Outsourcing McCarthyism

Outsourcing conservatism
Arizona’s new contraception law shows how the private sphere often leads the way for reactionary policies
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/15/outsourcing_conservatism/singleton/

What can’t be accomplished from within the government gets done anyway. Using the Constitution to shield un-Constitutional activities, picking and choosing laws, using religious exemptions when it suits them and insisting the US is Christian when it doesn’t. Very nasty behavior of these people. The win-at-all-costs and the Bush-era “you are with us or you are against us” attitude forcing polarization amongst those who likely wouldn’t normally give a damn.

If nothing else, this round of high visibility politics has revealed the ‘conservative’ movement for what it is: a return to the 50’s era where women were expected to be barefoot, pregnant and keeping the house and everything else was “man’s” work and minorities (i.e., those not born white and into wealth) stick to their cotton picking plantations. The whole religious objection to contraception has revealed their true objection to abortion and it has nothing to do with saving lives and everything to do with imposing authority’s control over women. Normally I would predict that this attitude would ensure a landslide loss of the GOP this year but women are sheeple too and it is clear that women are just as eager to believe pleasant lies as men are. Of course, when the other choice is a Constitutional shredding ‘centrist’ (it was just a few years ago everything Obama ‘champions’ today was mainstream GOP) with no desire at all to implement even the slightest speedbumps in the destruction of our economy by the oligarchy it really does boil down to the non-choice choice of death by hanging or death by firing squad.

I really hate to have to say this, but: Go Paul!

Get some sun, baybee!

Reasons That Vitamin D May Matter
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/reasons-to-place-a-bet-on-vitamin-d/

I started to become a believer in the ‘power’ of vitamin D a couple of winters ago. Through a somewhat unusual confluence of events I pretty much spent no time outside exposed to the sun and in the late winter/early spring I started to get sick over and over again. I found an article like this and started to take supplements. I also started to make it a point to get some sun during the winter as I have read several places that it appears that ‘naturally’ produced vitamin D (meaning that produced through UV exposure of your skin) was somehow more beneficial than the material supplied through diet. Since my outdoor activity started to increase (hence my UV exposure) subsequent to my supplementing my diet with vitamin D I couldn’t feel sure that that was the only issue. However, in the two winters since then I have continued with my efforts to expose myself to the sun and have had dramatically fewer bouts of illness. Previous to the sick winter mentioned above, I had pretty routinely been getting sick in the late winter and even got pneumonia once. Anecdotal, of course, but my personal experiences make me feel that vitamin D is something important and with the effort being so minimal (just show your face and arms (more if you can manage it) in some sheltered place out of the wind in the full sun; I have been comfortably down to my shorts in below-freezing weather under such circumstances (and I am by no means any sort of ‘polar bear’ club member!)), it seems silly to take supplements.

Greed fatigue

Greed fatigue and MF Global
Speculators who lost $1.6 billion for their customers get big bonuses. So what else is new?
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/greed_fatigue_and_mf_global/singleton/

Just like my constant bla bla bla police state other people are bla bla bla-ing about the criminal activities of our Wall Street overlords. Of course, I mention them a time or twain myself, but I consider the root of the problem with the government, not Wall Street. However, since our current society has put the fox in charge of the hen house, we should expect that fatigue would set in hearing the exact same story over and over again. When you can’t change anything, ignorance really does seem to be the preferable alternative. One of my goals with this blog (other than trying to make my days go by a wee bit faster) is to serve as a pointed stick poking into the sides of my reader(s) reminding them that our society really does suck and we really should give a damn that wealthy crooks routinely thumb their noses at the law and our government routinely ignores its own binding Constitution.

Consider yourself poked.

I always thought I was a slacker

But it seems 5-6 hours a day is the max for a so-called ‘knowledge worker’:

Bring back the 40-hour work week
150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/singleton/

On the few days I have been focused on work (I haven’t liked the jobs I have held for more than a decade and have reluctantly decided that the best I can look forward to is not being miserable) and actually doing development I have found that I can fly along for just about 5 or 6 hours and all the sudden it is like a switch has been thrown and I am done for the day. Sometimes I can do some thinking or planning and very occasionally some high level design work, but my ability to effectively respond to the information supplied by the debugger or my program output has basically reached zero. Having been bombarded with stories of programmers going on all night ‘hack attacks’ and churning out piles of code, I have always felt rather inadequate. I have noticed, though, that, in keeping with most of my bosses comments, the product I put out on an on-going basis is quite superior to most of my peers. I have tended to notice that the more ‘inspirational’ a coding style a developer has the more likely he (it always seems to be ‘he’, though there is clearly a sex bias in the world of professional programming) is to check crap code into the repo and then go home at 3 in the morning leaving the mess for someone like me to clean up. So, perhaps my feelings of inadequacy have been misplaced all these years and I have been comparing myself with people who actually do the worst work.

Anyway, I have been a worker in high labor environments (assembly lines, fast food, etc.) and the exhaustion is totally different than working as a programmer. If I am working on an interesting problem (something that, sadly, rarely happens) I actually get energy from the work (even if I am past my 5-6 hours of useful coding) and can take that energy and go walking or jogging or whatever. Conversely, if I am not working on anything interesting (the majority of the past decade), I am so mentally exhausted when I get home that I have to force myself to go exercise (which, fortunately, almost always improves my mood). When I did physical labor, I often was too tired to do exercise when I was done, but I don’t recall having the mental exhaustion and being unable to be interested in things.

As a person who has studied management extensively (why is it so common that people with absolutely no management education are routinely promoted to management positions? No one would expect to promote an unskilled janitor to senior technical lead, would they?) I was already aware of a lot of the topics in the article. Effective management is maximizing the return on your resources and if you can get more work out of fewer people working less hours, then that is exactly what you would do. Of course, with the yawning ignorance of the typical ‘manager’ seen today, it is clear why they continue to work so sub-optimally: they were hired by people who suck equally at being a manager and their promotion decisions will be made by the same ignorant louts who hired them, so there is a massive reinforcing cycle going on. There is so much room in most industries for someone who can actually manage that one could probably simply purchase any company at random, implement effective management, and see the value of the company double in a few years. Too bad our entire culture has devolved to the point that all our hard won knowledge on how to effectively manage has been lost through serial ignorance.

Several Science Articles

None alone were able to generate enough mental energy to blog about, but together had enough activation energy, so here they be…

Most Detailed View Yet of the Apollo 11 Moonwalks: Big Pic
http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-apollo-11-landing-site-120314.html

Take THAT moon landing conspirators! Of course, they will simply claim that this photo was also fabricated also, so whats the point? Anyway, it is amazing to see the tracks left by the first explorers. I imagine that if we are ever able to colonize the moon that area, at least, will be fenced off as a monument or something.

Powered Roboglove moves from space to auto plants
http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/62069-powered-roboglove-moves-from-space-to-auto-plants

It looks like as soon as someone solves the power problem the Starship Troopers body armor will be a reality. It is either that or waldos or even AI-operated Terminators. I think I would rather have a human in the loop, not that my opinions matter.

Solar eruption mistaken for refueling UFO spaceship
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/14/solar-eruption-mistaken-for-refueling-ufo-spaceship/

Of course, it isn’t a UFO at all, at least to educated people. Image artifacts are something people seem increasingly unable to comprehend (I read an article the other day about an image at a Mayan temple taken during a lighting storm that appeared to show a beam of light emanating from the top of the temple, it was just a well-known artifact of how digital images are processed). I am not sure if is Americans are getting stupider (though I certainly feel that is the case) or if because of their ignorance the find scientific explanations untrustworthy or what, but people seem increasingly willing (nay, eager!) to latch onto the most extraordinary explanation for anything that happens along. I sometimes find it very challenging to accept that the exact same species that produces Newtons, Einsteins, Fermis, etc. can produce so many butt ugly stupid morons. How is it possible that a single species can have such a wide range of intellects (presuming you care to dignify the lower-end of the spectrum with that term)?

Amazon = Evil? !

Scott Turow on why we should fear Amazon
The feds might sue Apple and publishers over pricing. But a top author suggests the e-retailer’s playing monopoly
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/13/scott_turow_on_why_we_should_fear_amazon/singleton/

No upside comes without a downside, there are always losers to go with winners (in an ideal world the loser would be OK with losing, but that implies that the winner wins nothing of consequence so such an ideal world might be boring as hell). I have read lots of bad things about the traditional publishing industry (and my personal efforts to get published certainly haven’t made me a fan), but based on the article/interview above it seems clear that Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive practices (something that is OK when you are small, but at some magical moment becomes not-OK when you have reached a certain size; see Microsoft and Google for examples) and while they clearly lack what is traditionally called a monopoly, they have such a huge impact on the market their decisions have monopoly-like impact. Of course, if they own the right politicians (something Google execs are slowly learning (and MS execs learned a decade ago)) then it is all moot, even if a suit is filed the prosecution will drag on well past the point the competitors will care as they will all be driven out of business.

Just like WalMart, though, it is hard to decide to pay more going to some other store just to support some local vendor who might wind up going out of business anyway.

More evidence (as if it were needed) about our unequal ‘Justice’ system

J.P. Morgan Chase’s Ugly Family Secrets Revealed
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/j-p-morgan-chases-ugly-family-secrets-revealed-20120313

If you have blood pressure problems you might not want to read the article above. It does, however, clearly outline the disparity in our so-called justice system where the oligarchy is totally immune from any consequences of their actions (even, it seems, when their actions have negative impact on other members of the oligarchy). The rich have always had unequal access to ‘justice’ and I can’t conceive of any society where that won’t be the case simply because the rich can afford to buy the best representatives and the poor can’t. However, until relatively recently (at least according to my rose colored glasses) the rich were at least forced to pony up big bucks to buy the best talent because they were indicted and tried. Today there are no indictments so of course there will be no trials, thus there won’t be any need for blood sucking lawyers to bleed the rich into the middle class (or lower, ideally). I recall the whole insider trading scandals of the 70’s and 80’s when the ‘punishment’ was to pay a fine that was a fraction of the money they made in their illegal activity, then a few months of ‘summer camp’ minimum security jail and from thence to lucrative speaking gigs. Where was the risk in getting caught? Now, of course, it is even worse, there is no trial, no concerns for time in summer camp, no worries about niggling little fines, just bore on ahead and continue committing illegal acts.

Our _only_ hope at this point is that the oligarchy starts to war amongst themselves. I don’t see this as a high probability, though, as they can run to Congress to get tax payer dollars to ‘make them whole’ and since business is business, once the parties have reached their settlement, things go back to normal.

I read an interesting article about Japan’s lost decade (going on two, now) and cautionary tales it tells that might be helpful for us, if we had the wit to learn from them. At the time I wasn’t motivated to post here and only mention it now on the heels of my typical apocalyptic statements (well, looking back, they weren’t very apocalyptic, so I guess you will have to use your imagination). Japan, it seems, has been running a debt (as a percentage of their GDP) well in excess of what the US is carrying currently and is projected to be carrying in the next decade or so. Their interest rates have remained quite competitive and they have been managing their debt without any shocks. Of course, at some point they will need to pay off that debt, but at least as long as the interest rates remain stable (and low) it seems they can continue more or less indefinitely. It would seem that the US has the potential to follow in Japan’s footsteps, at least in that regard, and keep a manageable lid on the interest rate and thus avoid the hard decision for the next decade or so. Of course, this is a balancing act and it won’t take much for investors to lose faith, but as long as our government can avoid that (which is sometimes a very difficult thing to envision), we can probably drift along ignoring the problem for a couple of decades, at least.

You go girl!

Will red meat kill you?
More bad news for bacon lovers — a Harvard study offers urgent reasons to eat less
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/13/will_red_meat_kill_you/singleton/

My wife, someone who eschews beef, pork, chicken (except eggs) in favor of veggies and sea food was quick to point out the report released yesterday regarding the red-meat-will-kill-you research conclusion. I haven’t read the primary research but I expect if I did I would find it filled with the typical scientific caveats common to almost all peer reviewed literature. I also get very suspicion when I read things like this:

“Americans’ love of meat likely accounts for about 1.5 million excess deaths every decade.”

Why are we now reporting everything in decades? I can only think it serves to maximize the terror because that translates to 150K people per year out of a population of 300+ million, a way less scary number. So, when I read the above article I thought I would promote it a bit on my site.

For those of you who like conspiracies…

Russia’s Pravada lambastes the US media for ignoring the ‘obvious’:

Arizona sheriff finds Obama presidential qualifications forged
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/07-03-2012/120708-arizona_sheriff_obama-0/

Quite an amazing intro for the Sheriff:

…Arpaio’s credentials include serving in the United States Army from 1950 to 1953, service as a federal narcotics agent serving in countries all over the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and served as the head of the Arizona DEA. Without doubt, this is a serious Law Enforcement Officer, not one to be taken in by tin-foil-hat wearing loons.

Clearly Pravada has different criteria for the sort of things that loony people should consider for their tin-foil-hat-wearing. Nothing I have read about Arpaio makes me think he is the slightest bit reliable and instead I would consider him a member of the tin-foil-hat wearing loony crowd. The epic scale that would be necessary to have Obama be some sort of Salt-inspired deep cover agent (I liked the movie even though it required some serious suspension-of-disbelief) is barely conceivable yet Pravada would have us believe that this deep cover was so comprehensively enforced (yet done in such a way that not one single person (of the undoubted thousands that would have to know) has leaked the information) that the right-wing machine determined to bring Obama down finds this ‘reveal’ uninteresting.

Anyway, I thought my reader(s) might find the article amusing.

Vertical mobilty is dead

The Reproduction of Privilege
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/the-reproduction-of-privilege/

Vertical mobility (the ability to be born to poor parents yet go on to be middle class, for instance) in the US has been steadily eroding for well over a generation. While there are certainly societal reasons why this has happened, there are much larger reasons why I believe this has been done (perhaps not intentionally, though it becomes easier to believe in conspiracies as one does deeper research) by our winner-take-all, zero sum government/economy run by the oligarchy. One of the keys to vertical mobility is the mobility is its bi-directionality. While I am sure that the rich are probably not wild about the idea of the middle class or poor joining their ranks (don’t want to share their exclusive access, doanchano), I am positive they are acutely allergic to the idea of them joining the middle class (or heavens forbid, the poor!). So I am quite certain that the rich actively (likely without any need for any conspiratorial cooperation, just out of enlightened self interest) work to suppress any chance of their negative mobility which has, as a side effect, suppressing the upward mobility of the poor and middle class. Their goal is the rich stay rich and the rest can go to hell.

How to combat this? Well, as long as the oligarchy is in control of our government and economy, I don’t think there is any solution. People don’t like to run the risk of sliding down the economic scale (even the poor have homelessness to dread) but that mobility must be a part of any society that allows people to move up. While it isn’t possible for everyone to be rich, it is possible for the poorest of us to live a much more comfortable life where they don’t have to worry about where each meal will come from, what will happen if they get sick or injured and how they will survive when the can no longer work. To build such a society, though, almost certainly means that the peaks of the wealthy will have to come down, not something they are likely to accept without a substantial battle, one they are particularly well equipped to handle.