Tit for tat:
When North Korea refused to cancel its missile test, that reflected poorly on China, which didn't have the influence to stop it. Now, with Taiwan preparing a missile test, it's our turn to prove how much influence we have.
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July 31, 2006
In the air:
Is it me, or is this city WI-FI plan confusing?
A user opening a laptop at Quincy Market at lunchtime, for instance, might get Internet access from any of several providers. Some might offer free ad-supported service, though most probably would probably capitalize on the new technology to offer people Internet access for about $15 a month, less than half of the $35 to $40 average price charged on average today by broadband providers, according to task force members.
It might be free but probably it won't be. It could cost less than cable or DSL, but then again it might not. Moving across the city, would a user have to maintain multiple paid accounts to stay connected? I'm curious to see how this works.
Neighborhood news:
I saw the propped-up cardboard signs on Intervale Street this weekend, asking for contributions to the funeral expenses of a shooting victim and I thought to myself, this is one of those things that you won't read about in the newspaper. Well, I was wrong.
Artificial ingredient:
Social networking websites are just what they sound like. They grow virally through social networks. If you need a TV ad campaign to promote one, it probably wasn't working very well in the first place.
July 30, 2006
Just get the job done:
What is Romney thinking? By vetoing the money for covering the ramps through the Greenway, he is negating an important original objective of the Big Dig, a project that we've already paid for many times over, both in tax money and inconvenience. So now in addition to getting gouged we're going to rewind back to 1990 and just have to accept an eyesore running through the center of the city? You know, like we had before we started?
Failure to finish this job just adds insult to injury.
What exactly was the point of this mega-project? Other than to enrich Bechtel and an army of politicians, that is.
July 29, 2006
Civics lesson:
Everyone is doing video embeds, so I though I'd try it.
Stephen Colbert is a very funny guy but DC Congresswoman Eleanor Homes Norton gives him a run for his money.
Terrorists in your tank:
Full disclosure: I don't own a hybrid. I drive a VW. I even drive an SUV sometimes for work.
But I aspire to drive a hybrid. I admire people who drive hybrids. Why? Because gas dependency is a critical national security issue. Being energy efficient is not just some 1970s, Jimmy Carter, 'save the yellow butterfly' social movement. Energy efficiency is patriotic in the same way that being against terrorism is patriotic. Both issues are critical to our long-term national survival.
So, articles mocking the people who drive hybrids irritate me the same way that articles mocking people with patriotic stickers on their cars irritate me -- even though, ironically, the people that mock those who drive hybrids are often the ones waving the flag.
Excuses, excuses:
I try not to overdue it with Big Dig items here, but I think that a lot of people are still very angry about the whole thing. Maybe not to the degree that they were in the immediate aftermath of the ceiling collapse, but the anger is still there.
So interestingly enough, an AP story today notes Bechtel has been dropped from a hospital project in Iraq because of missed deadlines and cost overruns. The company blames both on the security issues of operating in Iraq. I guess that would have been a great excuse here too, if only there had been a civil war going on in downtown Boston.
Meanwhile the feds now want to conduct a multi-million dollar parallel audit of the entire Big Dig. I wonder which contractor they'll pick to do the job and how many cost overruns the audit itself will develop.
Questions are being raised about the authenticity of that 'smoking gun' memo, allegedly written by a safety officer on the connector project and exposed by The Globe.
And least but not last, the Herald reports that the traffic backups resulting from tunnel closures are hurting business for escorts. They don't miss a thing over there. (But why are reporters monitoring sites like these to begin with?)
In addition to impacting escorts, the traffic was blamed, this week, for the death of a man being transported by ambulance, although some questions are being raised (by Dan Kennedy) about that as well.
On the blog front, at BMG, Charley suggests that Amorello was a scapegoat and that we have bigger fish to fry. Agreed, but not having Matt to kick around anymore at least takes away a distraction so that we can now start to focus on the real bad guys. And Romney won't have the Matt issue to fall back on if being in charge of the Big Dig crisis starts to become a liability.
Speaking of Romney and the BD, Aaron doesn't think the association will become a liability for Romney now that Amorello's gone. We'll see. Jon Keller has some thoughts on this and he links to a Channel 4 I-Team (are they still doing that?) report that implicates Romney in some past problems. But Jay Fitzgerald gives Romney credit for at least, "aggressively taking charge."
July 28, 2006
Aristocrat:
Jumbo-tron:
On a recent stay in Singapore, I noticed from my hotel room window, a bright, flashing video screen in the distance. It was about a mile away in a different section of town, but it 's flashing brilliance ruined the early morning quiet.
I don't suppose that the proposed giant video screen at the Boston Garden would have run all night long, but when it did shine, it would have been an eyesore for that part of town. I think it's good that it didn't go through.
Long campaign:
Steve Bailey digs into Deval Patrick's resume to examine one or two jobs that didn't make it into the campaign material.
July 26, 2006
Round and round:
There's another highway project that's not delivering on promises and Romney, not the Turnpike Authority, owns this one. Carpundit, who's standing by in traffic, want's to know when the Sagamore Rotary will be finished.
And then there's the State-managed Cambridge Street Parisian makeover project. That's late too, as Jay Fitz notes.
My State-run construction complaint: Wollaston Beach renovations. I think the winter might have been a more appropriate time to tear things up, but what do I know?
Backyard gourmet:
If you thought grilling a burger was a simple business, think again.
Double-barrel smoking gun:
In one of the most important Big Dig stories so far, the Globe has excerpts of a memo, written by the Safety Officer in the I90 connector, warning that the design of the ceiling could lead to injury or death.
Not to be outdone, Herald reporters digging through documents came across their own bombshell; a memo noting epoxy failure in the specific area where the concrete slabs fell.
July 25, 2006
Efficiency:
Lyss wants to know why people don't just get out of their cars rather than wait in the long Dunkin Donuts drive-through line. Could it be laziness? It's a reasonable question and I think I know the answer.
In most Dunkin Donuts these days, nearly all the employees are working the drive through window and maybe one guy, usually one of the drive through people doing extra duty, man the counter. I've parked and gone in and waited behind one other walk-in customer while the last car in the drive-through line came and went long before I got my medium black coffee. Now I drive through. It's just faster.
And the coffee's good for you, to boot.
No vacancy:
The former, famous, Ritz Motel in Quincy.
Stealing my turkey:
Part of me agrees with Jay Fitzgerald's assessment of Israel's offensive against Hizbolla, that it was over the top. But another part sees a different rationale, especially now that I've pulled Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem down off the bookshelf and re-read the first half, centered on Beirut.
Friedman sees tribalism as the fundamental political reality in the Middle East.
The reason one can still find such tribe-like conflicts at work in the Middle East today is that most peoples in this part of the word, including the Israeli Jews, have not fully broken from their primordial identities, even though they live in what appear on the surface to be modern nation-states...
And tribal politics often have a different set of rules and dynamics than what we're used to. Freidman uses an old Bedouin legend to illustrate the point, and the story underlies, perhaps, what we are seeing with the Israeli response today.
...One day, according to this legend, an elderly Bedouin man discovered that by eating turkey he could restore his virility. So he bought himself a turkey and kept it around the tent, and every day watched it grow. He stuffed it with food, thinking, Wow, I am really going to be a bull. One day, though, the turkey was stolen. So the Bedouin called his sons together and said, "Boys, we are in great danger now -- terrible danger. My turkey's been stolen." The boys laughed and said, "Father what do you need a turkey for?" He said, Never mind, never mind. It is not important why I need the turkey, all that is important is that it has been stolen, and we must get it back. But his sons ignored him and forgot about the turkey. A few weeks later the old man's camel was stolen. His sons came to him and said, "Father your camel's been stolen, what should we do?" And the old man said, "Find my turkey." A few weeks later the old man's horse was stolen, and the sons came and said, "Father your horse was stolen, what should we do?" he said, "Find my turkey." Finally, a few weeks later, someone raped his daughter. The father went to his sons and said, "It is all because of the turkey. When they saw that they could take my turkey, we lost everything."
So to Western eyes, the Israeli reaction to the kidnapping of its soldiers may seem disproportionate, but I doubt that we are the intended audience.
Old school:
Daniel Schorr, 90 next month and still putting our a quality product, talks about blogs:
“But what we have here is a medium in which there is no publisher, no editor, no anything. It's just you and a little machine and you can make history. I find that scary. Nobody should get into print or on the air without some kind of editor. I have an institutional belief that nobody can be above having a good editor.”
(Could he be thinking about Dan Bernstien's work in the Phoenix?)
Editors do play an important role in Jay Rosen's new idea about how to organize non-institutional journalism. It sounds very ambitious to me, but who knows, it just might work.
Where we are today:
This is a strange story in The Globe. The headline is "Amorello failed at Big Dig, letter says." There's nothing about a letter in the article. I read it twice. I even searched for the word 'letter' or the word 'failed'. (Here's the letter, in another story. Maybe it's that I'm reading the online version that it seems so confusing.)
Anyway, the original article is a story about legal wrangling and the appalling use of public funds to provide high-priced legal assistance to Amorello who's fighting to keep his job in the face of universal calls for him to quit. Here's the Amorello money quote:
...I know my track record here has been excellent in bringing us to where we are today.
There you go, right from the horse's mouth. Who needs a letter?
Muted tones:
The redesigned Herald.com appears to have increased ad space, but generally is more toned-down and eye-pleasing than the old design. But if you're still looking for an eye-popping experience, there's always the paper version.
UPDATE: Dan Kennedy weighs in on the change.
July 24, 2006
Compromised:
Great post by Aaron Margolis who follows the Bechtel money trail. You may be shocked to find that Tom Reilly and Sal DiMasi figure prominently.
Cost per gallon:
Carpundit still doesn't like the low-consumption Prius. I'd argue that the improvement in gas milage is, in the final analysis, worth the inconveniences.
As Thomas Friedman says, green is, or should be, the new red, white and blue.
A thousand words:
I've been getting an increased volume of spam mail in the last couple of months and people I talk to are also noticing an increase. I've also noticed more stock recommendation picture spam, as described here.
The newest spam uses technology that varies the content of individual messages — through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types — so they appear to be distinct to spam filters. The spam is delivered to consumers and companies through millions of compromised PCs, called bots.
Are there people out there that actually buy stocks based on spam mail recommendations? Why don't we just establish a .stupid domain for those people so the rest of us can get our email, unaccosted.
Double, double toil and trouble:
A Bewitched convention in our own back yard. "I kind of felt that 'Bewitched' deserved a little more recognition than it had gotten in the past," the organizer tells The Globe.
Funny, I was thinking just the opposite. Green Acres I'd buy, but Bewitched has gotten more recognition than it deserves. (Wikipedia explains why Green Acres is funny. It's worth reading.)
And what about Get Smart? And The Beverly Hillbillies? (Yes, being on vacation gives you time to consider important issues like this.)
Introduced around:
To do a big project in Massachusetts you have to grease the political skids. Bechtel apparently owns the grease factory.
In what we all hope is just the beginning of a series of journalistic inquires, The Globe looks at Bechtel's way of doing business.
No longer roadkill:
She's smart enough, but is she tough enough to take on the political pros? Brett Arends gives Kerry Healey the once over.
July 23, 2006
When the rain comes:
The rain is good for some things, I suppose.
Part of the problem:
Where do the illegal guns used on the street come from? Well, I don't think there are many illegal gun factories, so it's safe to assume they move from legitimate commerce into an illegal market. At some point an illegal gun goes from being under the control of a legitimate owner into the hands of a criminal.
So, it would seem, stopping criminals from getting illegal guns is largely in the hands of legitimate gun owners. Too bad many of them don't see it that way.
July 22, 2006
Eighty percent miss rate:
Ironically, the more popular an anti-virus software package is, the less effective it is likely to be.
Super note:
We've just gone through an update of US currency from symmetrical notes to the new off-center 'big head' bills, but already it's time for another expensive upgrade of the $100 bill.
Why? You can blame North Korea.
Spooning and forking:
Sexual innuendo and blatant references to sex are woven into prime-time sit-coms. But the FCC is going after PBS documentaries?
You've got to be sh.. uh, kidding me.
July 21, 2006
This year's model:
Jeff Jarvis writes about old media and old models. He echoes the theme that Chris Lydon introduced in his criticisms of The Globe. Jarvis gives this advice to local papers:
Find your essence — hint: it’s local, local, local. Streamline now to put out a better focused and better print product.
Build it, network it, and localize it and the advertisers will come, he suggests.
Half again:
Who's doing all the blogging? A Pew study supplies the answers and Jack Shafer, the analysis.
...[T]his study shows that at this early point in the blog era, the great mass of bloggers aren't set on replacing reporters. The top 100 or top 1,000 may consider themselves "citizen journalists" of one sort or another, but the survey finds that 65 percent of bloggers don't consider their output journalism at all. They're just expressing themselves in a leisurely fashion...
Now this was a telephone survey of bloggers, which at first seemed a little strange to me since the study indicates half or so of all bloggers publish anonmymously. So I assume it was just a random sampling of the population. But bloggers as a proportion of the population don't reflect blogging in proportion to the internet so I'm not so sure about what it all means.
Anyway, I'm on vacation. For the next week or two, at least, I'll be doing that leisurely expression thing myself.
Deja vu, take two:
What was Beyoncé' thinking?!?
People apparently care about this stuff.
Off the hook:
Of course Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff wanted to settle all future claims against the company for Big Dig problems. And that was a month before the ceiling collapse. Apparently they could read the handwriting on the wall and sense the loosening of the bolts.
But why would anyone in government get behind a settlement like this?
For what it's worth, the Globe is reporting that a blink comparison analysis of Reilly and Romney shows that the AG is "very, very stressed," while the governor is much more at ease.
And on a related topic, in response the the BD tunnel collapse, U-Mass Boston is closing its underground parking garage. Yes, it's the concrete.
July 20, 2006
MPG:
In the market for a new car? Do the patriotic thing; go efficient.
Track this way:
Beryl, an early-season tropical storm, is heading towards the Cape. It's expected to hit sometime between midnight tonight and tomorrow morning. Winds are about 60 mph, sustained.
July 17, 2006
Gender-neutral pit stop:
Carpundit's back from vacation. He threatens to abandon racing for golf if Danica Patrick starts driving NASCAR.
I had no idea women were competing in these races. Interesting.
$109,500,000:
Take ten people with their own video cameras and spread them out across the connector tunnel. Pay each $100 a shift to make sure their cameras are recording. Add three shifts so that there's 24 hour coverage. That comes out to about a million a year.
Let's say you want to budget this for fifty years. No, make it a hundred years. Throw in meals and the price of replacement tapes and still, this fiscally irresponsible plan would only cost about half of the $200 million price tag we paid for the Big Dig video system... that didn't work!
The word is out:
From this morning's USA Today:
BOSTON — Outside Fenway Park on Sunday, words like “mismanaged” and “embarrassment” were flying around. And people weren't talking about the Red Sox.
Great opening to a story on the BD, cementing our status as laughingstock.
Technocratic:
Brett Arends listens to Chris Gabrieli and hears Al Gore. No, that's a good thing. Gore has had a lot of great ideas, especially on technology and the environment, but he was, you know, Al Gore.
Of Gabrieli, Arends says, he get's it.
July 16, 2006
Systemic:
More bad news for motorists.
BOSTON --It will be at least "a couple of months" before problems in the entire Big Dig highway system are repaired and the roads reopened, Gov. Mitt Romney said on Sunday, the same day another ramp was closed to traffic because of what he called a "systemic failure."
You didn't think it was going to get better, did you?
Here's a traffic advisory from BPDNews.
What the market will bear:
Corporate opponents of net neutrality say that regulation is unnecessary since there's plenty of competition in the broadband internet access market. If we don't like the pricing scheme of one provider, we can simply switch to another.
Sam Allis might have some issues with that.
An editorial on an editorial:
A Sunday Globe editorial explains what political blogs do:
They post photographs and videos. They check facts, amplify fallacies, and hit with the force of a wrecking ball.
I agree with the gist of the piece, which criticizes the negative fringes as more destructive than constructive. Of course that's not exclusive to blogs, which tend to reflect political divisions rather than define them. But the concern nonetheless underscores the growing influence of blogs. And I do think that bloggers could try harder to be constructive, despite the fact that it's extremism that generates traffic.
In the Globe's backyard there are two good examples of partisan but constructive blogs, Blue Mass Group and Hub Politics. And there are others. But the editorial writer turns to a Florida blogger to make his point.
The blogosphere has rough neighborhoods full of singeing criticism and fiction masquerading as fact. But, for the most part, blogs are a new frontier for public discourse. They matter. And they could matter even more.
It's good that The Globe appreciates the increasing importance and potential of blogs, but if they really want to promote good behavior they should jump into the local conversation and do more to link to, and promote good Boston-area sites.
Crossing the line:
War coverage is a complicated business. I have a lot of respect for combat photographers who put themselves at risk to document the action. That said, I don't buy into the school of thought that journalists are above it all. Independent, yes, but not morally unconstrained.
This photo, taken by a photographer employed by a US corporation crosses the line, in my opinion. If it had been taken by a freelancer and bought by the Times, I think it would be a different situation. A technicality maybe, but sometimes technicalities are the grips that keep slopes from becoming slippery.
July 15, 2006
Fun with URLs:
Here are ten good reasons to use a hyphen in your domain name.
War news:
Aussie Dave is liveblogging the war from Israel and NZ Bear has set up an aggregation page for Lebanese, Israeli and other bloggers writing about what's going on over there. (NYT graphic)
UPDATE: This (explicit photos) is where last week's Hezbollah aggression has led. It's pretty bad -- for both sides.
This interview with a Western mediator in Beirut is illuminating on several levels. And encouraging: he sees light at the end of the tunnel rather than continued escalation.
Anthony Shadid writes about how the Hezbollah attacks are dividing Lebanon:
"To a certain Arab audience and Arab elite, [Hezbollah leader Hasan] Nasrallah is a champion, but the price is high," said Walid Jumblatt, a member of parliament and leader of Lebanon's Druze community. "We are paying a high price."
Indeed. Shadid thinks this is a turning point for Hezbollah. When the photos linked above are published in Lebanon papers tomorrow, we'll see if the country turns with them or against them.
July 14, 2006
The bear is back:
I've been interested in how China's changing economy has been driving political change within the country. They're going slow and there are still plenty of signs of authoritarianism, but in general, I think the trends are encouraging.
I haven't been paying as much attention to what's going on in Russia, but Jay is. And it's China, apparently, not Western economies that they are taking their cues from.
Russia, under Putin, seems to be regrouping after jumping in too fast, shaking off all that idealistic Harvard Business School advice. By Western standards things aren't perfect but there does seem to be progress, economically anyway.
Collective wisdom:
The local blogosphere is abaze with Big Dig commentary and Adam is doing a bang-up job of pulling it all together.
It's good to see that he's tapping a broad range, including some newer voices who may not have gotten a lot of attention previously, such as Harold Clemons over at Ghetto Uprising, and EnuhCorK at Driving to Work. And Charles Laquidara (remember him?) who occasionally blogs local issues... from Hawaii. Not that I'm jealous.
Double down:
The new version of Microsoft Windows was supposed to ship this summer. But it won't. The latest is that it could ship by the end of the year. Bill Gates has gone on record stating that it (probably) will. Others aren't so sure.
So what if it doesn't? A software engineer has put $10,000 of his own money down on a bet with Gates that it won't. The ball is Bill's court.
In any case, whenever Vista does ship, Microsoft will already be thinking about the next upgrade to Windows. In fact, that work is already underway, codenamed Vienna.
So does anyone want to put their money down on whether Vienna will be released before the Big Dig audit is complete?
July 13, 2006
The circus that won't leave town:
From the latest Amorello press conference -- in response to a question about whether he'll step down:
I have taken an oath of office to serve as chairman of the Turnpike Authority until 2007.
Was that the oath, that he would stay in the job until his tenure ended? That's a contract not an oath of office. I couldn't track down the actual text of the oath, but I'm guessing it was less about what we would do for Matt and more about what Matt would do for us.
There's more to go after in the transcript, but it's like beating a dead horse. Blue Mass has a preview of an interview with Chet Curtis that will air tonight on NECN. And on it goes.
UPDATE: I don't know how I missed this Steve Bailey piece:
Matt Amorello has a decision to make: He can make the next six months about assuring the safety of the turnpike, or he can make it about himself.
Exactly. Matt and his press conferences are the proverbial highway wreck; we know we should keep our eyes on the road ahead but we just can't stop looking. That's why it's important that he go away. Maybe then we can focus on the real culprits: the contractors, and the system that let them screw us.
Follow the money:
Amorello may not realize it yet, but he's finished. He exists now only as a punching bag for Romney and as entertainment for the rest of us.
He's an easy target, but, as Eileen MacNamara wrote Wednesday, this isn't just about Matt Amorello. Increasingly, people are asking questions about the political-industrial complex that got us to this point.
Who's campaign has Bechtel contributed to? What about Modern Continental? Kim Atkins has already started down this road, noting yesterday that Tom Reilly -- the guy leading the investigation -- has accepted contributions from Big Dig contractors. (He's now stated that he is going to return them all.) Today, Margery Eagan highlights Joe Malone's recollections.
"When some (politician) would need a job for a supporter, (the Big Dig) is where you turned,” he said. “When someone needed a contribution for a campaign, the Big Dig is where they went. When someone needed to land somewhere after they got out of government, the Big Dig again.”
So, who else took money from Bechtel? How deep was the corruption? There's a Pulitzer out there waiting for someone.
- UPDATE: Charley at Blue Mass says this...
...It's an issue so resonant, so ridiculous, so nifty, so wasteful, so tragic, with so many possible villains and so few heroes, that our entire political and government establishment is implicated in its failures. The only reason why the first and last words out of every candidate's mouth haven't been "Big Dig" must have simply been wishful thinking.
No more. That someone actually died in the tunnels felt not like a surprise, but like something you knew was going to happen. You believed the assurances of the authorities because, well, you had no choice. But there's even more at stake here than the ability to drive to the airport without worrying about getting crushed to death by a slab of concrete.
Read it all, it's a good take.
College deferment:
You would think that with all the college kids in the Kenmore Square area, it would be a prime recruitment zone for the military. Not so.
Suicide strategy:
What is the strategy behind the attacks against Israel by both Hamas and Hezbollah? Both are at a tactical disadvantage yet they invite Israeli retaliation.
There's a coordinated plan here, and I hope it's not to set the groundwork for a non-conventional weapons attack against the Israeli people.
Heavier than air:
By the way, if you're concerned about the tiles in the Ted Williams Tunnel, you can relax. Those guys are only 800 pounds each.
July 12, 2006
Bad publicity:
Adam connects the dots between stupidity and a local PR firm. Nice one.
UPDATE: After watching the Comedy Central clip and confirming that the person interviewed was in fact the president of Luongo Public Relations, I am left wondering who would hire a guy who, either in an effort to be funny, or just through plain stupidity, would go on national TV to make a racially insensitive comment. Here's a list of his clients. I wouldn't want to be one of them.
Don't look up:
Did 2 ton, CONCRETE hanging tiles cost more than a conventional tunnel ceiling? Was it simply a way to present a higher bill to the Turnpike Authority? How else can one explain such a ridiculous design?
I suspected they were cheating us, but I thought, at least, that someone was watching to see that the overpriced construction met basic safety design standards. That 'someone' would have been the Turnpike Authority.
Matt Amorello, whether he inherited this issue or not, is where the buck stops. He has no boss, a status that he has fought to maintain. To listen to him promise to conduct full investigations and make promises that the rest of the system is still safe is beyond insulting to the general public.
People don't want a canned damage-control strategy. Or promises. We want a mea culpa -- for a start.
-Adam has the best roundup of coverage and opinion on the subject over at UH. Blue Mass is all over the political fallout as is Jon Keller, Dan Kennedy and Jay Fitz. Also check this blog search for "Big Dig" on Google, found via Tim at Boston Crazy Driving, who also offers some interesting observations.
July 11, 2006
The secret life of a plant:
A potted plant is the subject of today's big Globe story. It's true. On a day when the Big Dig tunnel collapse is the big news everywhere else, the Globe dedicates most of its (one star) front page real estate to a story about a cactus.
"It's kind of touching to watch the plant put forth this effort," said Frans Lawaetz, a freelance technology consultant who has been renting the apartment and taking care of the agave since last fall. "The plant is doing so much at the end of its life. It's running out of steam; it has done enough."
Has the Globe site been hacked? Is this a parody?
July 10, 2006
Join the club:
A lot of people I know are switching to Macs. Here are a few tips for new users, and here's a quick guide to some cool software available for the mac. Some of it's free. Also, to get more Mac apps, check iusethis. Again some apps are free but not all.
July 9, 2006
Been there:
John Koch writes about airplane phobia.
It's hard to take that first step, but once you name it openly and actively seek help , you're on your way to friendlier skies . Most phobics won't believe that statement, but it's demonstrably true.
Fifteen years ago after a particularly harrowing flight that capped off a series of anxious airborne experiences, I decided that that was it. I wasn't going to fly anymore. No one could make me. Long, boring, uncomfortable train rides up and down the east coast ensued.
Strangely, I still enjoyed flying in small planes or helicopters. It wasn't flying itself that I disliked, but being stuffed into a big, heavy, complicated slab of metal, that had no business being off the ground.
But you can't live that way, and eventually I had to get over my fear terror of flying. Since then, in the last several years I've flown across the Atlantic a number of times, the Pacific, all around China, over the North Pole, the Himalayas, Hudson Bay, The Rockies, the Gobi Desert. I even flew, the day the airspace was opened, a week after 911, over the still smoking rubble of lower Mahattan.
I didn't take a course as Koch did, but I found that a little red wine helped a lot.
July 8, 2006
Google in action:
Google is now officially a verb.
Gilder's error:
From Jay through John Farrell and Steve Reuland, I came to this article by George Gilder, originally published in the National Review.
His thesis, apparently, is that Darwinian materialism can never explain intelligence. I say apparently because Gilder is all over the map, referencing as support for his point, scientists and authors who's work, in many cases, stands in opposition to his premises.
I always thought Gilder was a smart guy. He's certainly a first class technologist. But in this article he gets a lot of basic stuff wrong.
A so-called “Turing machine” is an idealized computer that can be created using any available material, from beach sand to Buckyballs, from microchips to matchsticks. Turing made clear that the essence of a computer is not its material substance but its architecture of ideas.
Ideas is the wrong word here. A computer (as opposed to software) has nothing to do with ideas. A computer runs, not on ideas, but logic processes. This is as true for computers as it is for natural selection and biology. Later Gilder refers to Seth Lloyd's book on the fundamentals of computational processes and how they work in the physical world, and I have to wonder if he actually read the book. I did, and I'm sure Lloyd would be scratching his head after reading Gilder's article.
Gilder seems to be saying that intelligence, as well as other forms of complexity, are somehow supernatural because they can't be explained by the simple processes that underlie them. He quotes Robert Laughlin, a scientist who's work on emergent complexity in physical systems actually explains how something as complex as intelligence can arise. Again, I wonder if he's read Laughlin.
I'm not a scientist and I'm certainly not as smart as Gilder. But I do understand that Darwinism is based on logical processes that reward survival, and that intelligence and consciousness are not ends in themselves, but emergent complex systems that developed as survival strategies. There is a lot of science to back that up.
Gilder seems to be channelling Descartes. But there have been one or two developments in science and philosophy since the 1600s. For a start, I would advise Gilder take the time to read Sean Carroll's book on evolutionary developmental biology or Eric Kandel's book on the biology of cognitive processes or neurologist Antonio Damasio's series on consciousness, beginning with the book titled Descartes' Error.
The taming of The Chairman:
You'll have to wait a couple of weeks, until July 22nd, if you want to see Shakespeare on the Common. This year it's The Taming of the Shrew.
Or, you can watch a State House tragicomedy unfold today, as the Legislature prepares to override the Governor's veto of the deal extending Jordan Levy's tenure on the Turnpike Board.
UPDATE: Blue Mass Group notes that Tom Reilly also has a part in this play.
July 7, 2006
The company you keep::
City Councillor Sam Yoon is spending a lot of time with his new friends, Chuck Turner, Felix Arroyo and Charles Yancey. Meanwhile his effectiveness in the council is plummeting. Paul McMorrow in the Dig:
Frustration with the freshman councilor has been building steadily, and now appears to be boiling over. The lesson, it appears, is this: If you’re going to sit on your ass for six months, don’t rip your colleagues. Because they’ll rip right back.
This is the business-saavvy newcomer that was going to be such a good influence on the council? So much for potential. I wonder where he's getting his political advice, although I suspect I know.
Keepin' it real:
Rapper Jay-Z is calling for a boycott of $300-a-bottle Cristal champagne. Hey, I've been part of that boycott for years now.