendacious charity and leadership, which I think is a distinction more of us need to understand. Which is why I wrote the following paragraphs:

Yesterday, the last word in political hypocrisy under the guise of morality brazenly spun its words into my radio's stream. Somebody had the nerve to say Shiavo's death is all about 'judicial activists' changing the definition of life. Aside from the fact that it generally takes an act of congress to get Congress to act, I've not seen such a reactionary bit of grandstanding as yesterday's moves by Hastert and DeLay to jump into Shiavo's business.

The heads at NPR are finally saying '15 years' which is about the first time I've heard it said in any of the numerous radio stories I've been listening to for the past month. It occured to me that the pennance due those who can't abide her assisted suicide would be to watch a one hour video of Schiavo winking and gurgling. Every day. For a year. Let's see how their enthusiasm for political grandstanding weathers that grueling ordeal.

But I don't want that to be what comes out of my mouth today. It's why this post is late, because now I have to think. I have to slow down and stop reacting. Eastwood made me think about my own children and what I am helping them to become. He made me reconsider the notion of whom I might be living for and why. Indeed we should all reconsider the meaning of life in that regard.

Life is not a precious possession. It is not some treasure that can be banked. Life is a vigorous process. It is not something one has, rather it is something one moves with. You can't just get a life. Rather you engage in living. It's all about the dynamism. It's all about the achievement.

If you haven't seen the film, do. It can't be mitigated in the retelling and so I haven't hesitated.

Million Dollar Baby & Assisted Suicide

I finally understand why Terri Schindler Schiavo's story has such ridiculously long legs. It's Morgan Freeman's fault.

Million Dollar Baby, in case you haven't seen it, is a multileveled parable about living and dying. Depending on whom you are, the central moral of the story is about forgiveness, the meaning of sacrifice and family or the moral dilemma of euthanasia. It is the story of an over-protective boxing trainer who, at the urging of his ex-boxer partner, takes on a new fighter, a not-so-young woman with nowhere else to go.

It's a brilliant film in many ways. Let's talk about the movie. The first thing that struck me about this flick is that Eastwood has managed to make it timeless. It has a look which is so different and out of place among Hollywood films that you have to look closely at the automobiles to find out what year it's supposed to be. It succeeds by only being vaguely contemporary, it's a classic American story. Its characters look each other up and down, they stand in shadows, they talk around each other. They are their bodies and their voices in ways that we are not often presented. It is a close and intimate film empty of pretense. It isn't weighty and it didn't make me cry.

Watching Eastwood is making me want to take movies seriously again, something I haven't done for many years. For me, it has all been about converting bits that challenge my home electronics and assault my senses. For inspiration, I'd be happy with reading, thank you. But films like this, if they are not as rare as they seem, might turn that about. In this, the characters speak, not the writers. So emotional impact is not a target - there aren't engineered impact moments. Maybe it's the lighting, maybe it's the music, maybe it's the pace or some combination, but in the end you live through it. I felt as though I have been told a good story, and not had a 'moviegoing experience'. There were no women in faded white dresses with British accents awakening inner feelings somewhere in Africa. There were no broken men finding transcendent moments of redemption. It was something unusual, and perhaps unique: an honest film.

The story might end here, but that would be too simple. There is politics and moral posturing to do in a nation of infidels, and no rest for the weary symbol jockeys of the blogosphere. So I'm obliged to offer the suspicion that a goodly percentage of Terri's 'pro-life' fans are stung by the courageous transgression of Clint Eastwood's Frank. In order to make the following clear, note that there are two kinds of do-gooders in the Florida fracas. There are people who think Terri should live on. There people who think Mrs. Schiavo has lived long enough. Both claim to be friends looking out for hers and the best interests of the nation. Who's right? I think Clint Eastwood was right.

If Eastwood is right, it is because he created family where none truly existed. He grasped the unflinching truth of the danger and risk of skilled competition, and half-heartedly at first, yet finally with conviction and soul, he dedicated himself to bringing to fruition the passionate dream of someone who trusted him to. It is not selfless mentorship. It's investment of self. And if I might pontificate for a moment, this is all the difference between mendacious charity and leadership, which I think is a distinction more of us need to understand. Which is why I wrote the following paragraphs:

Yesterday, the last word in political hypocrisy under the guise of morality brazenly spun its words into my radio's stream. Somebody had the nerve to say Shiavo's death is all about 'judicial activists' changing the definition of life. Aside from the fact that it generally takes an act of congress to get Congress to act, I've not seen such a reactionary bit of grandstanding as yesterday's moves by Hastert and DeLay to jump into Shiavo's business.

The heads at NPR are finally saying '15 years' which is about the first time I've heard it said in any of the numerous radio stories I've been listening to for the past month. It occured to me that the pennance due those who can't abide her assisted suicide would be to watch a one hour video of Schiavo winking and gurgling. Every day. For a year. Let's see how their enthusiasm for political grandstanding weathers that grueling ordeal.

But I don't want that to be what comes out of my mouth today. It's why this post is late, because now I have to think. I have to slow down and stop reacting. Eastwood made me think about my own children and what I am helping them to become. He made me reconsider the notion of whom I might be living for and why. Indeed we should all reconsider the meaning of life in that regard.

Life is not a precious possession. It is not some treasure that can be banked. Life is a vigorous process. It is not something one has, rather it is something one moves with. You can't just get a life. Rather you engage in living. It's all about the dynamism. It's all about the achievement.

If you haven't seen the film, do. It can't be mitigated in the retelling and so I haven't hesitated.

Hardball

The Underside of a Blogger

This weekend, I along with a couple dozen others from Howard Rheingold's online community Brainstorms, are having a bit of photojournalistic fun as we document our lives in pictures. This is the third annual 'Daypix Weekend', and since it's the beginning of spring break I thought I'd introduce the idea to my blogpals and readers. The Brainstormers are from all around the world so that private showing should be a blast.

My first entry reminded me of the old canard about bloggers in their pajamas. I got up early this morning because I couldn't abide the fact that my big spike in traffic coincided with a dead spot in my verbal flow. So I'm getting the big volume and haven't delivered up to my normal quality. Of course, the new job with its 250 mile commute has a lot to do with that, but also the inclusion of my comic over at Punditdrome is introducing several new wrinkles to my otherwise smooth routine. I created and am already considering the decommission of a new blog dedicated to the comic strip. So a few things are in the air, but I'll be back in swing shortly.

The Underside of a Blogger

This weekend, I along with a couple dozen others from Howard Rheingold's online community Brainstorms, are having a bit of photojournalistic fun as we document our lives in pictures. This is the third annual 'Daypix Weekend', and since it's the beginning of spring break I thought I'd introduce the idea to my blogpals and readers. The Brainstormers are from all around the world so that private showing should be a blast.

My first entry reminded me of the old canard about bloggers in their pajamas. I got up early this morning because I couldn't abide the fact that my big spike in traffic coincided with a dead spot in my verbal flow. So I'm getting the big volume and haven't delivered up to my normal quality. Of course, the new job with its 250 mile commute has a lot to do with that, but also the inclusion of my comic over at Punditdrome is introducing several new wrinkles to my otherwise smooth routine. I created and am already considering the decommission of a new blog dedicated to the comic strip. So a few things are in the air, but I'll be back in swing shortly.

Usual Suspects

Friday Fragments

Assad The Lesser
If the question of Syria can be reduced to one or two factors, then Joe Klien's interview with Charlie Rose provided a good portion of the clue. Bashir Assad is getting pimpslapped around by area leaders as well as elements within his own country and government. As a president second guessed by his own government, suddenly Syria doesn't seem so dangerous. On the other hand, it becomes a bit less predictable. From now on, assign few calculated moves to Syria.

Powell The Lesser
It seem remarkable how seldom we've actually heard from Michael Powell these past 8 years. Now that he's heading out of the FCC, he can surely have just about any job in the world.

The Fabulous McCartneys
Notariety is a bear, but rarely have I seen such grace under pressure as that evidenced by the McCartney sisters in their NPR interview Wednesday. There's something about them which makes me think about English speakers as a civilization rather than as a bunch of disparate people around the world. It occurs to me that everyone's English has improved dramatically in the past 50 years, or at least American reporters are doing a better job at finding foreigners who speak well. Be that as it may, they exemplify with great precision the attitudes this White House has most certainly expected from Iraqis.

Friday Fragments

Assad The Lesser
If the question of Syria can be reduced to one or two factors, then Joe Klien's interview with Charlie Rose provided a good portion of the clue. Bashir Assad is getting pimpslapped around by area leaders as well as elements within his own country and government. As a president second guessed by his own government, suddenly Syria doesn't seem so dangerous. On the other hand, it becomes a bit less predictable. From now on, assign few calculated moves to Syria.

Powell The Lesser
It seem remarkable how seldom we've actually heard from Michael Powell these past 8 years. Now that he's heading out of the FCC, he can surely have just about any job in the world.

The Fabulous McCartneys
Notariety is a bear, but rarely have I seen such grace under pressure as that evidenced by the McCartney sisters in their NPR interview Wednesday. There's something about them which makes me think about English speakers as a civilization rather than as a bunch of disparate people around the world. It occurs to me that everyone's English has improved dramatically in the past 50 years, or at least American reporters are doing a better job at finding foreigners who speak well. Be that as it may, they exemplify with great precision the attitudes this White House has most certainly expected from Iraqis.

Chair

Freakonomics - First Peek

In my current reading, I've gotten an advance copy of Steven D. Levitt's new book, Freakonomics. The title is just weird enough to draw a good-sized audience of non-wonks, and the folks at William Morrow have got their audience right. Anybody who likes Michael Crichton, Oliver Sachs, David Brooks, Andrew Hacker or Malcolm Gladwell's eyes for the interesting will be immediately sucked in.

Co-written with Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is a smooth and entertaining read. Levitt has the mind of a scientist, but the eye of a curious wanderer who suddenly gets hooked on a subject. Anyone who reads blogs on the regular will recognize his willingness to take a curiosity and turn it inside out for inspection. But Levitt brings the rigor of statistics to bear on this as well as a disdain for simple answers. In many ways his discipline to go beyond the obvious is reminescent of business researcher Jim Collins the author of 'Good to Great', with the caveat that Levitt is a one man operation. If and when he gets to assemble the kind of team that Collins had, we will be in for a whirlwind of revelation.

Levitt is a little out of his depth when it comes to information theory, but he gets the fundamentals right. He makes timely observations about insider trading, citing Martha Stewart, but broadens the scope to look at the incentives of more garden variety professionals who interact with the public. I would have thought that the most interesting aspect of the Stewart, indeed of any high profile case has to do with identifying how any number of relatively weak individuals are suddenly rendered powerful by dint of their possession of the right info.

I've been very busy the past few days since I got it, otherwise I'm sure I would have finished by now. It will be digested this weekend. On the whole I think I will recommend it highly, and I guarantee that at least one of Levitt's stories will become the new common wisdom - like IBM's Diapers & Beer story.

Freakonomics - First Peek

In my current reading, I've gotten an advance copy of Steven D. Levitt's new book, Freakonomics. The title is just weird enough to draw a good-sized audience of non-wonks, and the folks at William Morrow have got their audience right. Anybody who likes Michael Crichton, Oliver Sachs, David Brooks, Andrew Hacker or Malcolm Gladwell's eyes for the interesting will be immediately sucked in.

Co-written with Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is a smooth and entertaining read. Levitt has the mind of a scientist, but the eye of a curious wanderer who suddenly gets hooked on a subject. Anyone who reads blogs on the regular will recognize his willingness to take a curiosity and turn it inside out for inspection. But Levitt brings the rigor of statistics to bear on this as well as a disdain for simple answers. In many ways his discipline to go beyond the obvious is reminescent of business researcher Jim Collins the author of 'Good to Great', with the caveat that Levitt is a one man operation. If and when he gets to assemble the kind of team that Collins had, we will be in for a whirlwind of revelation.

Levitt is a little out of his depth when it comes to information theory, but he gets the fundamentals right. He makes timely observations about insider trading, citing Martha Stewart, but broadens the scope to look at the incentives of more garden variety professionals who interact with the public. I would have thought that the most interesting aspect of the Stewart, indeed of any high profile case has to do with identifying how any number of relatively weak individuals are suddenly rendered powerful by dint of their possession of the right info.

I've been very busy the past few days since I got it, otherwise I'm sure I would have finished by now. It will be digested this weekend. On the whole I think I will recommend it highly, and I guarantee that at least one of Levitt's stories will become the new common wisdom - like IBM's Diapers & Beer story.

Metrics for the New Blog Millenium

I had no idea, all day long that I was getting a spike over the Blog Patronage post. Cool beans. I think it has been my biggest day since Cosby and/or Nick Berg. So while I actually did no surfing today (which is a good idea on your first day at work), I did jot down some notes about metrics for blogging. They are as follows.

Here are the adjectives: Here are the metrics

Profligate: Average blog posts per day.

Profound: Average trackbacks per post.

Popular: Average visits per day (already in TTLB)

Pervasive: Links per blog (already in TTLB)

Populist: Average comments per post.

Verbose: Average words per post.

Reverent: Average # of external links per post.

I'm not going to go to any great lengths to defend these and I think they're pretty self-explanatory. Anyone with a modicum of spare time and SQL skills could manage the programming, and you know that bloggers would break their necks to find out such data on their blogs. I leave the rest as an exercise.

There are a few other dimensions of blog performance which could be subjected to numerical analysis, but they would require a bit more resourcefulness. For example, how may RSS subscribers does a blog have? How many mentions does the blog get by A-List bloggers? How many mentions by mainstream media. I mention these without having paid much attention to Blogshares, or the recent rates at Blogads.

Again, I happen to think that blogs are primarily subjectively valuable and not objectively so. But we do play the game of popularity and many bloggers do so for money, just like the mainstream media. Anyone who lists themselves in Technorati, or any of the services plays the ratings game too. Maybe, just maybe we could improve it so that we know more than just popularity and pervasiveness. This is in no way to knock NZ Bear or the Ecosystem. He's the JD Power of the blogosphere and I think we're very fortunate to have that free service. So this is just my modest proposal.

About Last Night

Yesterday was one of those spellbindingly incredible days in which so many things happen that you don't know where to start explaining. Lordy I've got some explaining to do. Unfortunately, I've also got some driving to do because today is my first day on the new job. So here are some bullet points for you to consider and me to remember as I put together the pieces of a remarkable evening which started on the balcony of a 70 year old woman and ended up with police circling at 2am in a parking lot in Long Beach.

Brokerage Politics

The Chinese Backdoor

Weigers

The Power of the Mic

Lahore, Karachi, I Can't Remember Which

A Guy Named Julio

Four Black Men With Shotguns

That Girl's Dope

The Quiet Man in the Blue Blazer

Strata & Freakonomics

House

Bugs Bunny & Grenada, Mississippi

These Black Kids Don't Look Sick

The King & Queen

Charlton Heston

A Fistful of Chest Hair

April First

It appears that I will be expanding the Circle of Trust. Last night was rather magical. And the picture? That's me on the Right.

UPDATE: OK I'm just a big tease, but actually all the conversation was with a gaggle of old and new academic friends, led by Spence, whom I've known for a decade and yet never met face to face. The event was out at Whittier College.

About Last Night

Yesterday was one of those spellbindingly incredible days in which so many things happen that you don't know where to start explaining. Lordy I've got some explaining to do. Unfortunately, I've also got some driving to do because today is my first day on the new job. So here are some bullet points for you to consider and me to remember as I put together the pieces of a remarkable evening which started on the balcony of a 70 year old woman and ended up with police circling at 2am in a parking lot in Long Beach.

Brokerage Politics

The Chinese Backdoor

Weigers

The Power of the Mic

Lahore, Karachi, I Can't Remember Which

A Guy Named Julio

Four Black Men With Shotguns

That Girl's Dope

The Quiet Man in the Blue Blazer

Strata & Freakonomics

House

Bugs Bunny & Grenada, Mississippi

These Black Kids Don't Look Sick

The King & Queen

Charlton Heston

A Fistful of Chest Hair

April First

It appears that I will be expanding the Circle of Trust. Last night was rather magical. And the picture? That's me on the Right.

UPDATE: OK I'm just a big tease, but actually all the conversation was with a gaggle of old and new academic friends, led by Spence, whom I've known for a decade and yet never met face to face. The event was out at Whittier College.

Urban Hacking, Effete Republicans & The Spirit of Mega

In the coming weeks and months, it is my intention to get back in shape and do a bit of urban hacking and amateur spyjinks. I think it's an excellent idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, well, every once in a while I get my fill of bourgie bloviation.

I came across this notion in three or four stages. The first was the realization that Glenn Close is going to play a detective in this season of 'The Shield'. Make sure to get a season pass on that. She researched the project by spending some time with an actual real woman cop in NYC. The second was the idea of 'Blame the Enemy', which I will post in the future - stay tuned for that. The third has to do with my continuing security focus, and the fourth with my discovery of yet another blog I wrote several years ago in the months leading up to September 11th.

That blog was called 'Obscura' and I'm republishing it here. The archives may or may not work as of this publishing. Speaking of which, Blogger has gotten its act together since I last checked. I'm liking it a lot more and will probably do some serial hit-and-run blogging.

One of the Obscura posts led me back to Jinx Magazine. A very little known fact was that I used to be a tagger back in highschool. That's right, I belonged to a prep-school cholo-wannabee gang, and we tagged various joints in the very old school style of pre-wildstyle graffiti. Anyway my name was Jinx, so the site appealed to me immediately. Then I discovered what they were all about and was immedately transfixed by stories that took me way back. So I predisposed a portion of myself to GPS hacking, dumpster diving and like activities. Intellectually and culturally these fit nicely into part of the 'new tactical', and 'blackneck' themes. [Un]fortunately as the case may be, I have not pressed any compatriots into this manner of sport.

In reading up on the highlighted hacker of the day, Citizen Chris, it occurred to me that there's a bit of an anarchist component in this cohort. Chris writes with a bit of snarky irony:

There is this vast Republican conspiracy to underfund the entire infrastructure of the nation. Few repairs are made to highway systems so that more Americans are stuck in gridlock and thus have more time to be brainwashed by the Limbaughs, O'Reilly's, and Hannity's of hate radio as they sit and stew in traffic. The anger of the horrible commute creates a Pavlovian conditioning situation in which hatred of the gridlocked commute is transferred to Democrats, liberals and the their vast evil communist plots.

Tsk.

Be that delusion as it may, there is an element of truth in it, which is that they are talking about a class of Republicans that do exist out there. One of 70 classes I'd imagine. But for those of us Republicans who own boots, workgoves and chainsaws (you know it!), there's a bit of an attitude adjustment we have yet to deliver in the national electorate.

So I'm digging the angle of how close knowledge, power and (for lack of a better word) transgression are to what is generally percieved by dainty people to be criminality. The line is not so thin as many would like to think, and those of us whose responsibility it is to make things work, know very well what it would take to sabotage those very things. But we never do, we're responsible and we consider it our duty to remain that way.

America has millions who own 4WDs that never get engaged. And I think there is an image that youth has that only lefties and anarchists get dirty. Those on the right who do are all either 'stupid rednecks' or 'gullible soldiers'. Whatever to that. I'm going to have fun getting dirty and going to places where it is expected that only delinquents and homeless people are. So I'm looking, through Jinx, for folks in LA who won't mind getting their feet wet in the LA River. I know just where to start too, Civil engineering departments.

BTW, Chris, misguided as he is politically, has admirably gotten himself a 100-ton master's license. (Google that one your damned self.) Reminds me to call my boy Bernard who used to hang out with Liberian freighter captains.

One more thing. Remember the Spirit of Mega.

Urban Hacking, Effete Republicans & The Spirit of Mega

In the coming weeks and months, it is my intention to get back in shape and do a bit of urban hacking and amateur spyjinks. I think it's an excellent idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, well, every once in a while I get my fill of bourgie bloviation.

I came across this notion in three or four stages. The first was the realization that Glenn Close is going to play a detective in this season of 'The Shield'. Make sure to get a season pass on that. She researched the project by spending some time with an actual real woman cop in NYC. The second was the idea of 'Blame the Enemy', which I will post in the future - stay tuned for that. The third has to do with my continuing security focus, and the fourth with my discovery of yet another blog I wrote several years ago in the months leading up to September 11th.

That blog was called 'Obscura' and I'm republishing it here. The archives may or may not work as of this publishing. Speaking of which, Blogger has gotten its act together since I last checked. I'm liking it a lot more and will probably do some serial hit-and-run blogging.

One of the Obscura posts led me back to Jinx Magazine. A very little known fact was that I used to be a tagger back in highschool. That's right, I belonged to a prep-school cholo-wannabee gang, and we tagged various joints in the very old school style of pre-wildstyle graffiti. Anyway my name was Jinx, so the site appealed to me immediately. Then I discovered what they were all about and was immedately transfixed by stories that took me way back. So I predisposed a portion of myself to GPS hacking, dumpster diving and like activities. Intellectually and culturally these fit nicely into part of the 'new tactical', and 'blackneck' themes. [Un]fortunately as the case may be, I have not pressed any compatriots into this manner of sport.

In reading up on the highlighted hacker of the day, Citizen Chris, it occurred to me that there's a bit of an anarchist component in this cohort. Chris writes with a bit of snarky irony:

There is this vast Republican conspiracy to underfund the entire infrastructure of the nation. Few repairs are made to highway systems so that more Americans are stuck in gridlock and thus have more time to be brainwashed by the Limbaughs, O'Reilly's, and Hannity's of hate radio as they sit and stew in traffic. The anger of the horrible commute creates a Pavlovian conditioning situation in which hatred of the gridlocked commute is transferred to Democrats, liberals and the their vast evil communist plots.

Tsk.

Be that delusion as it may, there is an element of truth in it, which is that they are talking about a class of Republicans that do exist out there. One of 70 classes I'd imagine. But for those of us Republicans who own boots, workgoves and chainsaws (you know it!), there's a bit of an attitude adjustment we have yet to deliver in the national electorate.

So I'm digging the angle of how close knowledge, power and (for lack of a better word) transgression are to what is generally percieved by dainty people to be criminality. The line is not so thin as many would like to think, and those of us whose responsibility it is to make things work, know very well what it would take to sabotage those very things. But we never do, we're responsible and we consider it our duty to remain that way.

America has millions who own 4WDs that never get engaged. And I think there is an image that youth has that only lefties and anarchists get dirty. Those on the right who do are all either 'stupid rednecks' or 'gullible soldiers'. Whatever to that. I'm going to have fun getting dirty and going to places where it is expected that only delinquents and homeless people are. So I'm looking, through Jinx, for folks in LA who won't mind getting their feet wet in the LA River. I know just where to start too, Civil engineering departments.

BTW, Chris, misguided as he is politically, has admirably gotten himself a 100-ton master's license. (Google that one your damned self.) Reminds me to call my boy Bernard who used to hang out with Liberian freighter captains.

One more thing. Remember the Spirit of Mega.

Late

Blog Notes

I'm listening carefully to my readers and critics, and am going to make a strong effort to make reading the comic easier, and looking at syndication possibilities. The change from orange to green is just the first of a few changes around here. I think the result will be a better blog experience for all.

Stay Tuned.

Blog Patronage: A Token of Affection

Who is the number one black female blogger in the world? That's easy. LaShawn Barber. Why? Because she's untiring in her efforts to get her name out there, she has a compelling blog, and dammit people like her. I'm picking up on her meme today because it's a real enough one to discuss at length, but also because I think it's time (again) that black blogs get their due.

Just the other day, I ran into some character who thought he was the first black blogger from Detroit. As far as I know, the most popular black blogger from Detroit has been around for at least two years, and got a lot of coverage for an interesting incident that I won't go into. My point is that black blogs have long been around, the question is who is paying attention, and why or why not.

We are already learning something deep about the dynamism (or lack thereof as it were) of marketshare in the blogosphere. Because of the ways and means of linking, there are blogs that are 'popular' even though nobody is writing on them. For a long time I complained about Rachel Lucas being a higher order lifeform in the TTLB Ecosystem than I was, even though she stopped blogging for over a year.

In the blogosphere there is a real contingency of patronage. I'm not sure that everyone is so eager to say so, but it's real. As real as is the term 'blogosphere' is the term 'blogfather'. Ask any blogger of substance, and if they're honest (and are abetted by a technical clue or two) they'll know which other blogs send them the most traffic. They will also almost surely know who gave them their big break and under which circumstances that occured. There is not a conspiracy of white male bloggers, and I'd guess all of them would be loathe to admit any such clubbiness, but all popular bloggers belong to a club and none of them are about to delink anytime soon.

Dead White Male Blogs - The Elvis Factor
One way to look at the question of whether or not there is a conspiracy to keep all the goods is what [white male] bloggers do to police themselves. I think they don't. I know for a fact that there's a lot of dead linkage out there that nobody really trims, and that this ossifies marketshare. Once popular, always popular. It seems to be a one way function from which few people fall. DenBeste at USS Clueless has over 800 links and he hasn't blogged regularly for many months. In fact, I've been checking his latest post as I write this one and note that he has gotten the equivalent of one week's Cobb traffic in about 90 minutes. Here are several other dead blogs that still suck up oxygen. (I'm giving Andrew Sullivan a pass)

Lefty Destroyer

Jeff

Aaron's Rantblog

Calpundit

I could go on but it's boring and time-consuming work to slueth through the Ecosystem to see which blogs actually exist. This only strengthens my point.

Juan Cole & Meritocracy
I'm one of the people that happens to think that Juan Cole is a brilliant idiot on the level of William Shockley. He is one of those people of which I think the poet referred to as knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. In particular, I am speaking of his determined effort to sabotage the moral reasoning for the Iraq War with his incessant and well informed sniping. For this, Cole has generated a number of rivals and enemies in the blogosphere. There are others, Kaus, Kos, Atrios. I think that if the blogosphere were to be considered a meritocracy, Juan Cole would still be near the top. The reason for this is that Cole has reached the tipping point at which he is no longer dependent on the politics of blogrolling. Which is to say that he gets plenty of traffic without mutual linking, without supporting comments and without trackbacks. He's out there, unassisted, influential.

The rest of us poor slobs, and I would consider myself a poor slob on the order of Unfogged, although I have been compared to Lileks, need mutual blogrolling, league membership, comment traffic and other methods of enlightened self-interest to maintain or improve our status as noteworthy and readable. These practices, affectionately known as 'link whoring' are a stock in trade among the B-List and Blog Rabble which I would consider to be anyone less evolved than a Primate in the TTLB Ecosystem.

The Gratuitous, Qualified Pitch
At Cobb, I have consistently refused advertising. I think ads would make my site look hideous, they add nothing of value, and I couldn't possibly get paid enough with my current volume to justify them. I also haven't advertised. I simply can't afford it right now, plus I can't think of a cool enough slogan at the moment. I am also already a Large Mammal and living large is enough for me, sorta.

On the other hand, I do think that we're in a state of disgrace when it comes to the national recognition of black bloggers. As pitiable a situation as that is, I don't know that there is a list or that I'd want to be on it, considered separately. In other words, I know that when it comes to pure bloggy merit, there are a lot of African Americans that are deserving of a lot more traffic and recognition than they get, and I think Cobb ought to do a lot better than it does in terms of traffic. But, I'm not sure there's a simple solution.

I've decided to do something about that with regard to advertisement, but what I haven't really considered until now is the power of Affirmative Action, or more properly speaking: Tokenism.

I hereby submit Cobb for the consideration of all A-List Bloggers as the Head Negro in Blogs. Send me your poor, huddled vanillified readers yearning to breathe diversity. I lift my banner beside the olive greed sidebar! But since I also link to more black blogs than the average bear, I know the trickle down will continue.

I do so with the confidence of years of blogging and writing online that have thus far so nobly advanced me. And I also do it as a publicity stunt, and further and most importantly I do it because I understand that the dynamics of patronage in the blogosphere is the most important factor in launching a blog's popularity. If anyone anywhere today is saying that blogging is a white male domain, then they clearly do not know about how huge the blogosphere is and how many women and non-whites are active and popular. But there is the big unanswered question about whom the A-List Bloggers consider to be representative of those outside the top of their blogrolls. I've been a hot blog launched by DenBeste and by The Agonist (my blogfathers) when they were at their peaks, and I certain am appreciative of that, but I have never before sought nomination. The very persistence of the question of black blogs amidst 'white male hegemony' demands that the real black bloggers please stand up, and it's about time. But you and I both know that the A-List Bloggers or the MSM have to say it's an issue before the average blog reader, or average American takes notice and says 'hmm, I wonder...'.

Bottom line, merit in the blogosphere is what the top bloggers say merit is, and they allocate it out by referring to blogs with which they are engaged in conversation. I don't think that's going to change much. Blogs move not only on their own power but on their ability to get big bloggers to compete, cooperate or otherwise notice and comment on them.

And the People Say..
On the other hand, the phenominal rise of LaShawn Barber over the past year puts a distinct question to me, which is that while she has gotten very popular, most of us, her mates in the Conservative Brotherhood have remained pretty much where we were. Although I can speak only speak for myself, the big rush has not come, and trickle down just might not be real. So why second guess the market? Perhaps it's altogether true that people are indeed finding exactly what they want in the blogosphere from blacks, whites, women and everybody else who identifies some orientation to their writing. There isn't going to be a technical revolution in blog traffic monitoring, and the 'sphere is mature. All change from here on out is going to have to be phenomenon-based.

But that does not dissuade me from believing that Cobb and other purposefully black [political] blogs could use some publicity. We have something to say and we're worth reading. But until somebody with marketshare says so, we remain as we are. Obscure, poor and somewhat reconciled the the fact that our say so only reaches a paucity of eyeballs. And so we keep stepping.

Disclosure: According to the TTLB Ecosystem, Cobb ranks 1510th in average daily traffic with 137 readers per day. Cobb ranks 721st overall with 184 links.

More:
Technorati: blogging_while_black
SXSW Liveblogging: Blogging While Black
Snarky Commentary at The Captains Quarters.

Blog Patronage: A Token of Affection

Who is the number one black female blogger in the world? That's easy. LaShawn Barber. Why? Because she's untiring in her efforts to get her name out there, she has a compelling blog, and dammit people like her. I'm picking up on her meme today because it's a real enough one to discuss at length, but also because I think it's time (again) that black blogs get their due.

Just the other day, I ran into some character who thought he was the first black blogger from Detroit. As far as I know, the most popular black blogger from Detroit has been around for at least two years, and got a lot of coverage for an interesting incident that I won't go into. My point is that black blogs have long been around, the question is who is paying attention, and why or why not.

We are already learning something deep about the dynamism (or lack thereof as it were) of marketshare in the blogosphere. Because of the ways and means of linking, there are blogs that are 'popular' even though nobody is writing on them. For a long time I complained about Rachel Lucas being a higher order lifeform in the TTLB Ecosystem than I was, even though she stopped blogging for over a year.

In the blogosphere there is a real contingency of patronage. I'm not sure that everyone is so eager to say so, but it's real. As real as is the term 'blogosphere' is the term 'blogfather'. Ask any blogger of substance, and if they're honest (and are abetted by a technical clue or two) they'll know which other blogs send them the most traffic. They will also almost surely know who gave them their big break and under which circumstances that occured. There is not a conspiracy of white male bloggers, and I'd guess all of them would be loathe to admit any such clubbiness, but all popular bloggers belong to a club and none of them are about to delink anytime soon.

Dead White Male Blogs - The Elvis Factor
One way to look at the question of whether or not there is a conspiracy to keep all the goods is what [white male] bloggers do to police themselves. I think they don't. I know for a fact that there's a lot of dead linkage out there that nobody really trims, and that this ossifies marketshare. Once popular, always popular. It seems to be a one way function from which few people fall. DenBeste at USS Clueless has over 800 links and he hasn't blogged regularly for many months. In fact, I've been checking his latest post as I write this one and note that he has gotten the equivalent of one week's Cobb traffic in about 90 minutes. Here are several other dead blogs that still suck up oxygen. (I'm giving Andrew Sullivan a pass)

Lefty Destroyer

Jeff

Aaron's Rantblog

Calpundit

I could go on but it's boring and time-consuming work to slueth through the Ecosystem to see which blogs actually exist. This only strengthens my point.

Juan Cole & Meritocracy
I'm one of the people that happens to think that Juan Cole is a brilliant idiot on the level of William Shockley. He is one of those people of which I think the poet referred to as knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. In particular, I am speaking of his determined effort to sabotage the moral reasoning for the Iraq War with his incessant and well informed sniping. For this, Cole has generated a number of rivals and enemies in the blogosphere. There are others, Kaus, Kos, Atrios. I think that if the blogosphere were to be considered a meritocracy, Juan Cole would still be near the top. The reason for this is that Cole has reached the tipping point at which he is no longer dependent on the politics of blogrolling. Which is to say that he gets plenty of traffic without mutual linking, without supporting comments and without trackbacks. He's out there, unassisted, influential.

The rest of us poor slobs, and I would consider myself a poor slob on the order of Unfogged, although I have been compared to Lileks, need mutual blogrolling, league membership, comment traffic and other methods of enlightened self-interest to maintain or improve our status as noteworthy and readable. These practices, affectionately known as 'link whoring' are a stock in trade among the B-List and Blog Rabble which I would consider to be anyone less evolved than a Primate in the TTLB Ecosystem.

The Gratuitous, Qualified Pitch
At Cobb, I have consistently refused advertising. I think ads would make my site look hideous, they add nothing of value, and I couldn't possibly get paid enough with my current volume to justify them. I also haven't advertised. I simply can't afford it right now, plus I can't think of a cool enough slogan at the moment. I am also already a Large Mammal and living large is enough for me, sorta.

On the other hand, I do think that we're in a state of disgrace when it comes to the national recognition of black bloggers. As pitiable a situation as that is, I don't know that there is a list or that I'd want to be on it, considered separately. In other words, I know that when it comes to pure bloggy merit, there are a lot of African Americans that are deserving of a lot more traffic and recognition than they get, and I think Cobb ought to do a lot better than it does in terms of traffic. But, I'm not sure there's a simple solution.

I've decided to do something about that with regard to advertisement, but what I haven't really considered until now is the power of Affirmative Action, or more properly speaking: Tokenism.

I hereby submit Cobb for the consideration of all A-List Bloggers as the Head Negro in Blogs. Send me your poor, huddled vanillified readers yearning to breathe diversity. I lift my banner beside the olive greed sidebar! But since I also link to more black blogs than the average bear, I know the trickle down will continue.

I do so with the confidence of years of blogging and writing online that have thus far so nobly advanced me. And I also do it as a publicity stunt, and further and most importantly I do it because I understand that the dynamics of patronage in the blogosphere is the most important factor in launching a blog's popularity. If anyone anywhere today is saying that blogging is a white male domain, then they clearly do not know about how huge the blogosphere is and how many women and non-whites are active and popular. But there is the big unanswered question about whom the A-List Bloggers consider to be representative of those outside the top of their blogrolls. I've been a hot blog launched by DenBeste and by The Agonist (my blogfathers) when they were at their peaks, and I certain am appreciative of that, but I have never before sought nomination. The very persistence of the question of black blogs amidst 'white male hegemony' demands that the real black bloggers please stand up, and it's about time. But you and I both know that the A-List Bloggers or the MSM have to say it's an issue before the average blog reader, or average American takes notice and says 'hmm, I wonder...'.

Bottom line, merit in the blogosphere is what the top bloggers say merit is, and they allocate it out by referring to blogs with which they are engaged in conversation. I don't think that's going to change much. Blogs move not only on their own power but on their ability to get big bloggers to compete, cooperate or otherwise notice and comment on them.

And the People Say..
On the other hand, the phenominal rise of LaShawn Barber over the past year puts a distinct question to me, which is that while she has gotten very popular, most of us, her mates in the Conservative Brotherhood have remained pretty much where we were. Although I can speak only speak for myself, the big rush has not come, and trickle down just might not be real. So why second guess the market? Perhaps it's altogether true that people are indeed finding exactly what they want in the blogosphere from blacks, whites, women and everybody else who identifies some orientation to their writing. There isn't going to be a technical revolution in blog traffic monitoring, and the 'sphere is mature. All change from here on out is going to have to be phenomenon-based.

But that does not dissuade me from believing that Cobb and other purposefully black [political] blogs could use some publicity. We have something to say and we're worth reading. But until somebody with marketshare says so, we remain as we are. Obscure, poor and somewhat reconciled the the fact that our say so only reaches a paucity of eyeballs. And so we keep stepping.

Disclosure: According to the TTLB Ecosystem, Cobb ranks 1510th in average daily traffic with 137 readers per day. Cobb ranks 721st overall with 184 links.

More:
Technorati: blogging_while_black
SXSW Liveblogging: Blogging While Black
Snarky Commentary at The Captains Quarters.

Harvard Admission: Do Not Open Until Christmas

Like most folks in the news-junkie class, I found out in the past week or so that Harvard busted some 'hackers' who apparently broke into an Admissions database. The story was somewhat beneath my radar for caring and I only made a mental note in passing that it sounds like another blow against the ethics of certain of our future leaders. There was some quibbling somewhere and then the story came out. All 119 students accused were summarily rejected by the University. Then I found out more.

Over the past week I have been literally obsessing about security (I'll explain that later) and have set up a dozen or so new RSS feeds from security blogs. I have learned so much! The latest of these informs me that the 'hack' was accomplished by twiddling with the URL at the website. In other words the security was so stupid as to be inconsistent with the very idea of secured information.

It turns out that all applicants to the Harvard Business School were given accounts on a website:

HBS interacts with applicants via a third-party site called ApplyYourself. Harvard had planned to notify applicants whether they had been admitted, on March 30. Somebody discovered last week that some applicants' admit/reject letters were already available on the ApplyYourself website. There were no hyperlinks to the letters, but a student who was logged in to the site could access his/her letter by constructing a special URL. Instructions for doing this were posted in an online forum frequented by HBS applicants. (The instructions, which no longer work due to changes in the ApplyYourself site, are reproduced here.) Students who did this saw either a rejection letter or a blank page. (Presumably the blank page meant either that HBS would admit the student, or that the admissions decision hadn't been made yet.) 119 HBS applicants used the instructions.

This reminds me of an old Bill Cosby story about his mean Uncle Charles. All year long Uncle Charles promises little Bill that if he's good, he's going to get a bicycle for Christmas. As the holiday season rolls around, little Bill asks if he has been good enough. Uncle Charles plays coy, saying nothing, but the twinkle in his eye suggests that Bill will be riding happily on Christmas Day. As the day gets closer, Bill pesters his uncle more and more, until one day he does so and upsets Uncle Charles' drink. Uncle Charles, in a fit of rage says "Yes I was going to get you a bicycle, but now you just ruined it." Bill is crushed.

This is clearly cruelty and it is essentially no different from what HBS has done to its applicants. It had made a decision upon the basis of what the students had already accomplished, and then arbitrarily extended a new 'ethics' criteria based. I don't see a way that HBS can wiggle their way out of this. If the decision to admit or reject had already been made, the application of additional contingencies represents a breach of good faith and draws suspicion on the integrity of the decision process.

That admissions status was available to website members when it should not have been is a technical problem, but it also represents a flaw in the admissions process. Clearly there were significant reasons why the ApplyYourself website was built and populated with student's personal information. It's reasonable to assume that chief among those reasons were transparency of the admissions process and speed of delivery of information. Two steps forward. But too much speed and transparency costs a decision reversal? After all, whose information is it anyway?

Harvard hid the status of these applicants in plain sight. It invited students into a private room with their name on the door ostensibly for the purposes of giving and taking pertinent information. In one corner of this room is their acceptance/rejection letter, addressed to the applicant with the implied warning, 'Do not open until Christmas'. That's cruel.

Understand that it is a non-trivial process to get information from Harvard's Admissions Committee, whomever they may be, onto a third-party website. Whatever that process may be, it is certainly more complicated than stuffing envelopes, stamping them and holding them to be mailed. Nevertheless, by sending this information to the third-party who is doing the work of adding content to the website, Harvard was waving it under the nose of the applicants. I grant that using reasonable security would have solved the technical problem, but that doesn't alter the fact that withholding the information due to applicants is an irresponsible injection of drama and punishing those previously accepted is harshly cruel. Harvard clearly was not administratively ready to modify its admissions process to include this sort of website. The ironic result is that aspects of its process have become embarassingly transparent.

Harvard should reinstate the students who were previously accepted on a deferred admit basis, fire ApplyYourself and keep all further admission information on paper, on campus & under lock and key.

Harvard Admission: Do Not Open Until Christmas

Like most folks in the news-junkie class, I found out in the past week or so that Harvard busted some 'hackers' who apparently broke into an Admissions database. The story was somewhat beneath my radar for caring and I only made a mental note in passing that it sounds like another blow against the ethics of certain of our future leaders. There was some quibbling somewhere and then the story came out. All 119 students accused were summarily rejected by the University. Then I found out more.

Over the past week I have been literally obsessing about security (I'll explain that later) and have set up a dozen or so new RSS feeds from security blogs. I have learned so much! The latest of these informs me that the 'hack' was accomplished by twiddling with the URL at the website. In other words the security was so stupid as to be inconsistent with the very idea of secured information.

It turns out that all applicants to the Harvard Business School were given accounts on a website:

HBS interacts with applicants via a third-party site called ApplyYourself. Harvard had planned to notify applicants whether they had been admitted, on March 30. Somebody discovered last week that some applicants' admit/reject letters were already available on the ApplyYourself website. There were no hyperlinks to the letters, but a student who was logged in to the site could access his/her letter by constructing a special URL. Instructions for doing this were posted in an online forum frequented by HBS applicants. (The instructions, which no longer work due to changes in the ApplyYourself site, are reproduced here.) Students who did this saw either a rejection letter or a blank page. (Presumably the blank page meant either that HBS would admit the student, or that the admissions decision hadn't been made yet.) 119 HBS applicants used the instructions.

This reminds me of an old Bill Cosby story about his mean Uncle Charles. All year long Uncle Charles promises little Bill that if he's good, he's going to get a bicycle for Christmas. As the holiday season rolls around, little Bill asks if he has been good enough. Uncle Charles plays coy, saying nothing, but the twinkle in his eye suggests that Bill will be riding happily on Christmas Day. As the day gets closer, Bill pesters his uncle more and more, until one day he does so and upsets Uncle Charles' drink. Uncle Charles, in a fit of rage says "Yes I was going to get you a bicycle, but now you just ruined it." Bill is crushed.

This is clearly cruelty and it is essentially no different from what HBS has done to its applicants. It had made a decision upon the basis of what the students had already accomplished, and then arbitrarily extended a new 'ethics' criteria based. I don't see a way that HBS can wiggle their way out of this. If the decision to admit or reject had already been made, the application of additional contingencies represents a breach of good faith and draws suspicion on the integrity of the decision process.

That admissions status was available to website members when it should not have been is a technical problem, but it also represents a flaw in the admissions process. Clearly there were significant reasons why the ApplyYourself website was built and populated with student's personal information. It's reasonable to assume that chief among those reasons were transparency of the admissions process and speed of delivery of information. Two steps forward. But too much speed and transparency costs a decision reversal? After all, whose information is it anyway?

Harvard hid the status of these applicants in plain sight. It invited students into a private room with their name on the door ostensibly for the purposes of giving and taking pertinent information. In one corner of this room is their acceptance/rejection letter, addressed to the applicant with the implied warning, 'Do not open until Christmas'. That's cruel.

Understand that it is a non-trivial process to get information from Harvard's Admissions Committee, whomever they may be, onto a third-party website. Whatever that process may be, it is certainly more complicated than stuffing envelopes, stamping them and holding them to be mailed. Nevertheless, by sending this information to the third-party who is doing the work of adding content to the website, Harvard was waving it under the nose of the applicants. I grant that using reasonable security would have solved the technical problem, but that doesn't alter the fact that withholding the information due to applicants is an irresponsible injection of drama and punishing those previously accepted is harshly cruel. Harvard clearly was not administratively ready to modify its admissions process to include this sort of website. The ironic result is that aspects of its process have become embarassingly transparent.

Harvard should reinstate the students who were previously accepted on a deferred admit basis, fire ApplyYourself and keep all further admission information on paper, on campus & under lock and key.

PGP

Good Life Good Death

(from the archives, Dec 2001)

for christmas, my brother deet bought a book called 'good life, good death'. it was written by the 13th nephew of the dalai lama. he discussed a bit of it with us last night. i realized that my conversational skills have declined. i don't use them at all - i just write lowercase online. nevertheless i was able to witness the transfixing effect of these eastern mysteries upon him.

i chimed in clumsily about karen armstrong's biography of bhudda which i am 3/4 finished. the pearls of wisdom burbled out of my mouth in a slurry. one of the kids yelled, or dropped punch on the carpet and the moment was lost.

i tried to recapture the moment by starting the conjecture that we are engaged in a clash of civilizations. how could islam beat the west? the answer had something to do with 'they don't value individual life like we do'. david got us started talking about our military policy of saving every man, and the powell doctrine, as he recounted a friend of his ability to swim 21 miles in the open ocean with combat boots on. it went on for a decent while.

black wedenesday hasn't happened yet. so i wonder what i'll be able to say before people care to prove that america is actually always and everywhere acutely aware of any eventuality. our problem is broadcasting and capturing the attention of people whose values we will change in the moment of need.

the buddha says that pain is unavoidable. this is also revealed in my 15 year old diary. facing pain is a universal challenge. as i embark to make myself an appropriate middle-aged middle-class existence i find this appealing. i always sought to avoid the fate of characters in martin amis' fiction. but now i am finding it in my heart to wear a jolly give a shit attitude and integrate it into my daily smile. i am almost ready to think of america as my very own little ghetto. avoiding pain is avoiding life. it is the attempt to think your way out of every problem, it is the attempt to institutionalize civilizing forces. it is the attempt to extend life. but the buddhais convincing me that life is in the moment and institutions are all vanity.

there is no such thing as patriotism. that's why nobody agrees on what it is. patriotism is affinity to the state, and the state is an institution, a momumental edifice of artifice, a construction of theories and anonymous fidelities. it isn't what it was 20 minutes ago - it lies in the attitude of a million people trying to say what it means to them. the constitution is artifice as well, a representation of a dynamic spirit of love and respect which loses all energy once abstracted to paper. the man who drunk wine at jefferson's table might have an idea what this thing was all about, but unless you are he reincarnated, you will not know. it won't be your story, and in the end that's all you remember. you remember the man who pulled you from the burning building and the pieces of your leg hanging from the extruded aluminum spur. you pledge your life to the one who saved yours. that is because pain is universal and freedom from pain is universal and the only act of civilization is life-saving. not patriotism. not the abstract. wittgenstien fucked us all over when he said that words are deeds, and even he knew that he was full of shit, because he had to pick up the poker at the moral science club...

i like this wooly little forum. but we too are vain. in my new neighborhood, i'm going to teach my neighbors how to chop wood. a deeds exchange will be more useful than a words exchange. that's why going to church is meaningless except for the music. you cannot just sit and recieve wisdom or blessings. you have to be blowing air through your body and heaving it out. you have to be exercising your fingers and feet and pulling out all the stops and bobbing your head and feeling the resonsances of the low notes. making music is a deed. (last night at the party, my job was to keep the music playing and the fire burning). hosting is work but also a pleasure - it is better to be the party giver than to be the fetted friend. the moment is found in alleviating the suffering of my guests. the conversation about religion and politics was dead but people actually danced.

you have to find your own way. words are only useful inside your head. you only write them down to remember. but now every word you ever wrote is trying to own your spirit, but that was 15 years ago. google doensn't know shit. google is just like nbc, cbs, pbs all of them. it's just trying to make real a surplus of meaningless abstracts. it's trying to force its context on you. it is a haunted house jam packed with a surfeit of restless spirits trying to inhabit your body. it doesn't matter that it was 'you' that wrote it - those were 15 billion wholly other cells, not you. you are now, and the more time you try to convince yourself that you are the same you were before, the more words you need. go right ahead, try it. make a word harness. if you're crafty maybe it'll fit and lead you in some direction. but you'll go wrong because the use of words is for them to be observant not reflective. there is a reason time moves forward and not backward. you cannot be institutionalized without words. all that effort to maintain a static fiction, all those applications, all of those entry level skills, all of those poor saps trying to conform to the ways and means of old spirits, old documentation, old manuals with none of the inventor's spark. get you head rid of the ghosts of christmas past and be more mindful of the present. you'll have to find your own way. tradition is a trap.

the job for computers is to keep bartleby free. every institution needs a million bartlebys. i struggle to take his scrivening spirit and bottle it in silicon. then he can be free of it and live in the moment. once the building is empty of humans, all laid off and the principals gone to brazil, let it crash to the ground. who cares?

Good Life Good Death

(from the archives, Dec 2001)

for christmas, my brother deet bought a book called 'good life, good death'. it was written by the 13th nephew of the dalai lama. he discussed a bit of it with us last night. i realized that my conversational skills have declined. i don't use them at all - i just write lowercase online. nevertheless i was able to witness the transfixing effect of these eastern mysteries upon him.

i chimed in clumsily about karen armstrong's biography of bhudda which i am 3/4 finished. the pearls of wisdom burbled out of my mouth in a slurry. one of the kids yelled, or dropped punch on the carpet and the moment was lost.

i tried to recapture the moment by starting the conjecture that we are engaged in a clash of civilizations. how could islam beat the west? the answer had something to do with 'they don't value individual life like we do'. david got us started talking about our military policy of saving every man, and the powell doctrine, as he recounted a friend of his ability to swim 21 miles in the open ocean with combat boots on. it went on for a decent while.

black wedenesday hasn't happened yet. so i wonder what i'll be able to say before people care to prove that america is actually always and everywhere acutely aware of any eventuality. our problem is broadcasting and capturing the attention of people whose values we will change in the moment of need.

the buddha says that pain is unavoidable. this is also revealed in my 15 year old diary. facing pain is a universal challenge. as i embark to make myself an appropriate middle-aged middle-class existence i find this appealing. i always sought to avoid the fate of characters in martin amis' fiction. but now i am finding it in my heart to wear a jolly give a shit attitude and integrate it into my daily smile. i am almost ready to think of america as my very own little ghetto. avoiding pain is avoiding life. it is the attempt to think your way out of every problem, it is the attempt to institutionalize civilizing forces. it is the attempt to extend life. but the buddhais convincing me that life is in the moment and institutions are all vanity.

there is no such thing as patriotism. that's why nobody agrees on what it is. patriotism is affinity to the state, and the state is an institution, a momumental edifice of artifice, a construction of theories and anonymous fidelities. it isn't what it was 20 minutes ago - it lies in the attitude of a million people trying to say what it means to them. the constitution is artifice as well, a representation of a dynamic spirit of love and respect which loses all energy once abstracted to paper. the man who drunk wine at jefferson's table might have an idea what this thing was all about, but unless you are he reincarnated, you will not know. it won't be your story, and in the end that's all you remember. you remember the man who pulled you from the burning building and the pieces of your leg hanging from the extruded aluminum spur. you pledge your life to the one who saved yours. that is because pain is universal and freedom from pain is universal and the only act of civilization is life-saving. not patriotism. not the abstract. wittgenstien fucked us all over when he said that words are deeds, and even he knew that he was full of shit, because he had to pick up the poker at the moral science club...

i like this wooly little forum. but we too are vain. in my new neighborhood, i'm going to teach my neighbors how to chop wood. a deeds exchange will be more useful than a words exchange. that's why going to church is meaningless except for the music. you cannot just sit and recieve wisdom or blessings. you have to be blowing air through your body and heaving it out. you have to be exercising your fingers and feet and pulling out all the stops and bobbing your head and feeling the resonsances of the low notes. making music is a deed. (last night at the party, my job was to keep the music playing and the fire burning). hosting is work but also a pleasure - it is better to be the party giver than to be the fetted friend. the moment is found in alleviating the suffering of my guests. the conversation about religion and politics was dead but people actually danced.

you have to find your own way. words are only useful inside your head. you only write them down to remember. but now every word you ever wrote is trying to own your spirit, but that was 15 years ago. google doensn't know shit. google is just like nbc, cbs, pbs all of them. it's just trying to make real a surplus of meaningless abstracts. it's trying to force its context on you. it is a haunted house jam packed with a surfeit of restless spirits trying to inhabit your body. it doesn't matter that it was 'you' that wrote it - those were 15 billion wholly other cells, not you. you are now, and the more time you try to convince yourself that you are the same you were before, the more words you need. go right ahead, try it. make a word harness. if you're crafty maybe it'll fit and lead you in some direction. but you'll go wrong because the use of words is for them to be observant not reflective. there is a reason time moves forward and not backward. you cannot be institutionalized without words. all that effort to maintain a static fiction, all those applications, all of those entry level skills, all of those poor saps trying to conform to the ways and means of old spirits, old documentation, old manuals with none of the inventor's spark. get you head rid of the ghosts of christmas past and be more mindful of the present. you'll have to find your own way. tradition is a trap.

the job for computers is to keep bartleby free. every institution needs a million bartlebys. i struggle to take his scrivening spirit and bottle it in silicon. then he can be free of it and live in the moment. once the building is empty of humans, all laid off and the principals gone to brazil, let it crash to the ground. who cares?

Come Back Five Years Ago

I just discovered that my first blogs have been retained all of these years. Whoda thunk? So my next little project is to integrate the past into this current blog. So if suddenly you see some interestingly odd stuff happening with my archives or RSS, now you know. You'd think I'd give props to Blogspot. OK I do, but they still don't get to host it.

Come Back Five Years Ago

I just discovered that my first blogs have been retained all of these years. Whoda thunk? So my next little project is to integrate the past into this current blog. So if suddenly you see some interestingly odd stuff happening with my archives or RSS, now you know. You'd think I'd give props to Blogspot. OK I do, but they still don't get to host it.

Robots (Starring Robin Williams)

Is it me or is Robin Williams just too manic and full of himself? 

I think I've listened to my last unsubtle 1.5-entendre. After about an hour of it, it goes downhill. 'Robots', at a theatre near you, is about as formulaic as it is possible to make an animated feature and still have it actually be funny. But after it's over you feel like you've been tied down, sent through an MRI and tickled strategically.

But I'll tell you what it is that irks me where I have no business being irked. It's the unrelenting reactionary anti-corporatism. Jeez what a load of shallow grease. I think that as time moves forward, there's a clear difference between the writing at Pixar and everywhere else. Pixar is the class act. Everybody else sucks. I mean if you're going to launch a screed against corporate greed, do it with real characters, not a ragtag gang of automatons with less personality than the crew at the Rugrats (or the Teen Titans, or Jimmy Neutron, or The Fairly Oddparents, or Spongebob Squarepants, or Monsters Inc, or half a dozen other kid-friendly joints).

I lay odds that this whole mangled affair was the brainfart of Robin Williams who must have had a bet with somebody that he could do half his routine in drag without offending anyone. It's not offensive to anyone doesn't know the difference between a hero and a sidekick, or people too slow-witted to know that there are other moral forces in the world besides the violent rebellion of the angry masses.

It's Robin Williams all over the place overacting roughshod over what might have otherwise been a charming movie for adulds as well as goofy fun for kids. Instead, Williams runs his robot through at least 20 different voices without so many as 3 costume changes. Instead of a flawed hero overcoming his own insecurities, Rodney Copperbottom (oh yeah him, this is his story right?) is just an ordinary guy trying to fill a need; Robin Williams as 'Fender' is the flaw.

Ick. The more I think about the spindly legs upon which the clunky morality of this tale does the robot, the more I hate thinking about it and the less I can recommend it. Not that it's not funny, but it's  fart-joke funny and I can only take my debasements in pairs. If the ensemble would have gelled, if only there had been more to the story than just plot, if Williams would have just fit inside his character, if Halle Berry had said more than 100 words, if somebody could explain why Big Weld was so fat...

Giving credit where credit is due, I can't recall the last evil mother working through her pretty boy script since The Manchurian Candidate. Nice touch. A passive-aggressive momma's boy - the only character with a tie. On the other hand, poor Rodney Copperbottom, not only does he not really get the girl (or if he does, we can't really tell which one), but he does the whole thing for his dad.

This is a film with no real heroes, and in that regard it is inferior even to 'Shark Tale'. Yes that's right, Shark Tale is superior to this bucket of bolts when it comes to the story.

Where Robots shines is in its slapstick. There's a brilliant scene in which Copperbottom gets magnetized - classic. It does a pretty decent job making jabs and takeoffs on other movies, but seems a bit shy to lay it on as thick as it should have - well with any actor other than Williams. Aunt Fanny is as big a crackup as she should have been, and the fart and booty jokes are top shelf.

I swear I hope this flick doesn't get past the DVD.

Rap Security

May I Have Your ID?

Cobb v Schneider

In a rare moment, I entangle myself on someone else's blog. In giving advice to someone believed to be a fifth grader, I whacked a manifesto by Dan Schneider reference by Drezner. Of course, I had to use fifth grade English. Schneider whacks back, so I'm bringing it over here for grown folks.

4)Cobb:
Pt1- I state 'However, not many wars can claim to be relatively clear cut as those two.' What do you not understand about the qualifier 'relatively'?

I think that a moderately proficient historian can come up with as many complications on American involvement in WW2 as you give for Iraq. In fact a cursory view would suggest that the same ones could be employed. I simply think you picked a very poor premise, and I like Hitchens and symbolic logic wonks are particularly attuned to the fact that a false premise taken as axiomatically true can logically support any conclusion one wishes.

Pt 2- I actually grant the Pres the best of motives, and defend the First Lady, if you actually read the piece. Even granting he's simply wrong, the war was and is unsupportable- as I show by vetting the Joint Resolution. In fact, to show how off-center you are, as are Leftists, when I've tried to send or link the piece to political/anti-war websites many refused to allow it because I wd not declare myself a Liberal and/or they did not like that I did not solely blame Bush for the war, but also the cowardly, anomic Left. And it's worth noting that I differentiate between Cons & the Right & The Left & Liberals, because I quote from a flaming Reaganaut who is against the war, as are all true conservatives. You can call yourself a con and be for the war, but that ain't gonna make you one. Both extremes are noxious, but the Right's worse cuz they're the powerholders who've consigned so many to needless deaths.

Define 'needless'.

I think that the reasons for and against the war stand or fail on their own logic, and I am one of those who detests the idea of reverse-engineering ideology from one's affinity or aversion to the prosecution of this war. In this, I am saying that geopolitics are different from domestic politics and I don't buy that one's position on the war should put one into a proper square back at home. Nobody on the Left suggested we shouldn't war because somebody might get tortured, but suddenly it became derigeur to cite Abu Ghraib's inevitability once news broke. That's not Left, that's reactionary. It's one of the reasons I bring up Hitchens whose position on an American imperial imperative stumps most folks.

Pt3- the piece is subtitled as an Attack, but even so it is open about it and states '6)I hope this essay can become a template to help argue the Anti-War cause against the incessant Orwellian revisionism and lies that are fundaments needed to propagate war, regardless of whether your opposition is based in conservative or liberal politics, or mere pragmatism and a rejection of deceit and delusion, as mine is. I offer specific talking points, often apolitical, and provide sloganeering hooks to win converts.' I am up front about my aim, far more than you are in this post when you claim, 'I strongly believe that the author believes that anyone who disagrees with his position is evil, stupid or both.'

I find it very difficult to believe that anyone who has read the PNAC manifesto and understood neoconservative sway over GWBush's foreign policy would suggest that the ulterior geopolitics involved were not transparent. That is to say that anyone who took seriously the neologism of 'WMD' as proximate cause for the engagement is either starkly fresh to America's long-term interests in the region or precisely the type of political naif for whom rhetoric is dumbed down. In other words, I dismiss as naive everything that suggests deception, dishonesty or Orwellian revisionism and lies were part of a conspiracy of post-hoc rationale. A final confrontation with Saddam Huessein was inevitable. I like Scott Ritter's take. (http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/001651.html)

I think your article does a whole lot of piling-on and engages in a surfeit of short paragraphs which don't stand on their own, but when taken together appear to be a mountain of logic. I must confess not to have the patience to check each of your boulders for soundness although I have certain piled together mountains of my own over time. But I think you wanted to bury us all at once and/or force us to deal with the mass of rubble. Sorry, not all of us need to be attacked.

As time allows, we can actually whack at the boulders over here. It's always good practice to talk about the subject when it appears. But let's really get into the White Man's Burden thing, shall we?

The ANSR Man

I have accepted an offer from Answerthink.

After about four years of hacking the woods with my own machete, I'm joining a team. This is not the China Deal, which crashed and burned several weeks ago, but the ever tempting Plan B.

It's a reunion of sorts. I'll be working with folks I knew from the 90s and I'll be focusing, once again, on the Hyperion suite of tools. Since I left Hyperion in 2001, they've acquired Brio and Razza, their n-tier product set has matured, their brand recognition has increased and their share price has doubled. Answerthink is the gorilla consulting partner on the West Coast, I'm going to help run things in Southern Cal.

Now this doesn't exactly square with my entrepreneurial spirit, and it's true that I have been quoted saying things like "I'm never going to work for anyone again." In fact I believe that I made quite an impression when speaking of The Vector. Well, the Vector has been deflected, and for the time being, I'm going to be driving a big truck, I'm just not going to own it.

What I tell myself, I believe to be true. Opportunities are forever for those who are prepared. Over the next few years, I'm going to build up this practice, and when I decide to jump at a new opportunity, it will be bigger than one I could have stumbled on with my current associations. Which brings us to that, the devolution of Plan A.

About as much detail as I can say is this. I was to run the IT for a joint venture between some fairly rich and somewhat powerful individuals. Basically a resort in China. I was one degree away from the principal of what looked to be an opportunity to mint money. There were connections to West African gold & textiles, The Chinese Communist Party, Hiphop celebrity, New York Advertising and London International Banking. It turned out that this was not about herding cats, but herding lions, and our commander in chief was a little too much chair & whip and not enough care & feeding. The problem with such an approach is that while it might work for currency trading boiler rooms and the Russian Mafia, it doesn't work with the international Jet Set, of which the partnership was comprised. After an unfortunate series of events, people walked out in a virtual cloud of fists and lawsuits.

The whole thing sounded to good to be true for a long time. However it wasn't. What it was, was too good to be easy, and it has been a singular proof to me that character counts a great deal more when it involves Money, Power or Influence. Corruption is little more or less than the willingness to be above caring. They say power corrupts but it is not power itself that corrupts, power simply amplifies personality. Small flaws in character become writ large. It's just like Shakespeare. The powerful or rich needn't become saints, they only need to recognize commensurately what broken promises and distrust mean when it involves so many more resources. When you have an order of magnitude more choices than the average bear, the right thing seems of fractional use. In fact, it becomes that much more important.

So I'm chilling the international and pumping up the local and soon to be regional. It's better to be the king of a small hill than a prince halfway up a mountain. I am thrilled at the opportunity to put the blue shirt back on. I have spent most of my professional career involved with management consulting and the pure golden geekiness of BI enterprise software. Answerthink also has its own real management gurus - The Hackett Group, so it's much more than a body shop. I believe they have the right combination of tech skills and business brains to be superior, plus I know, like and respect folks in the division I'm joining which just happens to be growing at 25%.

Hey. This means I have to redesign my professional web page... yike.

The ANSR Man

I have accepted an offer from Answerthink.

After about four years of hacking the woods with my own machete, I'm joining a team. This is not the China Deal, which crashed and burned several weeks ago, but the ever tempting Plan B.

It's a reunion of sorts. I'll be working with folks I knew from the 90s and I'll be focusing, once again, on the Hyperion suite of tools. Since I left Hyperion in 2001, they've acquired Brio and Razza, their n-tier product set has matured, their brand recognition has increased and their share price has doubled. Answerthink is the gorilla consulting partner on the West Coast, I'm going to help run things in Southern Cal.

Now this doesn't exactly square with my entrepreneurial spirit, and it's true that I have been quoted saying things like "I'm never going to work for anyone again." In fact I believe that I made quite an impression when speaking of The Vector. Well, the Vector has been deflected, and for the time being, I'm going to be driving a big truck, I'm just not going to own it.

What I tell myself, I believe to be true. Opportunities are forever for those who are prepared. Over the next few years, I'm going to build up this practice, and when I decide to jump at a new opportunity, it will be bigger than one I could have stumbled on with my current associations. Which brings us to that, the devolution of Plan A.

About as much detail as I can say is this. I was to run the IT for a joint venture between some fairly rich and somewhat powerful individuals. Basically a resort in China. I was one degree away from the principal of what looked to be an opportunity to mint money. There were connections to West African gold & textiles, The Chinese Communist Party, Hiphop celebrity, New York Advertising and London International Banking. It turned out that this was not about herding cats, but herding lions, and our commander in chief was a little too much chair & whip and not enough care & feeding. The problem with such an approach is that while it might work for currency trading boiler rooms and the Russian Mafia, it doesn't work with the international Jet Set, of which the partnership was comprised. After an unfortunate series of events, people walked out in a virtual cloud of fists and lawsuits.

The whole thing sounded to good to be true for a long time. However it wasn't. What it was, was too good to be easy, and it has been a singular proof to me that character counts a great deal more when it involves Money, Power or Influence. Corruption is little more or less than the willingness to be above caring. They say power corrupts but it is not power itself that corrupts, power simply amplifies personality. Small flaws in character become writ large. It's just like Shakespeare. The powerful or rich needn't become saints, they only need to recognize commensurately what broken promises and distrust mean when it involves so many more resources. When you have an order of magnitude more choices than the average bear, the right thing seems of fractional use. In fact, it becomes that much more important.

So I'm chilling the international and pumping up the local and soon to be regional. It's better to be the king of a small hill than a prince halfway up a mountain. I am thrilled at the opportunity to put the blue shirt back on. I have spent most of my professional career involved with management consulting and the pure golden geekiness of BI enterprise software. Answerthink also has its own real management gurus - The Hackett Group, so it's much more than a body shop. I believe they have the right combination of tech skills and business brains to be superior, plus I know, like and respect folks in the division I'm joining which just happens to be growing at 25%.

Hey. This means I have to redesign my professional web page... yike.

Impact

Microsoft Buys Groove

Now here's something to be interested and perhaps very skeptical about. One way or another it's a big deal. Ever competitive, MS has just stuck a sword through the gut of Chandler. In the battle for superior office collaboration, Ray Ozzie smashes Mitch Kapor to the carpet. The question is whether or not Groove will survive integration with the next version of Windows.

My prediction is that it will be stunningly complex on the back-end and fabulously friendly on the front. I say this having successfully Grooved for several months last year. Right now, the integration of Groove and Windows is flawless, down to the 200 Registry entries, and the changes to Windows Explorer. In fact, it's rather difficult to get rid of all the tentacles Groove inserts into Windows. Groove is a collaborator's dream in that it obviates the need for File Servers and Briefcases. Everything is synchronized nicely, in near real time.

I have yet to come across an implementation of Windows Active Anything that works very well across an enterprise. Groove has the best chance of anything yet. It is a secure and non-clunky way of enabling collaborative objects.

The best thing about the Groove desktop is the interface. It is good enough for people to be immediately productive. It has taken Ozzie and company several years to accomplish this, and their latest version is truly all that. I've heard somewhat stupendous things about WebDAV, but I'm not holding my breath. What Linux does on the desktop is cool, but this is the killer app.

I predict that Win32 developers will start creating sharable objects for Groove as soon as humanly possible, and that it marks a return to fat-client basics. What is Groove's competition? Web Services. I have a feeling that a lot of .Net developers are going to take it on the chin.

Groove is a big enough and killer enough app to make Windows a much more attractive proposition, and no there isn't a Mac version. I have a feeling that if it gets deep enough into the OS, it's going to be a whole new world. Groove has the capacity, in my estimation, to be for Windows what the combination of Aqua and i-apps are for Mac, with security and collaboration built in.

Microsoft Buys Groove

Now here's something to be interested and perhaps very skeptical about. One way or another it's a big deal. Ever competitive, MS has just stuck a sword through the gut of Chandler. In the battle for superior office collaboration, Ray Ozzie smashes Mitch Kapor to the carpet. The question is whether or not Groove will survive integration with the next version of Windows.

My prediction is that it will be stunningly complex on the back-end and fabulously friendly on the front. I say this having successfully Grooved for several months last year. Right now, the integration of Groove and Windows is flawless, down to the 200 Registry entries, and the changes to Windows Explorer. In fact, it's rather difficult to get rid of all the tentacles Groove inserts into Windows. Groove is a collaborator's dream in that it obviates the need for File Servers and Briefcases. Everything is synchronized nicely, in near real time.

I have yet to come across an implementation of Windows Active Anything that works very well across an enterprise. Groove has the best chance of anything yet. It is a secure and non-clunky way of enabling collaborative objects.

The best thing about the Groove desktop is the interface. It is good enough for people to be immediately productive. It has taken Ozzie and company several years to accomplish this, and their latest version is truly all that. I've heard somewhat stupendous things about WebDAV, but I'm not holding my breath. What Linux does on the desktop is cool, but this is the killer app.

I predict that Win32 developers will start creating sharable objects for Groove as soon as humanly possible, and that it marks a return to fat-client basics. What is Groove's competition? Web Services. I have a feeling that a lot of .Net developers are going to take it on the chin.

Groove is a big enough and killer enough app to make Windows a much more attractive proposition, and no there isn't a Mac version. I have a feeling that if it gets deep enough into the OS, it's going to be a whole new world. Groove has the capacity, in my estimation, to be for Windows what the combination of Aqua and i-apps are for Mac, with security and collaboration built in.

My Party Too

Christine Todd Whitman is my new hero. I think she's got the right idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if she becomes the Republican Party nominee in 2008. I'm saying it now, McCain-Whitman.

Her new website, MyPartyToo.com is going to be the focus of a lot of attention if I can have my way. I'm also going to start using her term 'social fundamentalists' to describe my rivals within the party. Listen to what some of my fellow Republicans are saying:

I was as upset as any other Republican when President Bush violated his campaign promise and raised taxes. I strongly supported Newt Gingrich as he tried and eventually succeeded taking control of the House of Representatives. I strongly believed in the Contract With American and the direction our party was going in. Lower taxes, reduced spending, a balanced budget, a populist message, and little regard for the social agenda of the social fundamentalists. Though I am pro-life (with exceptions) that is about as much as I have in common with them. Now it's 10 years later and this is what Republicans are fighting for: - Intelligent Design being taught in science classes - health classes teaching AIDS can be caught from sweat and tears - health classes teaching that pregnancy can result from intimate touching - dismissing the overwhelming evidence of global warming - the destruction of our environment - discriminating against gays and lesbians - big government control over our personal lives - nation building in a country that doesn't pose a threat to America - massive deficits and a larger national debt - almost $8 trillion.

Now that guy is slightly to the left of me, if left means anything as a direction; he's jumping ship. But he's correct. I pick him because he has a laundry list of things that Republicans should be looking at. There is indeed a battle for the soul of the GOP, and it's time for us moderates and progressives to take up the banner.

Like Whitman, I think there is room for social fundamentalists in the party. They've got to be represented somewhere. But the way they are working with their convictions is inappropriate and destructive. It's the social fundamentalists who are saying you cannot be a pro-choice Republican. How can we be a majority party in defiance of 80% of America and the well-tested law?

There is a difference between a social conservative and a social fundamentalist. The social conservative says, I don't support gay marriage. The social fundamentalist says I don't tolerate it, nor people who do. Gay marriage isn't slavery, and Republicans who think they are going to abolish gay life are on the wrong side of history. The agenda of social fundamentalists has entered the realms of fear and punishment, and that is stepping over the line in a pluralist society. I do not deny any American the morality of their convictions, but I cannot abide an agenda of persecution born out of cynical fears.

Whitman has stood up clearly and drawn a clear line. By doing so, she has helped me to realize how long we have been simmering in the pot of intolerance. As I look back at a number of the discussions I've had here about what kind of Republican Party I'm talking about, it has always been clear in my mind that organizations like the Main Street Republicans or the Manhattan Institute were more to my liking. In fact, when you look at the organizational partnerships at Whitman's site, I am more than a little bit jealous. I've been hoping, but not working diligently to get our Old School in gear.

Nevertheless it is clear that the party is contested. America will win when we moderates prevail.

My Party Too

Christine Todd Whitman is my new hero. I think she's got the right idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if she becomes the Republican Party nominee in 2008. I'm saying it now, McCain-Whitman.

Her new website, MyPartyToo.com is going to be the focus of a lot of attention if I can have my way. I'm also going to start using her term 'social fundamentalists' to describe my rivals within the party. Listen to what some of my fellow Republicans are saying:

I was as upset as any other Republican when President Bush violated his campaign promise and raised taxes. I strongly supported Newt Gingrich as he tried and eventually succeeded taking control of the House of Representatives. I strongly believed in the Contract With American and the direction our party was going in. Lower taxes, reduced spending, a balanced budget, a populist message, and little regard for the social agenda of the social fundamentalists. Though I am pro-life (with exceptions) that is about as much as I have in common with them. Now it's 10 years later and this is what Republicans are fighting for: - Intelligent Design being taught in science classes - health classes teaching AIDS can be caught from sweat and tears - health classes teaching that pregnancy can result from intimate touching - dismissing the overwhelming evidence of global warming - the destruction of our environment - discriminating against gays and lesbians - big government control over our personal lives - nation building in a country that doesn't pose a threat to America - massive deficits and a larger national debt - almost $8 trillion.

Now that guy is slightly to the left of me, if left means anything as a direction; he's jumping ship. But he's correct. I pick him because he has a laundry list of things that Republicans should be looking at. There is indeed a battle for the soul of the GOP, and it's time for us moderates and progressives to take up the banner.

Like Whitman, I think there is room for social fundamentalists in the party. They've got to be represented somewhere. But the way they are working with their convictions is inappropriate and destructive. It's the social fundamentalists who are saying you cannot be a pro-choice Republican. How can we be a majority party in defiance of 80% of America and the well-tested law?

There is a difference between a social conservative and a social fundamentalist. The social conservative says, I don't support gay marriage. The social fundamentalist says I don't tolerate it, nor people who do. Gay marriage isn't slavery, and Republicans who think they are going to abolish gay life are on the wrong side of history. The agenda of social fundamentalists has entered the realms of fear and punishment, and that is stepping over the line in a pluralist society. I do not deny any American the morality of their convictions, but I cannot abide an agenda of persecution born out of cynical fears.

Whitman has stood up clearly and drawn a clear line. By doing so, she has helped me to realize how long we have been simmering in the pot of intolerance. As I look back at a number of the discussions I've had here about what kind of Republican Party I'm talking about, it has always been clear in my mind that organizations like the Main Street Republicans or the Manhattan Institute were more to my liking. In fact, when you look at the organizational partnerships at Whitman's site, I am more than a little bit jealous. I've been hoping, but not working diligently to get our Old School in gear.

Nevertheless it is clear that the party is contested. America will win when we moderates prevail.

Victim

Healing, Curing, Black Politics & The Doppler Effect

I found something from the archives that I found particularly interesting. I was actually searching for something on Steven Levitt (the Chicago economist) but found William Levitt (the Long Island real estate developer) instead. Indulge me for a moment:

The early Levittowns also had an ugly secret: no black families allowed. "As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice," Levitt insisted in 1954. "But, by various means, I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours."

i was paraphrasing levitt in my westbury example because half of my library is in the garage.

let me step back and give you my interpretation of the scope of this thread because i do want to engage you on common ground. first off, i contend that the biggest racial problem in america is the institutional racism inherent in segregated housing, and that every major obstacle facing blacks and latinos in particular in achieving social equality stem from the fact that they are living, by and large, in internal third worlds. if you ever hear me say that america is a racist country i am talking about the structural facts of american apartheid. jim crow and racial segregation were the law of the land, and until the overwhelming majority of racial minorities are dispersed into housing built *after* fair housing laws, all those enequities will remain permanent. you cannot evade the fact of white flight, and you cannot evade the fact of ghettoes. by extension, everyone who has participated in this housing market strengthens this aspect of american racism.

that is the short way of saying it. i am in 100% agreement with the theses put forth by glenn loury. here is his piece.

now. there is but one way out of this situation and it involves nothing short of the destruction of the ghetto. this implies mass migration and/or massive transfers of capital. these measures would, by and large, eliminate economic basis of and structural component for racism in america.

both mass migration and massive transfers of capital are, to put it mildly, politically unacceptable. and therefore we have moved from the area of CURE to the area of HEALING. when you move to the area of healing, you address the symptoms but not the root causes of racial inequality. nevertheless, HEALING is an important part of solving the entire problem.

so my approach to this part of the discussion of race first asks the question, exactly how important is healing, and who should be responsible for doing it? i contend that we have quite enough healing, and that our positive attitude towards healing ought to help us focus on curing.

so when i bring up the matters of white flight, segregated neighborhoods, and racist institutions i am pushing the envelope towards the personal. i am asking us to consider the political acceptability of curing. i am trying to get people to accept responsibility for failure to act on a curing basis, and i call into question the rationality of further healing.

--
moving forward, for example, it's clear that a sizeable portion of the electorate has had its fill of affirmative action. i would argue that affirmative action is part cure and part healing. to the extent that it removes people from the ghetto and places them into areas of american that *work*, it is a cure. yet to the extent that it is considered an act of charity and goodwill, of bending rules and making exceptions then it is an act of healing. in the largest scope of things, all of the affirmative actions in america have not significantly changed the relative gap in employment rates between the mainstream and the beneficiary class (except perhaps for white women). so affirmative action is clearly not a final cure.

enterprise zones and set asides address more directly the matters of transfers of capital. CURES. and yet the political acceptability of the combination of enterprize zones, set asides AND affirmative action is just about dead. so politically speaking, we are at an impass. american refuses to cure.

so all the healing leftover goes out to blacks and latinos who have essentially already entered the middle class, leaving ghetto residents in the lurch. the only thing left that will help those barrio dwellers are real cures.

The other day over at P6, we got into analogyland talking physics. We screwed up the physics, but the basic idea made sense, which is that the speed of the observer makes a difference in the perception of something that is actually constant.

To put the Doppler Effect into the black political analogy, the economic progress of certain segments of African America skews their perception of Republican politics. If they are moving forward, it sounds good, if they are falling backward it sounds bad. Republicans say the same thing and different folks hear it differently. To extend this metaphor of physics into the quantum realm, whenever a certain group of blackfolks investigates that message, it changes.

Healing, Curing, Black Politics & The Doppler Effect

I found something from the archives that I found particularly interesting. I was actually searching for something on Steven Levitt (the Chicago economist) but found William Levitt (the Long Island real estate developer) instead. Indulge me for a moment:

The early Levittowns also had an ugly secret: no black families allowed. "As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice," Levitt insisted in 1954. "But, by various means, I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours."

i was paraphrasing levitt in my westbury example because half of my library is in the garage.

let me step back and give you my interpretation of the scope of this thread because i do want to engage you on common ground. first off, i contend that the biggest racial problem in america is the institutional racism inherent in segregated housing, and that every major obstacle facing blacks and latinos in particular in achieving social equality stem from the fact that they are living, by and large, in internal third worlds. if you ever hear me say that america is a racist country i am talking about the structural facts of american apartheid. jim crow and racial segregation were the law of the land, and until the overwhelming majority of racial minorities are dispersed into housing built *after* fair housing laws, all those enequities will remain permanent. you cannot evade the fact of white flight, and you cannot evade the fact of ghettoes. by extension, everyone who has participated in this housing market strengthens this aspect of american racism.

that is the short way of saying it. i am in 100% agreement with the theses put forth by glenn loury. here is his piece.

now. there is but one way out of this situation and it involves nothing short of the destruction of the ghetto. this implies mass migration and/or massive transfers of capital. these measures would, by and large, eliminate economic basis of and structural component for racism in america.

both mass migration and massive transfers of capital are, to put it mildly, politically unacceptable. and therefore we have moved from the area of CURE to the area of HEALING. when you move to the area of healing, you address the symptoms but not the root causes of racial inequality. nevertheless, HEALING is an important part of solving the entire problem.

so my approach to this part of the discussion of race first asks the question, exactly how important is healing, and who should be responsible for doing it? i contend that we have quite enough healing, and that our positive attitude towards healing ought to help us focus on curing.

so when i bring up the matters of white flight, segregated neighborhoods, and racist institutions i am pushing the envelope towards the personal. i am asking us to consider the political acceptability of curing. i am trying to get people to accept responsibility for failure to act on a curing basis, and i call into question the rationality of further healing.

--
moving forward, for example, it's clear that a sizeable portion of the electorate has had its fill of affirmative action. i would argue that affirmative action is part cure and part healing. to the extent that it removes people from the ghetto and places them into areas of american that *work*, it is a cure. yet to the extent that it is considered an act of charity and goodwill, of bending rules and making exceptions then it is an act of healing. in the largest scope of things, all of the affirmative actions in america have not significantly changed the relative gap in employment rates between the mainstream and the beneficiary class (except perhaps for white women). so affirmative action is clearly not a final cure.

enterprise zones and set asides address more directly the matters of transfers of capital. CURES. and yet the political acceptability of the combination of enterprize zones, set asides AND affirmative action is just about dead. so politically speaking, we are at an impass. american refuses to cure.

so all the healing leftover goes out to blacks and latinos who have essentially already entered the middle class, leaving ghetto residents in the lurch. the only thing left that will help those barrio dwellers are real cures.

The other day over at P6, we got into analogyland talking physics. We screwed up the physics, but the basic idea made sense, which is that the speed of the observer makes a difference in the perception of something that is actually constant.

To put the Doppler Effect into the black political analogy, the economic progress of certain segments of African America skews their perception of Republican politics. If they are moving forward, it sounds good, if they are falling backward it sounds bad. Republicans say the same thing and different folks hear it differently. To extend this metaphor of physics into the quantum realm, whenever a certain group of blackfolks investigates that message, it changes.

Freedom

24 & Torture

Kevin Drum notes:

After Jack finished up a session of home brew torture directed at his girlfriend's almost-but-not-quite ex-husband (don't ask), it turned out that GABNQXH wasn't a bad guy after all. He was telling the truth all along, and after the girlfriend got Jack to ease up GABNQXH cheerfully (under the circumstances, anyway) opened up his laptop and found the information Jack wanted. What's more, this week GABNQXH was a positive sink of help, magically knowing how to open up a secure database before the bad guys neutralized it with a pulse bomb that took out half of LA in the process.

This is the third or fourth individual that has tortured according to a fairly loose definition of 'I know it when I see it' in this season of 24. In this notable case as well as the one immediately previous, both of the torturees are apparently good guys. The first was a CTU employee who was framed by a double-agent. She got several applications of a stun gun to the neck. The second individual, described above, got 110V of house current to his bare chest.

In both of these cases, the individuals were bruised, battered and scarred, but hard. And guess what? They turned right around (within an hour of their torture) and assisted the people who tortured them. Now this may be just part of 24's tortured (heh) plot twists, but is it realistic? That's hard to say.

I'm quite sure there are plenty of ways that you can extract a huge amount of pain from an individual without rendering any permanent damage. Isn't that what torturers know? As well, there are ways that you can deliver a great deal of permanent damage that doesn't show, or at least there used to be. File this in your 'bad old days' file. My father used to tell me that it was common practice for white cops to repeatedly slam telephone books on the heads of black arrestees. It left no marks but could easily deliver a severe concussion. These days, it's relatively simple to get an MRI to show swelling of the brain, but not so then.

We live with torture. It's a sad fact of life.