Month: June 2004

risk analysis

Discuss:

Crooked Timber: A Piece of the Pie :
“[E]conomic growth is caused by the risk-taking executives of Fortune 5000 companies, and therefore they deserve the benefits of that growth. Worker bees don’t make any contribution — they just work — so why should they get anything?”

The comments at CT are, as usual, informative: the cited article looks to be worth a read. Wonder would it take to have someone who isn’t a member of the oligarchy to run for President? I suppose Clinton and Carter best fit that description of the last few residents of the White House . . .

innovation versus lock-in

In a post at Crooked Timber, there’s a discussion of how the notions that widespread ownership of guns saves lives, tobacco smoke is harmless (if not to smokers then to anyone who breathes it second-hand, and global warming is a myth are often seen in close association with support for Microsoft, and, more particularly, denunciation of open-source software. Sounds like a useful, multi-criteria litmus test for blockheads, if you ask me . . . .

One aspect of this is the proliferation of “studies” and “benchmarks” that purport to show how open source products are either a hopeless dead-end for business (ie, non-hobbyists) or unsuitable for real work. The Alexis de Toqueville Institute study has been mentioned in these pages before, and I found this updated analysis when I was looking for some detail for a comment on CT.
Continue reading “innovation versus lock-in”

MT 3.0 no better than 2.x?

This from a fellow (and soon to be ex-) MovableType user: he just upgraded to 3.0 but still found this note from his hosting service in his inbox:

Michael’s Mind » WTF?

You need to find an alternative to your MT as its running very high in the process list. MT has a lot of flaws in process management and security and causes a lot of problems on the server.

This week looks like I’ll take a poke at migrating to WordPress . . . . performance was always a problem with MT 2.x and if they’ve not fixed that in 3, why bother?

with friends like this, who needs enemies?

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Report says U.S. allies aided al-Qaida:

From 1998 through 2000, Clinton administration officials pressured Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help force the Taliban to surrender bin Laden and to crack down on the ever-growing presence of al-Qaida in the two countries. But both governments refused to sever diplomatic relations with the Taliban or help investigate al-Qaida’s growing empire, officials said.

The Clinton administration also learned that Taliban efforts to extort cash from Saudi Arabia “may have paid off,” a commission report states.

The wingnuts and freepers will still find some way to say Clinton is to blame for Al Qaida’s power.

It looks more and more like Saudi Arabia is as much or more of a threat to the stability of the Middle East than Saddam was. At least with him, you knew where you stood: the Saudis seem to play both ends against the middle at every opportunity.

going Aboriginal

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | We can dream too

There is only one way to escape from an impasse, and that is to turn back to the point where you went wrong, sit down on the ground and have a think about it.

Long extract from the argumentative Germaine Greer: I’ve read a bit about Oz and some mention of it has appeared on these pages, but have never been there — yet.

What she writes squares pretty well with my impressions, so it makes for an interesting scenario. Why just Australia? Why not Canada as well? And what reparations or amends could we make in this country to our own aboriginal peoples?

And the painful but obvious logic of sitting down — the moment you realize you’ve lost your way — and working out how to get back to it resonates all too well in these chaotic times.

war as a numbers game

The March of Folly: Troy to Vietnam: if Barbara Tuchman were still alive, would she be compelled to replace Vietnam with Iraq?

I love all her books but this one stands out as a must-read. She analyzes the mistakes made by powerful and well-organized nation states and how they have made sometimes fatal decisions that can only be defined/described as folly. Her examples are the Trojans and that horse you’ve heard of, the Renaissance popes’ provocation of the Protestant Reformation, Britain’s loss of the American colonies, and America’s (and France’s) involvement in Vietnam. To quote the publisher’s blurb:

Barbara Tuchman defines folly as “Pursuit of Policy Contrary to Self-Interest.” In THE MARCH OF FOLLY, Tuchman examines 4 conflicts: The Trojan Horse, The Protestant Secession, The American Revolution, and The American War in Vietnam. In each example an alternative course of action was available, the actions were endorsed by a group, not just an individual leader, and the actions were perceived as counter productive in their own time.

A great read, for any student of history or politics, especially for the section on the loss of the American Colonies: I suspect very few Americans realize how little support the Revolutionary War had at home in England and how many prominent people of the time supported the colonists’ goal of independence.
Continue reading “war as a numbers game”

this just in: the press corps found their teeth

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan:

MR. McCLELLAN: David, you’re just ignoring the facts. You’re not looking at what Director Tenet said. You’re not looking at what Secretary Powell said before the United Nations.

Q Scott, do you really think people buy this?

MR. McCLELLAN: And I think that you can seek to drive a wedge, but there is no wedge there between what the September 11th Commission said and what the facts —

Q Between what the facts are and what the reality is.

Wow, it’s like they want to earn their paychecks all of a sudden . . .
Continue reading “this just in: the press corps found their teeth”

does this speak for itself?

It should . . . .

The Document Sean Hannity Doesn’t Want You To Read – Center for American Progress:

Speaking at the Take Back America conference on June 3, American Progress CEO John Podesta said, “I think when you get so distant from the facts as — as guys like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do, yeah, I think that tends to — it kind of — it tends to corrupt the dialogue.”  Apparently he struck a nerve with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Hannity challenged Podesta to “defend and explain one example where I — where I said something that was so false.”  Since choosing just one of Hannity’s distortions is too difficult, here are fifteen examples:

Can someone really be so ignorant of the facts? How do you show up at the workplace everyday? How can you collect a paycheck without a qualm?

For all that the likes of Hannity and Limbaugh fulminate about the transgressions of anyone they don’t like, public servants work in the public eye and, whether these clowns like it or not, for the public. The work of elected officials and civil servants is public and open to review, unlike that of radio propagandists.