Category: observations

further reading

Harpers.org:

This essay on the relationship between disasters, authority, and our understanding of human nature went to press as Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The excerpt below is followed by a postscript, available only on the Web, that specifically addresses
the disaster in New Orleans.

This looks worth a close read. The notion that a disaster exposes the weakness of authority which begets an increase in authority’s efforts to assert itself bears some examination.
Continue reading “further reading”

failed experiment?

Small Government Republicanism Is Gone:

Small-government Republicanism has been dead since the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. But now it has been staked, and its head has been cut off and stuffed with garlic.

I wonder if the entire American experiment is over. Over the past quarter century, we have endured a relentless assault on the very idea of a national government that does anything beyond the minimum — and even that is considered onerous. We have seen the national news media, once considered to be a bulwark against political arrogance, undermined to the point where few people trust anything they see, hear, or read. Any education beyond the elementary years — the three Rs — is attacked by religious fanatics, ignoramuses of every stripe, as being biased, sacrilegious, or treasonous.

I wonder how a single nation, the third largest in the world, can be governed by people who hate government and whose most ardent supporters don’t seem to want to belong to a large, diverse community.

Anyone have any optimism to spare?
Continue reading “failed experiment?”

health insurance: good if you have it

The New Yorker: Fact:

. . . cost sharing is “a blunt instrument.”

Interesting piece by Malcolm Gladwell on health insurance. I found the emphasis in dental insurance — and how people cope without it — to be pretty painful stuff. I have noticed the looks one gets when you’re missing a top front tooth, and am glad I am not looking for work right now (imagine applying for a knowledge worker or technical position and missing out on due to an inability to eat a crisp apple).

I have heard the phrase “moral hazard” before but had never heard the explanation before. Sounds like more tired Puritanism, where we refuse to extend a benefit to everyone lest someone somewhere malinger and abuse our collective good nature.

Reading this with the backdrop of New Orleans, post-Katrina, in my mind makes me wonder what people think of themselves and their fellow men: do we really dislike or mistrust each other that much?
Continue reading “health insurance: good if you have it”

Wanna be in a Neil Gaiman/Jonathan Lethem/Stephen King/Lemony Snicket book?

This September, Your Name Here…:

It’s nice — and that’s an understatement — when something good done in this blog has repercussions. You may remember that back in March I auctioned off the name of a Cruise Ship in ANANSI BOYS for the CBLDF. And we made $3,533 for the CBLDF. And that happened around the same time that Michael Chabon used this blog to mention to the world that the First Amendment Project was running out of money having used most of it up defending Freedom of Speech issues (and many of you went and made donations). So I suggested to Michael Chabon that we might want to try something similar to what I’d done with eBaying a name in a book, only bigger.

Michael and the FAP folk went away and did lots of work. And now it has borne cool fruit…

Have you ever wanted to be in a Stephen King book? (You must be female in order to die, though.)

Stephen King

What he’s offering:
“One (and only one) character name in a novel called CELL, which is now in work and which will appear in either 2006 or 2007. Buyer should be aware that CELL is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain. Like cheap whiskey, it’s very nasty and extremely satisfying. Character can be male or female, but a buyer who wants to die must in this case be female. In any case, I’ll require physical description of auction winner, including any nickname (can be made up, I don’t give a rip).”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

Or a Lemony Snicket book?

Lemony Snicket

What he’s offering:
“An utterance by Sunny Baudelaire in Book the Thirteenth. Pronunciation and/or spelling may be slightly ‘mutilated.’ An example of this is in The Grim Grotto when Sunny utters ‘Bushcheney.’ Target publication date is Fall 2006.”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

or a Jonathan Lethem-written Marvel comic?

Jonathan Lethem

What he’s offering:
“I need the name of a Columbia University professor for a comic book I’m writing for Marvel. It can be your name or the name of a friend — but if it’s a friend, I need to hear from them with their permission.”

When you can bid:
September 8-18

While I am promising to put your name onto a gravestone in my next children’s novel, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK.

Anyway, the schedule (and the complete list of authors) is as follows:


September 1-10: Michael Chabon, Amy Tan, Peter Straub, Andrew Sean Greer, Karen Joy Fowler

September 8-18: Stephen King, Lemony Snicket, Dorothy Allison, Jonathan Lethem, Ayelet Waldman

September 15-25: John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, ZZ Packer

And all the information is up at http://www.ebay.com/fap. It’s a perfect birthday present, graduation present, retirement present, way to impress a boyfriend, girlfriend, parent, child. And it’s for an extremely good cause.

Spread the word.

Stick the info up on your blog or journal. Put it in your newspaper or magazine (if you happen to write for one). Print out the page and pin it up on your office bulletin board. It would be a good thing if, when September starts, everyone who wants to be in a book by any of the above people knows that this is their chance.

Continue reading “Wanna be in a Neil Gaiman/Jonathan Lethem/Stephen King/Lemony Snicket book?”

summer fare

Also featured at tonight’s outdoor dining extravaganza (at which we learned that the childhood best friend of our hostess was someone I had once worked with: if her hometown of Soperton, Georgia, has not been mentioned, the connection would not have been made) was a red potato salad I have made a few times every summer for a while now.

Take a 2-3 pounds of good quality red potatoes (Paul Newman offers organic red and russets under his Newman’s Own brand that I buy at Trader Joe’s), scrub and cut them into small chunks (again, about the size of the last joint of the thumb), and boil or steam until just cooked (pierceable with a fork). While they cook, mix 1/2 cup mayonnaise and 1/4 cup prepared mustard, a generous shaking of celery seed (a teaspoon), and a tablespoon of cider vinegar in a measuring cup.

When the potatoes are done, remove them from heat, drain and quickly mix the dressing into them. Serve as soon as you can, or prepare as close to mealtime as possible: they are better warm then chilled.
Continue reading “summer fare”

With the switch to Intel comes data lock-in?

Apple to add Trusted Computing to the new kernel?:

Trusted Computing in the kernel is like a rifle on the mantelpiece: if it’s present in act one, it’ll go off by act three.

Cory Doctorow gives a brief but illuminating overview of what ‘features’ we may find in new Mac hardware. Given we don’t even know what chips will be in the new Intel Macs and that the issues raised could be artifacts of the Pentium4 chips used for the Rosetta tools. it still bears watching.
Continue reading “With the switch to Intel comes data lock-in?”

does anyone at MSFT get security?

So Windows Genuine Advantage has a hole in it:

Microsoft “Genuine Advantage” cracked in 24h: window.g_sDisableWGACheck=’all’:

Microsoft “Genuine Advantage” cracked in 24h: window.g_sDisableWGACheck=’all’
Cory Doctorow: AV sez, “This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called ‘Genuine Advantage.’ It was cracked within 24 hours.”
Before pressing ‘Custom’ or ‘Express’ buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck=’all’)

It turns off the trigger for the key check.

Link (Thanks, AV!)

And then read this:
Schneier on Security: Microsoft Builds In Security Bypasses:

I am very suspicious of tools that allow you to bypass network security systems. Yes, they make life easier. But if security is important, than all security decisions should be made by a central process; tools that bypass that centrality are very risky.

I didn’t like SOAP for that reason, and I don’t like the sound of this new Microsoft thingy:

We’re always looking for new things that can allow you to do things uniquely different today. For example, this new feature tool we have would allow me to tunnel directly using HTTP into my corporate Exchange server without having to go through the whole VPN (virtual private network) process, bypassing the need to use a smart card. It’s such a huge time-saver, for me at least, compared to how long it takes me now. We will be extending that functionality to the next version of Windows.

That’s Martin Taylor, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy, talking.

Read that again: a new feature that is designed to bypass VPN authentication, all for the sake of convenience, is considered so cool, it will be in the next release of Windows. What IT manager is going to read that and not want Martin Taylor’s head on a pole?
Continue reading “does anyone at MSFT get security?”