William Gibson on the NSA and Technology in General

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Boing Boing has some interesting excerpts from an interview with William Gibson re. the new NSA controversy.  He points out that as a society we’ve (Americans) been assuming that the CIA et.al. has been doing this kind of stuff for years anyway, and that during the Cold War we were even comforted by the idea that they were listening anyway.  I’d argue that many people are still comforted by this idea as we fight terrorism.

Reading this caused me to look at this another way.  A few years ago I did some work in the “database marketing” field.  I was stunned at how much information companies like Acxiom are collecting about all of us every day, but it didn’t really bother me that much because the data they were collecting had mostly to do with our habits as consumers.  What we buy, where we buy it, etc.  And they sold that data to companies whose only real goal was to figure out how to get us to buy more of their stuff. They really didn’t have any motivation to use it any other way. Still, even then there were privacy advocates who were worried that the data could and would be used for more nefarious purposes.  They pointed out that if the government decided to pay for the data the companies would have an instant profit motive for releasing the data.  And then, of course, there was the problem of the companies losing the data or having it hijacked by hackers, but that’s another story.

What makes this “government spying on citizens” meme so disturbing to me is that the government has not been forthright about what they’re doing, and not just on this issue I might add, and so there is no reason to trust them when they say they’re just doing it to fight terrorism.  That’s what happens when you violate the public trust: just when you may need us to trust you most we say “f— you.” 

Ironically I think if the government had said, “Hey, without getting into the details we want you to know that this is the kind of thing we’re doing to fight terrorism.  To protect the innocent we’re cooperating with the fill-in-the-blank oversight committee to make sure that we don’t violate citizens’ rights…oh, and by the way we couldn’t use any of this information in any kind of court because it was not obtained in the proper manner and was never intended for that use anyway” then many of us would welcome what they’re doing in principle. 

But the government assumes we’re idiots, that we can’t be trusted and they know better than us what we need/want.  That’s the other irony: this administration has created more of a “nanny state” than any of its supposedly more liberal predecessors.  This from a regime that turned “liberal” into an epithet.

And we have three more years of this crap.

Importance of Age Cutoff Dates in Sports

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The boys at Freakonomics have come up with another interesting point.  In this one they posit that we’ll probably see a disproportionate number of players born in January and February in this year’s World Cup.  Their reasoning has to do with FIFA’s adopting a January 1 cutoff date for determining eligibility on national youth soccer teams which should have a ripple effect throughout the rest of the players’ careers.

Upon further review they decided that since different countries use different dates for their own "in country" purposes that the World Cup might not be the best example.  So they looked at the NHL and found a very strong relationship between birth months early in the year and participation in the league (hardly any players were born between September and December).

I was one of those kids with a September birthday that could make me either the oldest kid or youngest kid in the class.  My mom was told that if I was held back I’d probably get bored and become a troublemaker so she opted for me to be the youngest, which wasn’t really a problem until 8th and 9th grade.  I was a late bloomer so when I got out of 9th grade I was barely 5 feet tall which didn’t help my athletic or romantic prospects.

For 10th grade I transferred to a small private school (85 students) and by default all the boys played every sport.  That coincided with my first growth spurt so by the time I was through 11th grade I was 5’8 and getting some playing time on the soccer field and basketball court.  My senior year I was 6 feet tall and weighed in at 150 pounds (I couldn’t put weight on no matter how hard I tried) and I averaged 16 points a game on the varsity basketball team.  I often wonder what kind of high school career I would have had if I was held back a year.  I put 20 pounds on my freshman year of college and I can only imagine I would have had a pretty good senior year.

No regrets though;  I might have been good enough to get a scholarship to a small school which would have changed the course of my whole life.  I wouldn’t have gone to GMU, met my wife and as happy as I am now I wouldn’t do anything to change those eventualities.

Back to the original point: in my mind there is absolutely no doubt that the arbitrary cut-off dates that youth sports leagues use has a huge impact on kids’ level of success.

Important Reading About the NSA’s Phone Call Data Collection Program

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Lex has written a great, extensive, article on his work blog about the newest NSA scandal. After reading it my first reaction is this: because what the NSA is doing isn’t actually listening to the conversations on all the calls they are tracking I guess the NSA (and the President and Attorney General) can claim they weren’t lying when they said earlier this year that they were only tapping calls between folks in the US and overseas.  And that is exactly the kind of hair-splitting I’ve come to expect of the President and all his little people.  Will we ever find the bottom of the pit that this Administration has dug?

Lewisville Businessman Selected to Participate in Vonage IPO

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That headline sounds impressive right?  Until you consider that all Vonage customers who meet certain criteria are invited to participate in Vonage’s IPO.

This morning the "Lewisville Businessman" mentioned in the headline, that would be moi, had a voice mail from the Vonage folks re. the IPO.  The message pointed me to www.vonageipo.com to see if I qualified for inclusion in the IPO.  So I visited the page and clicked on the button to register and was directed to this page which listed the following criteria I need to meet to participate in the IPO:

  • You opened an account with Vonage on or prior to December 15, 2005.
  • You have maintained your Vonage account in good standing through February 1, 2006.
  • You are a U.S. citizen.
  • You will be a U.S. resident as of the date of the consummation of Vonages initial public offering.
  • You have a valid U.S. social security number.
  • You are a natural person. No entities, such as companies and trusts, are eligible to participate.

                Other conditions to participation also may apply.

The one about being a "natural person" worries me because, you know, sometimes I get that "not-so-natural" feeling…but I digress.  This is my first opportunity to participate in an IPO which means I’m a little worried about Vonage’s future.  I mean if they want me then there has to be something wrong, right?

***Update 5/31/06*** I’m very glad I didn’t go for this deal.  Here’s a NY Times article that describes the IPO as disastrous.   Here’s an excerpt:

Vonage,
tarred by a disastrous initial public offering last week, is scrambling
to reassure investors. The company, which provides Internet phone
service, said yesterday that it would reimburse the bankers who handled
the sale if any Vonage customers refused to pay for shares that were
allotted to them.

Vonage gave its customers a chance to
buy as much as 15 percent of the 31.25 million shares that were offered
last week. About 10,000 of the company’s 1.6 million customers
ultimately received shares, which were sold at $17 each, according to a
person briefed on the deal. Customers had until yesterday to open an
account with a specified broker and pay for their shares.

Some
customers who participated in the "directed share program" were
reluctant to pay for their shares after the stock fell. The shares have
lost more than 26 percent of their value since their debut last
Wednesday. They fell 52 cents, to $12.50 yesterday.

   

Profit vs. Non-Profit

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David Boyd has this from Walter Williams:

One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to
greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one’s
fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving
and pleasing him. Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th
century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately,
demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen
as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us
and declare, “We’re a nonprofit organization.”



Profit is cast in a poor light because people don’t understand the role
of profits. Profit is a payment to entrepreneurs just as wages are
payments to labor, interest to capital and rent to land. In order to
earn profits in free markets, entrepreneurs must identify and satisfy
human wants in a way that economizes on society’s scarce resources.


As you may know I do most of my work with non-profits and here is what I can tell you about them: the good ones behave just like well-run, for-profit companies.  If they think of themselves as existing for a “higher purpose” and justify their existence in that light then they are doomed.  If, on the other hand, they view their members or constituents as customers and view their existence as serving those customers then they are most likely going to succeed.

Luck or God?

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There’s an interesting post on Freakonomics call "Luckonomics, Anyone?" in which Stephen Dubner says:

In the vast majority of the “success literature” I’ve read (including
rags-to-riches autobiographies as well as the biographies of
politicians, athletes, businesspeople, etc.) and the vast, vast majority
of the media appearances and lectures I’ve seen by successful people,
luck is almost never mentioned as a major contributor. It’s always
dedication, hard work, brilliance, grace under pressure, etc.

He goes on to say that he’s been encouraged recently to read articles in which luck is recognized as a large factor in some person’s or entity’s success.  I’ll throw my hat in the ring with Mr. Dubner and say that I firmly believe that luck, both good and bad, is a huge component of everyone’s life. 

I’d like to add, however, that I think that if you were to read interviews with many people they will attribute their success to God, Yahweh, Allah, etc.  I think they would argue that good fortune bestowed by God is not the same as good luck, or that bad luck is not equivalent to God’s wrath because the faithful basically believe that God has an active hand in their lives.  Personally I subscribe to the weather theory;  that God had an active hand in our creation, including our capacity for critical thinking and that the rest has been left up to us.

That means I do believe in luck. If my house is struck by lightning do I blame God?  No, it just so happened that my house was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  If I’m watching a baseball game and a screaming foul ball misses my head by inches but brains the minister sitting behind me do I credit God’s guiding hand?  No, I just got lucky that I was sitting in my seat and not in the seat behind me. After all if God’s hand guided the ball away from my head that means that it also guided it to hit the minister which really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

When I was a teenager I used to watch the news and see the video of mass starvation in Ethiopia and wonder, "Why would God allow that to happen?" and I’d also wonder at why I was born and raised in a rich country, never missing a meal in my life and surrounded by caring and thoughtful people.  Why wasn’t I born in Ethiopia, surrounded by starving and desperate people?  I just couldn’t buy the idea that God intentionally put children in that spot.  I still don’t buy it.

So what I do think is this: God created this universe and everything in it.  God gave human beings the ability, the right, to be free and to think for themselves and with it the responsibility to manage their little corner of the universe.  Luck, good and bad, is a result of the trials that God built into the universal order. Bad weather, bad people, bad decisions, etc. are an intentional aspect of God’s creation. It is our test to see how we use our tools, our rights, to respond to our good or bad luck, and our "grade" will help determine where we’ll eventually go when we move into the next realm. 

If you are a fortunate one do you endeavor to share your good fortune?  If you are an unfortunate one do you exact revenge on the more fortunate, or do you endeavor to change your fortunes?  Personally I feel I’ve been very fortunate in this life (one longtime friend says there must be something called "Lowder Luck" because I tend to get very lucky breaks very often) but I worry that I have not done enough to share my good fortunes.  Perhaps it is time to change that.

North Carolina’s Part-Time Citizen Legislature

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The Raleigh News & Observer has an interesting article (found via Ed Cone) about North Carolina’s traditional part-time legislature.  The basic thrust of the article is that most of the people serving North Carolina are retired, self-employed or independently wealthy due to the fact that the legislators aren’t paid much and the job requires an almost full-time commitment that precludes your average person from serving.  There’s some mention of creating a “professional” legislature with full-time pay, but others argue that the legislature should remain as it is.  Some of the interviewees also say that they worry that there are not enough young people in the body which might skew the body’s deliberation.

One of the points the article makes that I find to be totally irrelevant is this:

It’s noteworthy who does not serve in the legislature:

North Carolina has more than 120,000 store sales clerks and 107,000 retail cashiers — but none in the General Assembly.

There are no lawmakers who make their living as food preparers, freight haulers, assemblers, office clerks, truck drivers, registered nurses, customer service representatives or waitresses — the rest of the state’s most common jobs.

The point of a representative democracy is not that it literally have a representative from every walk of life, but that it enable people from every walk of life to choose who represents them.  If the person chosen to represent them does not satisfy their needs then they are free to choose a replacement during the next election.

It is also highlighted in the article that the percentage of black and hispanic representatives is lower than their respective percentages of the population.  This is an old saw in politics and feeds into the whole gerrymandering debate, but again it really is irrelevant.  No matter our color our vote still counts the same whether we are black or white, rich or poor.  Sure each person’s individual influence varies outside of the voting booth, but inside it we are equal and we have the same opportunity to choose our representative in the government.  Does that mean we will always get what we want?  No, but that’s not what a representative democracy is all about.  It’s about our ability to SAY who we want not our ability to GET who we want.

BTW, I think this argument holds true with regards to age as well.  I know quite a few retirees who are younger at heart than any 30-something I’ve ever met.  Hell, most of us thirty-somethings are too worn out by our everyday lives (i.e. kids) to feel anything but broken-down and old.  If my old-codger of a rep isn’t doing what I like I’ll just vote against her next time.

And for the record I am completely opposed to a full-time, professional legislature.  There’s enough corruption with them working part time…imagine what some of these jokers could do if they had all year to do it!

About Disney

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Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics fame recently posted about his family’s experience at Disney.  He makes some valid points about the “Disney experience” i.e. you end up spending a lot of time standing in line and it’s expensive.  As I posted before we just did the Disney thing last week and although we didn’t experience many long lines, the benefit of visiting at a non-peak time of year and early in the week, I can definitely vouch that it IS expensive.

Levitt also asks two questions:

1) Why is demand for Disneyworld so great?

2) Why do they make you stick your fingers into some machine when entering Disneyworld? What is the point?

My take is that although Disneyworld is expensive and puts you through a lot of waiting they do the basics well:  the place is much cleaner than your average theme park, the staff tends to be more pleasant than at your average theme park, the food is definitely better than at other theme parks and they offer more than roller coasters and spinning rides with their “multimedia” experiences.  They also have an inherent marketing advantage with their cartoons, movies, networks, etc.

Yet with all that I don’t think we’ll go back until it’s time for the grandkids.  There really isn’t a lot of stuff for the kids once they get into the teen years (my oldest two definitely found the shows to be a little cheesey on this trip and they’re just 12 and 13) and as an adult I have to say you tend to suffer through the experience for the sake of the kids.

As for the finger thing I found out the hard way that they use the finger scanner to tie you to a specific access card.  I don’t know if they use fingerprints or some other biometric but I know it definitely works since I mixed up my daughter’s card with mine and they had to re-code my card to let me in.

The paranoid part of my brain also thinks maybe the Bush administration has something to do with it…nah.