So the solution is what? Less regulation?

The Real Reason for the Tragedy of the Titanic
The disaster is often seen as a tale of hubris, social stratification and capitalist excess. The truth is considerably more sobering.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577337923643095442.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Yet another document that somehow failed to get published when I was done with it…

At the accident’s core is this reality: British regulators assumed responsibility for lifeboat numbers and then botched that responsibility. With a close reading of the evidence, it is hard not to see the Titanic disaster as a tragic example of government failure.

Beins as how this is the WSJ the only ‘solution’ that appears in the offing is to eliminate government regulation. I guess the idea is that the White Star Line would have put in the extra life boats out of fear of being sued into bankruptcy, but didn’t because regulation didn’t require it. This ignores, of course, the likely reality that the WSL would simply have paid the necessary bribes to make the whole legal problem go away (one can’t reasonably presume that by doing away with most regulation we don’t also do away with all regulation and most law) and wouldn’t have suffered a penny more than they did with the government regulation.

Of course, the real solution would have been to require that the damn government regulators update their regulations on a regular and on-going basis, but imagine how easy it would have been for the shipping lines to campaign against any updated regulations they perceived as too expensive. The problem isn’t with the concept of government, the problem is with the implementation of government!

Luck is in the eye of the beholder

What doesn’t kill you
When we escape death, we feel lucky and purposeful. Now science is explaining why
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/what_doesnt_kill_you/singleton/

This is a bit of a long article for some of my readers (I confess to reading it in two sittings, but then I started to read it after an exhausting day working on our construction project), but the thoughts it triggers (for me, anyway) are very interesting. People are meaning making machines and love to build narrations around the random circumstances that happen in their lives:

We compose our life stories using the data given — the somewhat random happenings of our pasts — but then we get the roles of the data and the interpretation confused: we stare in wonder at how well the events seem to fit the theme, forgetting that we custom-fit the theme to the events. Instead of drawing a target around a cluster of bullet holes and gawking at the aim of a marksman, you’re constructing a story around a series of occurrences and marveling at the insight and wisdom of providence. One stray bullet and you wouldn’t be who you are today.

I touch upon luck and its interpretation in my article about faith. I admit to often falling into the trap of wishing I was more than a sequence of random happenstance with an occasional grin (and often loud outbursts of cursing). I want to be judged by history as consequential, not lost to everyone but my family and a handful of close friends. I suspect that is a core element of human nature and one of the reasons why we all work so hard at our personal narration. However, the scientist / critical thinker in me forces me to acknowledge (even if I only do so for a few minutes a time) that life is nothing more than ‘shit happens’ and all the rest is spin. Why should someone who was _nearly_ killed, but had his (or her, lets be gender neutral here) house, family and community destroyed (by, say, a tornado, earthquake or tsunami) be lucky? Perhaps the ‘lucky’ ones were those that were killed instantly and never had to spend a moment wallowing in depression from knowledge that everything important to them was gone. Why should the guy who _almost_ died when he was struck by lightning be the lucky one when he will be living the rest of his life with serious long-term health consequences of being partially cooked alive?

Why can’t the guy who has an uneventful life, married a sweet caring loving partner, raised loving children that go on to contribute to society, then dies peacefully in his sleep (perhaps holding hand with his partner who dies at the same moment) be the lucky one? Maybe because that narration is just boring?

It is so simple: put a package on that pecker!

Abstinence isn’t working
Teen births are down, thanks to contraception use. Why does the right ignore the facts and insist it’s abstinence?
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/15/abstinence_isnt_working/singleton/

As I have lamented earlier, the GOP has been hijacked by anti-feminists who think that government should have no pretense in our society _except_ that it should control in minute detail what goes on in our bedrooms. As such it should come as no surprise that they champion the entirely useless (unless one wants to _increase_ the rate of teenage pregnancy, of course, which helps to keep those damn uppity women in the kitchen where they belong) abstinence program and doggedly ignore any evidence contrary to their absolute conviction that there is no other solution.

Either that or these people are so god damned stupid and idiotic that they simply are incapable of understanding cause and effect. Since so many are sheeple I guess I should not be surprised if this is indeed the case and this isn’t a situation of the vast right-wing conspiracy so often quoted by the liberal whack jobs on the left.

It is shit like this that continually reinforces my misanthropy.

Where is the Tea Party outrage?

A huge student loan scam
With the help of Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., for-profit colleges are massively ripping off U.S. taxpayers
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/a_huge_student_loan_scam/singleton/

Additional proof (as if any were needed) that the Tea Party anti-government crusade is nothing more than racist anti-feminine blather and not about the excesses of government. This whole for-profit higher education system is 100% scam from beginning to end, left to right, top to bottom. It is nothing more than a wholesale transfer of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the 1%. There is no way that the majority of people can pay back these loans and they loans are all backed by our ‘great’ government. Then, to add a bitch-slap to the insult added to the injury, these for-profit schools don’t even award a degree for all the (tax payer) money spent! Of course, I am quite certain that the degree would be worthless anyway, but at least they would have the illusion of having earned something.

I looked into on-line education a number of years ago as I thought it would be an interesting way to dramatically reduce the cost of education. Imagine my surprise when I found that the tuition was as high or even higher than public Universities! All that AND a degree worth far less than the equivalent from a decent public University. But, you say, public Universities are subsidized, so the true cost isn’t being reflected in the tuition. Yes, but keep in mind that a public University has a huge campus to maintain, something nonexistent in the on-line world of for-profit schools. The cost for on-line education should be very modest in comparison.

A wee bit of personal experience… Several years ago (heck I guess now it was probably over 7 years) I was interested in a brand new PhD program in information security (the school shall remain nameless to avoid any potential for a lawsuit, but a trivial amount of research will reveal the name to anyone interested) in a brand new ‘University’ just being created. The program started out in Northern Virginia and seemed like a perfect fit with my intentions at the time. It would have been a bit of a stretch economically, but I felt the payoff would be worth the investment. I met with a recruiter there who also seemed to share my idea that I would be a perfect fit with the program: I had a strong interest in infosec, a strong background in computers and several thesis ideas already percolating. However the owner of the program (notice how I said ‘owner’; as a private, for-profit organization it is no different from the local sub shop in that regard) decided that I was a lousy fit for their program because he was actually looking for people who, for all intents and purposes, would get no benefit whatsoever from having the degree. What I mean is that the owner wanted students who already had jobs in the infosec ‘biz and were indeed quite senior in that regard, thus would enable him to brag in his marketing material that his program had graduated ‘top people’ in the field. Of course, they would already have been top in their field, so the degree, to them, would be nothing more than vanity (meaning it wouldn’t help them get jobs or get them more money). That was when I started to see the whole for-profit education system for the scam that it is. This is not to say that our current not-for-profit (public or private) education system isn’t without some serious defects (regular reader(s) here will know I have a very jaundiced view of the status quo), just to say that the for-profit arm of our education system is nothing more than legalized theft from the taxpayer.

Why I hate politicians and politics

Where’s the outrage over Republican’s ‘communist’ claim?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/avlon-west-communists/index.html

First, lemme state that my focus on the GOP is because until fairly recently (about the time of Bush Jr.) I considered myself a Republican. Since I never really considered myself a liberal or a Democrat (though regular reader(s) will see my evolving attitude) I have pretty much always had disdain for that portion of the political spectrum. As such, when a liberal Democrat said something particularly idiotic or engaged in the typical bald-faced lies of politicians, it barely rated notice because, after all, that was what I expected.

As mentioned earlier the current face of the GOP has made me ill. The very thought that I voted for McCain with that idiot Palin on the ticket gives me the retroactive heebie jeebies. But things keep getting worse and worse. This whole communist crap outlined in the article above is a perfect case in point. Idiots that say these sorts of things should never have been elected in the first place because when you say things like that (and mean them as appears clear here) you are basically saying you will never compromise with your ‘opponents’ because to do so would be to debase the very thing you claim to support so wholeheartedly. Just writing this is getting my blood pressure up, it pisses me off so much! I suppose the pendulum will swing back towards the center at some point, though right now it is hard to imagine that happening, and for a brief period we will enjoy less idiocy in government, but then the pendulum will fly past sanity and swing up into idiocy again, just at the other extreme.

I equate politicians with pathological liars. The hypothetical honest politician would never get elected to his or her first office because our brain dead sheeple electorate is so intent on living in a fantasy that they will routinely ignore the truth in favor of some idiotic lie. Thus, were there ever any politician wannabee who refused to feed the sheeple their desired lies, his or her career would end before it even began. As a consequence our political circus self-selects for pathological liars willing to feed the sheeple their expected lies. Based on my reading of the history of politics here in the US, though, it seems that the electorate has always been strongly favoring of these sorts of personalities. It seems our current idiotic race for the Presidency (where as far as I can tell, the only difference between the presumptive candidates is the color of their skin, not withstanding the hysterical blather from the extremes on either side (and _both_ would be terrible leaders for our country and its citizens)) is far from the worst in historical comparisons, yet our country has somehow muddled along all these decades.

I believe it was Churchill who said something along the lines of ‘Americans always wind up with the best solution, but only after they have tried and failed at every other possible solution’. It seems we are once again trying out extreme cluelessness and idiotic tendencies of our electorate by making various litmus tests a requirement to play the game. Few people realize that our politicians are typically chosen by only a couple of percent of our electorate and when these decisions are being made generally the process is exclusively owned by the most rabid of partisans on either side. The rest of the electorate then gets to make the decision between the whack job from the right or the whack job from the left. What a shitty way to operate a government! Decisions are made by elected officials chosen by 1-2% of the electorate on a routine basis. It is shocking that _any_ decisions are ever made!

A MUST READ

Hopefully my reader(s) here all have the capacity to read this and feel shame being a US citizen. I strongly doubt that the vast majority of the sheeple in our stagnant, corrupt third-world country even have the capacity to read the document to the end, let alone see the horrifying truth. Perhaps by my having it linked here it will pop up on Google’s news list and perhaps a few more handfuls of people will read it. It is a small thing for me to do compared to the massive thing he has had to suffer, but at this point it is all I can think of…

The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/the_real_criminals_in_the_tarek_mehanna_case/singleton/

Obama, the Antichrist

Yes, Virginia, this is Obama’s JOBS Act
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/yes-virginia-this-is-obama-s-jobs-act-20120412

I wrote a bit about this topic before: “Expanding Wall Street’s license to steal“, but Matt is, I feel, way more eloquent and certainly much better at providing links to the base material.

I am really at a loss on the absolute hatred of the right for Obama. After all, he has done nothing for progressives since he has been in office and it is even difficult to call his actions moderate Republican. I guess that is why the official GOP candidates have had to shift so damn far to the right, that is the only way they can distinguish themselves from Obama!

Conversely, I can’t understand why progressives continue to support this GOP right-wing nut job in sheep’s clothing. He hasn’t done a damn thing for them (the health care bill was straight out of Bush Jr.s playbook and the gays-in-the-military thing was going to happen no matter who was in office (if you can think of anything else that, even in dim light, looks progressive, please let me know)) and while Romney is surely an empty suited idiot mouthpiece for Wall Street, well guess what, so is Obama. I really can’t think of a damn thing that would be different if Romney gets elected, both are equally horrible for our nation.

The toilet is swirling around and around, we be heading down…

America’s war on its own citizens

How the drug war hurts everyone
From Wall Street to Oakland, recent events prove the campaign isn’t just futile. It’s a deadly waste of resourses
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/12/how_the_drug_war_hurts_everyone/singleton/

It seems I haven’t commented here much on my feelings on our so-called ‘war on drugs’. I believe it is a total travesty against our society, doubled or quadrupled by the knowledge of how wasted the whole alcohol prohibition effort was. Of course, given the oligarchic-al hold on our society and the _billions_ of taxpayer dollars pissed away I suppose it should come as no surprise that no matter that our society is growing to see the war on drugs as an inherently bad thing that it continues to escalate.

I have read comments that the overall cost to society of legalising drugs (I would legalise them all) would exceed the current cost to our society of the existing war on drugs, but I find the arguments unpersuasive. Yes, without a doubt more people would indulge in drugs and without a doubt more people would become addicted (just like with ready access to alcohol and legalised gambling those with weaknesses are more easily ensnared), but that discounts the 25% of the entire world’s prison population being US citizens (with the US, btw, having less than 5% of the world’s population), not to mention the massive drain on our society spending the billions in totally unproductive (beyond enriching the oligarchy, of course; always have to toss in that caveat) activity. If drugs were legal their profit margins would drop to the typical 10% or so that pharmaceutical companies get for non-patented products, which naturally means that crime related to drugs would essentially vanish overnight. That, of course, would put a massive crimp into the cash flow of some major corporations getting fat off our prison population (see here for instance).

I am really getting against the idea of government privatisation. Sure the government is a fucked up wasteful organisation but at least we can see who is doing what. With this privatisation crap we got no idea who is taking our tax dollars and the value we get in return.

The Death of American Privacy

Strip-Search Case Reflects Death of American Privacy
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/strip-search-case-reflects-death-of-american-privacy.html

Part of the issue I see here is the vast potential for abuse. On the one hand I feel that it is irresponsible for the state to NOT implement these sorts of searches when putting outsiders into general prison populations, so alternatives would require housing the arrest-ees individually. There is also the concern that some might seek to harm themselves, so it seems prudent to ensure that the arrest-ee is not carrying anything problematic. However, since simply arresting someone is basically a choice made by an officer on the street and there is, at that point, no room for due process or judicial evaluation, etc., these sorts of searches are thus subject to the whims of the arresting officer, which is a real problem in our ever deepening police state. There is already plenty of problems where the system turns a blind eye to abuse that is in fact illegal, I think it is problematic to enshrine abusive powers by making them part of the every day system.

This issue is compounded by the stated study results that showed an insignificant percentage of people were actually carrying things not detected by the conventional pat down or X-ray systems (not wild about X-raying people either, but that is what happens today just to get on a damn plane). If strip searching isn’t actually stopping anything from getting into the prison population (as the reported stats seem to make ironclad), then I can only see it being used as an institutional way of humiliating people who haven’t been given their due process and are thus basically guilty until proven innocent.

The balance point seems to me to be along the lines of only allowing this sort of search once someone has been formally charged (and thus presumably competently legally represented), denied bail (or unable to afford it) and thus needing to be introduced to the general prison population for long-term handling. It seems to me that prior to that point the arrest-ee should be held in a separate location independent of the general prison population. I am sure that, particularly in busy jurisdictions, it would be challenging (to say the least) to implement this sort of division, but guess what? Managing our legal system isn’t supposed to be something done at minimal cost, it should be done to maximise justice for society.

This reminds me of an article I read yesterday (but didn’t blog on) about the for-profit prison system working to further maximise our already world-leading system of incarceration. Man is our society in the toilet!

Higher education due for a storm

Innovations in Higher Education? Hah!
College leaders need to move beyond talking about transformation before it’s too late
http://chronicle.com/article/Innovations-in-Higher/131424/

Time to clear out the dead wood! I would like to think it will be radical and quick, but something makes me think it will be a generation or more in the implementation. While transformation in education is likely inevitable, the timing is not. First society will have to accept any alternative education system, which means the accreditation systems will likely be last to undergo any change, which naturally means that the organisations vested in the status-quo will have less incentive to adapt. Clearly some schools will adapt faster (some are already beginning radical changes, but there will be a shake-out period where society (re?)discovers what works) and not all major Universities will bite the dust, but I foresee a huge shake-out where 90+% of existing organisations will be driven out of business. Much like the author describes the media transformation we have been witnessing (meaning the rise of satellite, Internet, etc. has been ‘killing’ conventional media) there will be a repeat in our higher education (and, I firmly believe, but expect it to take a couple more generations (sigh), also in our primary schools). Conventional lecture is dead, but the corpse will continue to twitch, groan and make rude noises for decades to come.

I have a sad feeling, though, that just as it came way too late for me, it will come too late for my boy. He has already learned to hate school and is only in 2nd grade!