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The interminable debate over health care reform has revived one of the common complaints about our legislative branch: it provides for equal representation of states in the Senate. Under our system, citizens of my home state of Rhode Island (population: 1 million and shrinking) carry the same weight as those in my current state of North Carolina (population: 9 million and growing). To add insult to injury, the size of the House has not been updated for almost a century, allowing it to devolve from a proportional representation of the nation's will into some form of Senate-lite, where smaller states still enjoy a far better politician-to-constituent ratio (3:1 in the case of Rhode Island versus North Carolina). All of this is enough to leave voters in larger, bluer states shaking with rage as they watch senators from Montana and Maine decide how to fix health care for the 99.993% of the population that has no say in their re-election. Talk of abolishing the Senate has become almost as popular as talk of banning the filibuster.

The refusal to increase the size of the House is clearly an example of the powerful trying to retain power at all costs, but the belief that the Senate is a scam that tears at the very fabric of democracy is simply wrong. Such a belief is flawed because it assumes that we live in a democracy, which is only partially true. The U.S. is not a democracy - it is a democratic republic. Each state is currently a representative democracy, using the popular vote as a means of electing representatives to a larger federal government. The states come together as a republic, having agreed to join based on the laws that were in place at the time.

So while Rhode Island and North Carolina have been democracies for quite some time, the U.S. as a whole has never had such a distinction, and claims that we are being robbed of our political will by the Senate's continued existence betray an ignorance of basic civics. Would the Founding Fathers have drafted the same model of governance if they knew how the geographic, social, and financial aspects of the country would change? Perhaps. But that is neither here nor there - the fact is that the country would not have come together and survived if it had tried to be a full-fledged democracy instead of a republic. And since it never was such a democracy, it is silly to complain about how growth and inertia have ruined it.

Consider the following historical anecdote:

From the signing of the Constitution through the end of the Civil War, the nature of the republic was demonstrated in writing and in speech by the use of plural conjugation. A journalist might say, The United States are negotiating a trade pact with France; the plural are indicating that the states - not the union - were the ones making the final decision(s).

Post-Civil War, the story changes: having brought the rebel states back into the fold, the federal government flexes its muscle, enacting laws that guarantee more uniformity in state laws and using the financial crisis of Reconstruction to keep states in check. Soon journalists drop the plural and start referring to the union rather than the states: The United States is negotiating a trade pact with France. This is how we think of the country today, but is not how it was designed. The expansion of federal power in the last century has caused modern citizens to think that their state is simply a convenient subdivision of the federal government, when in fact it is a full partner in a contract between sovereign states, a contract predicated on the existence of the Senate (among other things).

All of this means that we are getting the exact type of government that we are supposed to get, which is good, because in this particular case, there is nothing we can do to change it (short of revolution). In addition to outlining the process for constitutional amendments, Article V also makes one very important restriction: it prohibits the removal of equal representation in the Senate unless every single state in the union ratifies the decision.

Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

That's right - our Founding Fathers, while woefully ignorant of all the amazing changes that would occur in subsequent centuries, were able to foresee that fluctuations in people and power could result in a super majority with the power to nullify an essential building block of inter-state peace. They explicitly denied any amendment related to Senate representation unless it had the blessing of all states, something that is all but impossible. Even the sacred First Amendment does not enjoy such protection.

The Senate may be a frustrating obstacle to larger states looking to influence policy decisions, but understanding the historical precedent for it can help us understand why things like health care reform may require opt-in clauses and other seemingly-inefficient mechanisms in order to pass muster. Senators have a reputation for being academic and procedural, and they are certain to enforce their state's role in the process even if half of America writes it off as an unexplainable mistake.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

Of all the crazy thing that people are saying about the planned civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the craziest is the idea that the defendant is not entitled to constitutional rights because he is not a U.S. citizen. This is complete balderdash. If you remove the strong emotion and anger associated with 9/11 for just a moment and think about the factors that went in to this decision, it becomes clear that a civilian trial is the most reasonable approach. Relevant factors include the actual text of the U.S. Constitution with regards to criminal law and legal precedent with regards to the rights of non-citizens.

A quick review of the actual text confirms that our judicial system does not differentiate between trials for non-citizen criminals and those of U.S.-citizen criminals. Thus, the furor that has been raised because KSM is enjoying the same rights as a U.S. citizen indicted for an equivalent crime is misplaced. The rights in question are covered under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, which read as follows:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Let's focus on the first line of each amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;

Right off the bat, we can see that this law pertains to any "person", not any "citizen", "native", or other designation. Interpreting "person" to mean anything more specific in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion would require judicial activism, which is anathema to those in vehement opposition to the trial. That's one downside of strict constructionism - it doesn't leave you much wiggle room when you're not getting your way.

Now, there is also a clause that allows the government to avoid a traditional trial in the case of war crimes. This is a popular citation by those looking for a way to shuttle the terrorists off to a military tribunal. There are a number of problems with this approach.

First, defining 9/11 as a war crime is questionable at best given how we have reacted to previous instances of domestic terrorism. I do not recall anyone declaring the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to be a war crime, nor the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In both cases, a high-profile target in a high-density area was attacked by extremists because of some perceived injustice by the U.S. government, and yet both sets of suspects were tried, convicted, and sentenced by civilian courts.

Second, despite their personal declarations of war against our government, the fact is that all of the aforementioned terrorists acted on U.S. soil, against U.S. civilians, without the support of any sovereign nation. Quite simply, they are thugs who managed to commit a crime that was an order of magnitude more destructive (both physically and emotionally) than other thugs. I do not know of any domestic law that attempts to clarify how violent or unique a crime must be in order to be classified as a war crime, and all of the international laws relate to battlefield scenarios that are clearly not applicable. Regardless, I suspect that such a law would be easily circumvented by the unlimited creativity of those who wish to attack us.

But just for the sake of argument, let's say it were possible to have a domestic war crimes law. Where would you draw the line between regular crime and war crime when outside a military theater? How many people do you have to kill? How much money must you waste? Does emotional scarring matter? What about relativity? Oklahoma City had far fewer deaths and injuries than 9/11, but I imagine it was equally traumatic given that the entire metropolitan area is just one-eighth the size of Manhattan. Similarly, assassinating the President only takes the life of one person, but it would be more devastating to the nation as a whole than the 1993 WTC bombing, which killed six civilians and caused non-fatal structural damage to one building.

Without answering these questions, we cannot know if KSM is indeed a war criminal or if we are gerrymandering the rule of law to fit his actions and our desired results.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;

To those who think that prosecuting KSM in Manhattan is an irresponsible decision by politicians looking to ignite a media circus, I present the procedural requirements of the Sixth Amendment. If the Fifth Amendment requires us to have a civilian trial, the Sixth Amendment requires that we have it in the same county where the crime was committed. Being that Manhattan is an area with an extremely high population density, such counties are rather small, and so it happens that the court house where KSM must be tried is in close geographic proximity to the former WTC. If KSM had attacked a tall building in Wichita, then perhaps the court house and the site of the attack would be farther apart and the whole situation less controversial, but that is not the case. If you attack innocent people in the financial district of downtown Manhattan, you will plead your case in the same[1].

So, taking the time to read the text of the laws in question has proved helpful. For me this is sufficient, but let's continue with the second factor (legal precedent) to seal the deal.

To determine the rights of non-citizens as it relates to criminal acts and trials, we should make a comparison with the other rights we give to non-citizens. A cursory review of the Bill of Rights and simple reflection on everyday happenings reveals that foreigners can come to our country and immediately enjoy all of the rights prescribed therein. The fact that you are here on a tourist visa (or whatever) does not mean that a police officer can arrest you for saying derogatory things about Michelle Obama, Lost, the Pittsburgh Steelers, or anything else that Americans love. You are also not forced to select or disavow any religion. No one will try to quarter troops in your apartment. The government does not have the authority to buy houses owned by non-citizens for pennies-on-the-dollar and use them for public works projects.

And, as painful as it may be, they will be tried by an impartial jury if they are suspected of a crime. There is nothing in the Constitution or any court ruling that provides an exception for foreigners. Illegal aliens may be deported because it's more efficient than trying and jailing them, but anyone who is here legally will have due process. Even those pieces of the Alien and Sedition Acts that still remain in place only authorizes a war-time Executive to arrest and deport non-citizens - it doesn't allow continued detainment and punishment. Since we clearly don't want to let KSM go free to whatever country would take him, we're obliged to indict him and put him on trial. Those are the rules.

With all that said, sometimes rules become obsolete and they must be updated to handle scenarios that the original authors could have not imagined, such as the need to wage war against an organization that has no property, borders, national economy, or international obligations. This may be the most frustrating news for those opposed to the KSM trial: not only is our Constiution incomplete on the subject of modern warfare and terrorism, but there is no one to blame for it. Rather than lash out at politicians for adhering to the law as it's written today, opponents should instead focus their energy on changing the law through the means provided by its authors. At least then we would be having an intellectually useful debate about what the law should be as opposed to a pointless debate about what people assume the law says.

[1] And from KSM's perspective, there's really nowhere he could go to escape his reputation and improve his odds of a fair trial. Everyone hates him, and New York jurors will only be marginally more prejudiced than those in Nebraska or Oregon.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

As a kid, I always imagined that I would be in my fifties before the nation elected a black president; in this hypothetical scenario, the gender barrier would fall first (in my forties), and in both cases, the candidates would need a conservative or Republican label to balance out the bias that Southern voters would have against them. Yesterday, we put that theory to the test, when the electorate was asked if a left-leaning black man with an Arab name and roots in the Chicago political system was the right man to lead them out of the wilderness and into an era where past political assumptions were no longer valid.

The answer? Yes He Is.

The most exciting thing about this election is that the future is much more malleable than it was before. It's likely that things will not turn out quite as well as Obama and his supporters are hoping, but I think it is undeniable that the probability of change is much greater than it was yesterday. America is not a country of gamblers, but the election of Obama indicates that it knows when to cut its losses and try something new. For McCain supporters (and Palin supporters), there is a positive message to take away from all this: if you care enough to participate in our electoral process, you can make a difference.

At the same time, I have to imagine that the idea of an Obama-type campaign - with its extensive volunteerism and rabid enthusiasm - is actually quite terrifying to politicians of either party who are facing re-election in 2010 or 2012. And that is fantastic.

Congratulations, Barack. A significant portion of my projections for the next two or three decades have just been wiped clean by your unprecendented campaign; this internal view of the country and where it's headed is by no means a blank slate, but it's much more interesting than it was when I was a kid. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Labels: culture, narcissism

Last fall, this blog openly mocked those who thought that the eventual ruling in DC vs. Heller would be a silver bullet that clarified the nature of the Second Amendment once and for all. I fully expected the justices to punt, passing down a narrowly-scoped decision(s) that resolved the immediate conflict without setting a precedent by which other gun regulations could be interpreted.

Yesterday, Justice Scalia threw my arrogance right back in my face, handing down a decision that did I what I claimed was impossible: it made a solid case for individual gun rights based on a sentence that has more grammatical errors than words. This opinion may end up being the most significant of Scalia's career; he shows no mercy, shooting down each the dissenters' points with an impressive combination of 18th century literature reviews and historical research on the motivations of the laws that preceded the Second Amendment. Whether you like Scalia or not, he makes a hell of an argument. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to at least read the syllabus[1].

This is not to say that the opinion is perfect. It does not include a comprehensive set of instructions for dealing with all of the edge cases surrounding individual gun ownership; it merely states that individuals must be allowed to own guns outside the context of a state organization. The ruling also makes clear that individual acts of self-defense are a constitutional right, but it does not explain why it is permissible to apply heavy regulations to such acts in public but not in private. Scalia himself acknowledges that there is enough fodder among the edge cases to fuel years of lawsuits.

What I find most interesting about this ruling is that the author - an unabashed social conservative who wears his politics on his sleeve - resisted the temptation to strike down state and municipal laws banning certain non-automatic weapons[2]. Most conservatives resist the notion of incorporation, which holds that the Bill of Rights must be applied at a state level because of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause; to those that believe in extreme judicial restraint, it is not the duty of the federal government to protect the people from state laws the undercut the Bill of Rights. However, since total incorporation has been in effect for decades now, Scalia could easily have rationalized its application within his opinion, invalidated any state or municipal law banning certain non-automatic weapons, and been a national hero to millions of people.

But he didn't. He stuck to his principles, knowing that his decision would set off a landslide of lawsuits in the lower courts.

I don't think that Scalia is innocent of having injected his personal beliefs into past decisions - he's made many arguments that were really hard to swallow from an alleged small-government conservative - but in this case, he walked away from the opportunity to slam the door on people he considers political opponents. I realize that the other four justices in the majority had input into the decision and would not have signed on if they didn't agree with all of his findings, but Scalia is an imposing personality, and I think he could have strong-armed the others into going along with it. Alternatively, had Justice Kennedy been assigned to write the opinion, and he had tried to apply incorporation, I think the right-wing justices would have been turned off and written a separate majority opinion, resulting in a ruling that favored Heller but did not set judicial precedent (which was my original prediction).

At the very least, we can appreciate this ruling because it means that Democrats will no longer have to reassure midwestern gun-owners of their unwavering gun love by participating in incredibly awkward campaign gimmicks.

[1] Abstract, for the scientists in the audience.

[2] This case is complicated by the fact that D.C. is a municipal oddity: it is a city, but it is run by the federal government. This means that federal law - which is where Scalia's non-incorporative decision will be applied - is the only law that matters. If Dick Heller lived in any other city in America, the findings would probably have been less favorable for him.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

I will not be participating in today's voting because I live in North Carolina, and our primaries are scheduled for May 6th. Of course, I don't actually get a vote on May 6th, either - my vote has been negated by the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, as well as the party officials that have punished any state that tried to hold a primary in January. Instead of selecting from the full slate of candidates available at the start of 2008, today's voters have to pick one of four "front-runners"; by the time the polling places open in North Carolina, there will only be one viable candidate in each party, making my vote irrelevant.

It amazes me that both parties have chosen to alienate voters in key swing states like Florida and Michigan in order to preserve a status quo that puts the entire nomination process in the hands of people who think The Old Man of the Mountain was an breathtaking monument. If you're trying to win control over an entire branch of the U.S. government, wouldn't you want to be sure that you're nominating someone who has the broadest appeal? This seems like an air-tight argument in favor of a national primary. Alternatively, we could conclude that the first votes should go to states like California and New York, states that offer a more complete representation of the American electorate. Either change would enhance the presidential election process by ensuring that more voices were heard before the field was winnowed.

Super Tuesday indeed.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

Apparently, the leaders in our executive and legislative branches have come to agreement with regards to saving the economy: they will courageously tackle our massive deficits, incalculable debt, and dismal growth by giving everyone $600. There are so many things wrong with this plan that I didn't even know where to begin; I had to go outside and throw rocks at the house for an hour until my anger subsided and I could write this post without breaking the keys off my keyboard. Let's look at the facts.

The main goal of the economic stimulus plan is to put cold, hard cash into the hands of normal Americans, who will take their unexpected bounty to the mall so they can buy presents and dine out; proponents say that this increase in consumer activity will boost payrolls, calm Wall Street, and save us from certain recession. The original version of the proposal (drafted by the House and endorsed by the president) would grant a $300 tax rebate to the dirt poor, $600 to taxpayers making less than $75,000 per year, and a few extra bones to people with kids; if you make between $75,000 and $87,000 per year, your rebate would decrease as your income increased, eventually bottoming out at $300. Six-figure breadwinners need not apply.

The Senate modified this proposal by doubling the maximum income levels so that wealthier individuals could get in on the super fantastic rebate action. It is not yet clear which version of the proposal will "win", but it looks fairly certain that all lower and middle class families will be getting a check for $600 just in time for those Memorial Day shopping extravaganzas.

Now, on the surface, this is encouraging: politicians managed to agree on a policy and enact a law in a matter of days, with an immediate result for the American public. Finally, a win for the middle class! Right?

Wrong.

Well, sort of. I'm sure that the extra $600 won't hurt middle class taxpayers, but the good feelings it creates will be short-lived; considering the deep financial hole that we are sitting in as a country, I think it would behoove us to consider the long-term impacts of this plan. This kind of inspection is not nearly as immediate or satisfying as the idea of giving everyone $600, but I am going to do it anyway.

The first thing that's wrong with this plan is that it confuses public sentiment with its original goals. Giving a few C-notes to middle class families on the brink of a recession may brighten their day, but it won't lead to concrete economic growth, which means that it won't really improve their lives. By most accounts, American families are in much the same situation as their government: they are in severe debt and find themselves robbing Peter to pay Paul, all to live the American Dream that is sold to them on TV. This means that the average person will use their $600 in one of three ways:

1. Payment of credit card debt, overdue bills, or loan principals.
   


2. Savings for emergencies, retirement, or education.
   


3. Purchase of new clothes, music, or other things they don't need.
   

The first two options are obviously the more responsible ones for someone who has incurred a lot of debt or has not made a practice of planning for the future. That may sound good from the perspective of someone who wants to help average Americans, but remember: the goal of the plan is to revive economic growth. I will try to explain why I think these things are in conflict without sounding like a heartless bastard, but I can't guarantee anything. Just so you know.

In the first scenario, the person is paying off debt for things that he bought in the past. The debt is still very real to him, but in the eyes of financial analysts and corporate executives, it's ancient history; when John Q. Public bought that new iPod with his credit card last year, the bank that issued the credit card paid his debt to Apple Computer in full, and that payment was recorded and celebrated during the same fiscal quarter. The fact that John is beholden to his lender at an 18.9% APR does nothing to advance the state of the national economy; paying down his debt is a good thing when it comes to his blood pressure, but it's not going to register as new economic activity.

The second scenario is even more optimistic and hopeful than the first, but it will also cause us to miss our target. I sincerely hope that the majority of Americans will save their rebate money, but I also realize that this will be discouraging because money in the (individual's) bank has no impact on our economic growth rate.

Given our history as consumers, and the fact that so many of our citizens came into debt by shopping and over-extending themselves, it is likely that many people will give in and go along with our third scenario. This is exactly what politicians are hoping for, but even this will not "save" us. The Experts concede that even if everyone spends their rebates on shiny new gadgets, the growth that we'll see next quarter will be 1-2%; now, 1-2% of the American economy is an incredibly large amount of money, but it will be overshadowed by the negative effects that we will see in subsequent quarters. If people don't do the responsible thing and pay down their bills, then they are only making their situation worse, and it will take them even longer to pay back this "free" rebate. Do we really want to encourage this kind of irresponsible spending? This is how we got in a hole to begin with!

Sending money to people who are in debt and don't have savings sounds nice, but it won't give us the results that our politicians want. If the recipients use it to pay bills or create savings, the economy will continue to stagnate; if they use it to buy more stuff, they are just digging themselves a deeper hole. Everyone will be excited for a couple of days in May, but we'll be back in a rut by June. Mission: not accomplished.

If we really wanted to increase economic growth by a few points this summer, we would give the $600 to those who make more than $75,000 per year because they are more likely to have disposable income. Now, let me be clear: I do not feel that the goal of temporarily increasing economic growth by 1-2% warrants giving a tax break to upper class taxpayers. Additionally, I do not need $600 from the government, nor will I feel any hostility if, when the final numbers are released, it turns out that I lost the tax rebate sweepstakes. I'm fine. Really. This is not sour grapes from someone who has a comfy job at the largest IT company in the world.

That said, people with disposable income tend to... dispose of it. They go out to eat and buy things they don't really need, all of which fuels the job market and salary numbers that have so concerned our dear leaders. The growth caused by such disposal of income would still be temporary, but it would happen. If this is the goal, the tax rebates should go to the upper middle class: those wealthy enough that they don't have unmanageable debt but not so wealthy that $600 is a drop in the bucket.

Of course, you cannot, in an election year, tell middle class voters who are financially strapped that the answer to their problems is a tax rebate for people who don't have any problems. I understand that. But I would hope that our leaders would understand the points I have raised and not make the proposal in the first place, thus avoiding the debate entirely.

The second thing that is wrong with this plan is that our government cannot afford to give us a tax rebate right now. We have not had a balanced budget in almost a decade. Our national debt makes me want to throw up under my desk. Our 401k money and future business plans are riding on the hope that large Asian countries will continue to buy our bonds. We are in a war that, whether you approve of it or not, costs billions of unbudgeted dollars per year. And despite all of this, the government wants to return part of its yearly income? If this idea were any more stupid, the amount of stupidity would cause some kind of cosmic integer overflow and make the whole thing brilliant.

Put another way: if the government were a person, he would have nothing to his name. He would have his credit cards taken away, his car repossessed, and his belongings sold at auction after settling in bankruptcy court. If such a person offered you $20 because he knew you were a little short on cash this month and couldn't afford to meet the gang for drinks, would you take it?

No?

Well, that's the situation we find ourselves in right now: we're handing out rebates like its 2001 despite a massive increase in debt. I'm a fairly libertarian guy, which means that I normally perk up when people mention tax cuts; the fact that I'm saying the government should keep our money should clarify just how bad I think our balance sheet is. It's never fun to pay taxes, but when your leaders overspend their budget multiple years in a row, you either have to increase their income (taxes) or boot them out of office. You can't Reagan-omics your way out of a $400 billion deficit. You certainly can't do it seven times.

In summary, this plan is a joke. In the best case, tax rebates for lower and middle class people will not generate economic growth, and in the worst case, it will generate a small bump in growth but increase the deficit and weaken the dollar. It's a lose-lose situation. Frankly, I have trouble believing that anyone involved with this plan would pass a second grade arithmetic test.

Fail.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

We don't have a television in our house, but holidays and vacations always grant us the opportunity to sit in front of one for hours at a time, be it in a relative's house or a hotel room. There's a lot of bad TV out there, but most of it just fails to be interesting; once in a while, though, I find a show that crosses the line from being bad to just plain offensive. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is such a show. After watching a couple of episodes, I spent a few days stewing in the iniquity of it all, trying to formulate a coherent rant that didn't suffer from myriad exasperated tangents. I will dispense that rant now.

When I first encountered Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (EMHE), I assumed it was just a way to pull at the heart strings of America's TV audience and get them to watch what is essentially a one-hour commercial for all of the show's sponsors. I don't fault ABC for taking the opportunity to show an hour of non-stop commercials, I just can't believe that all of the hosts are able to pull it off with a straight face.

Host #1: Sal and Julie love to grill outside during the summer, but they haven't been able to do much grilling since they ran out of charcoal last June. We could just buy them a new bag of charcoal, but I think we can do better than that.

Host #2: I talked our friends at Sears, and they said that Sears offers a great selection of propane grills and accessories, all covered by a Sears Home Warranty.

Host #1: Wow, it sounds like Sears has everything we need. Let's buy an expensive Sears brand grill that will make Sal and Julie happy for years to come.

Host #2: Good idea. Going to Sears will make this outdoor grilling area better than ever.

Host #1: Let's go to Sears!

Host #2: Sears!

This aspect of the show is just mindless and predictable, and I have no problem with that[1]. What bothers me about EMHE is the complete lack of fiscal responsibility that is demonstrated by both the producers of the show and the lucky families they have selected. I originally thought that the show would provide the families with reasonable upgrades to their existing homes using materials provided by the sponsors, making it a sappier and more commercial version of TLC's Trading Spaces; what I found was a show that glorified suburban excess while completely ignoring the plight of people who do not even have a home to renovate.

One of the first EMHE episodes I saw focused on some family in Wyoming that had bought a house that was half underground and, consequently, filled with radon gas. The whole family was sick from the radon poisoning, and they didn't have the money to build a new house or take care of the dozens of stray pets they had adopted over the years. Enter EMHE. They tore down the original house and gave this family of four a million-dollar home with seven bedrooms, a pet sanctuary, and, by my count, exactly fifty-two flat-panel TVs.

Why is this bad? Let me count the ways:

The first and most obvious thing that eats at my soul is the fact that ABC has used its immense power to extract millions of dollars in time and materials from local citizens but only managed to help one family. I don't see why a poor or middle class family that is on the down and out needs a McMansion in order to improve their lives. Every time they highlight some family member who works with disabled kids or a local charity, it strikes me that this person must have extreme cognitive dissonance upon moving into a house that is light years beyond their means.

Having grown up in a lower-middle class suburb with a single mother, I can honestly say that if anyone had offered us a brand new 3 BR/2 BA ranch like the ones all of my friends lived in, we would have been more than happy to take it. Such a house would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 depending on which area of the country it was built in; why, then, does ABC feel the need to build homes that are assessed at $500,000 to $1,000,000? I'm sure that the families are excited to live in such luxury, but if you toned down the luxury three or four notches, would they really know the difference? Would they be any less happy?

EMHE could provide these families with nice suburban homes and all of the latest gadgets for about $200,000. By restricting themselves to "nice" and "impressive" (as opposed to "grand" and "overwhelming"), the show could afford to help three or four times as many families. It would have more content to work with and there would be no effect on the amount of product placement that is currently in the show. I really don't think there would be any negative impact on revenue or ratings if the network changed the show to balance cool home improvement with the desire to help as many people as possible.

The second thing that irks me about this show is also tied to fiscal irresponsibility. It's bad enough that a giant corporation is spending excessively on something that isn't necessary (big surprise), but it's made worse by the fact that they are pushing these families into a situation that will leave them house poor. Keep in mind that these families are already "regular poor", and while house poor may seem like an upgrade, it's not exactly the stress-free life that ABC promises on the show. If a family can barely afford their current mortgage and cost of living and is not in the position to upgrade their admittedly ramshackle house, can they really afford the property taxes on a $500,000 house? Depending on what state you live in, the property taxes on such a house could easily exceed the combined mortgage payments and property taxes of a house in the low $100,000s[2].

Of course, there is a chance that the families can remain frugal in their new luxury pad and pay their property tax bill on time. Success is less likely when it comes to the utility bills. Again, we're talking about families that were already having trouble paying the bills when they lived in homes that were 1,500 square feet or less; the new homes average over 5,000 square feet, and many of them have beautiful-yet-costly structural features. The Wyoming family came home to a three-story house with a foyer wall made of glass, and when you couple that with eastern Wyoming's distinct lack of trees, I think it's safe to say that this place is going to be a greenhouse for most of the year; their only respite will come during winter, when all of their heat will rise through the foyer and escape out the giant glass wall. I would love to see the parents' reaction to that first electric bill.

The third and final thing that has me yelling at the TV is the fact that Wyoming is one of an increasingly small number of states that has not passed a law to raise its minimum wage above the federal rate of $5.85. The people of Wyoming would march on Cheyenne if anyone tried to pass a state law that raised the local minimum wage or, alternatively, increased their state sales tax in order to help more families on welfare. And yet, I saw hundreds of Wyoming residents come out to build an enormous new home for one family in need, despite the fact that said family could not repay them, did not do anything to earn the house, and did not even help build the house. This stinks of hypocrisy. The lesson here is that spending a million dollars and organizing hundreds of volunteers is no problem if the cause is heart-warming and there's a good chance you'll be on TV, but it's out of the question to do the same when the goal is to help random people whose hard-luck stories are not relayed to you in tender, five-minute TV segments.

But enough about Wyoming. That episode didn't even bother me that much, because I'm sure that if Wyoming was like the rest of America and had a some basic laws in place to protect home buyers[3], the radon thing would have been caught before the closing and the family never would have bought the house. Some of these other families are much more suspect, and their prizes much more enraging. Let's move on, this time to Kirkland, Washington.

The family in Kirkland includes a single mother who has three daughters and has renovated her inground pool for the purpose of teaching area children to swim. This small business gives her the means to pay her bills, but her house is falling apart and it would cost more to fix it than to rebuild. Unlike the Wyoming family, which lived on a couple of acres in the middle of, well, Wyoming, this family lives in a quaint suburb next to houses that are similar in size. It was during this episode that ABC discovered a new way to encourage poor financial decision making.

The Kirkland house had been in the family for generations, so the mortgage was paid off long ago; this means that the family's monthly costs were going to food, utilities, and the temporary fixes they've put in place to make their home safe. Surprisingly, my initial reaction to this situation was not to tear the house down and build a million-dollar property complete with gazebos and a professional swimming pool. Instead, I thought it would make the most sense for the mother to put the property up for sale, move into an apartment, and get a new job that provides the same income as her swimming lesson business (which can't be very large, given that her customer base is fairly small and she has to compete with non-profits such as the YMCA).

The great thing about my solution is that it's the responsible thing to do, and it doesn't require me to believe that the family's problems are equivalent to those living in public housing in downtown Seattle. I realize that this sounds harsh when compared to the ABC solution, but it is a solution, and one that the mother should have adopted a long time ago. Kirkland is a popular town, and there are plenty of potential buyers for a nice suburban plot upon which a new family could build their dream home; since she doesn't have a mortgage to pay off, she could sell the property for an extremely low price and still make a big addition to her savings account. This family doesn't need a McMansion, it needs a real estate agent and a basic investment strategy.

The last and most recent episode I caught was about some family in Vermont that had two young boys, one of whom was physically and mentally handicapped. They seemed like pretty reasonable people, and the house they ended up getting wasn't as lavish as others before it; but while I didn't have any beef with the actual family, the whole episode got me thinking about the unfairness of ABC's selection process. This family bought a "fixer upper" that had no real foundation. The house should have been condemned. They were only able to afford the house because no one else would go near it, and frankly, I don't think that such a desperate decision should give them priority over other Vermont residents who have sobbier sob stories.

There are thousands of other families across the country in equally tough situations who have not stretched themselves beyond their means and taken on mortgages for homes they can't afford. These people will never be recognized by ABC because they don't own property. They are in the same dire straits, and are arguably more responsible citizens, and yet, without a homeowner's deed, they will have no shot at the McMansion on 1.5 acres like the people from Vermont. All we have learned from this episode is that if you give in to America's big house obsession and spend yourself bankrupt while competing with the Jonses, a big team of All American volunteers will come out to save you. Reward you, even.

There are plenty of other, less grown-up reasons to hate EMHE, but I've covered the ones that everyone should agree upon. Every day I wake up and check the daily news to see if the president of ABC has managed to form a synapse between his two working neurons and pull the plug on this sham of a television show. Every day I am disappointed.

So much anger.

[1] It may be mindless, but it's not immoral.

[2] Despite the fact that the new house is a contest prize, the familes can avoid paying income tax on it thanks to a questionable tax loophole.

[3] I checked - it doesn't.

Labels: culture, narcissism

Those who follow the Supreme Court have been buzzing with anticipation since the justices announced that this term's docket would include DC vs. Heller, a case that will determine the constitutionality of our capital district's handgun ban. The SCOTUS blog has a good summary of the two positions being argued in the case, as well as the implications it has for other laws that restrict gun ownership. The hearing won't happen until March, but that hasn't stopped people on both sides of the argument from setting their propaganda machines to HIGH and doing everything short of calling the justices at home.

But despite all of the excitement over the Court's decision to tackle this controversial issue, the fact is that the ruling in Heller will not have the conclusive, clarifying effect that everyone is looking for. Because D.C. is a federal entity, the ruling will only affect the federal government's ability to limit gun ownership - it doesn't say anything about state or municipal legislatures, which is where most of the controversial gun laws are authored. At best, the ruling in Heller will inspire new appeals focused on state laws, but it will not have a direct effect on those laws.

I know it's hard for those at the center of the Second Amendment debate to do so, but I wish we could just admit that this case is not as groundbreaking as it has been portrayed and start talking about the real cause of this conflict, which is the irrelevance of gun laws written in 1789. No matter which side you're on, I think it's safe to admit that the Second Amendment suffers from limited imagination and poor grammar. Here is the text:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Ignoring the awkward and unnecessary comma after Arms, this sentence has two reasonable but opposing interpretations:

1. All individuals should be able to own guns in order to protect themselves and participate in government-sponsored militias. The weapons may be used for national defense, self-protection against criminals, or revolution against the government. Since threats against the individual exist today, this right is still valid.
   


2. All individuals should be able to own guns in order to participate in government-sponsored militias. These militias were not wealthy or well-organized enough to provide soliders with weapons, and allowing citizens to own guns ensured that they would be equipped to fight when called upon. Because our country now has a very wealthy and powerful military, this right is no longer valid.
   

The tricky thing about the second interpretation is that it still doesn't restrict the right to own private guns - it simply says that the need for a militia is no longer a valid argument. The complexity of this statement is seemingly endless, which is why I find the hoopla over Heller so frustrating. Trying to make a real constitutional decision based on the Second Amendment is putting lipstick on a pig: either way you go, it's not very impressive. The vague text and lack of judicial precedent means that future justices could easily overturn your decision. The Second Amendment provides no real guidance in 2007, which is why I think it should just be repealed. This idea is not as radical as it sounds.

If the Second Amendment were stricken from the Constitution tomorrow, the Tenth Amendment ensures that we would be in a similar situation to the one we face now: state laws would govern who could own what kinds of guns. The only new possibility would be for a state to ban private guns all together; since the people doing the banning are subject to popular elections, I think it is unlikely that more than a few states would go through with a full ban. There is enough diversity of opinion in most states to prevent politicians who favor gun restrictions from going "too far". States like Oregon and Connecticut will probably ban guns immediately, but so what? You can still go to Kentucky and pick up a handgun and a carton of milk in the same trip. Right-leaning folks have proposed this same solution in the debate over Roe vs. Wade, and I don't think gun ownership is any less significant.

That said, I don't think that anyone who is invested in this debate could ever process the idea of repealing the Second Amendment as rationally as I have written it, so here is an alternative idea: nullify the Second Amendment by writing a new amendment. This is the same idea used by the authors of the Twenty-first Amendment, which made obsolete the alcohol prohibition of the Eighteenth Amendment. The new amendent could spell out the nation's policy on individual gun ownership, taking into account all of the technological and social advances that have occurred in the last two hundred and eighteen years. It could also respect the rules for using commas.

It's unlikely that George Mason could have imagined the kinds of weapons that humans would build in the years after the Constitution was ratified, nor could he imagine a world where a a miltiary superpower did not have to draft its male citizens. Even if you are a card-carrying member of the NRA, I don't think you could dispute that the Second Amendment does not take these things into account. It is incredibly naive about the role of guns in society. We simply cannot know what would have been written had Mason known that, in 2007, individuals would have access to weapons that kill dozens of people per minute, or that a rifle is no longer an adequate tool for revolution. Rather than waste time debating poorly-worded text written two centuries ago, we should amend the Constitution to clarify exactly what the country wants.

Proposing this new amendment would generate endless hype and debate, and getting Congress to agree on the exact text would be a monumental task. But hey, that's why they make the big bucks. This is a hard problem, and it's pretty clear that the original guidance given to us in the Second Amendment is not working. There shouldn't be this much controversy over one sentence. The right to keep and bear arms shouldn't hinge on a prepositional phrase that sounds more like musing than declaration. If we want to settle the debate and the majority is not willing to take the easy route (repealing the Second Amendment and delegating to the states per the Tenth Amendment), then a clarifying amendment is a must. Everything else is a waste of oxygen.

Labels: culture, law, narcissism

Today was discouraging. I hit a six-mile traffic jam just outside of Charlotte on my way to ApacheCon, and I didn't see one person on the other side of the highway with his hand out the window. In other words, all of the time I spent documenting our road rage prevention system was for naught. I was expecting the magic of the Internet to cause a new meme to spread rapidly across the land and save me from these kinds of experiences, but I guess that isn't going to happen. The Internet is too busy creating lolcats.

I wish I had a time machine so that I could turn back the clock and tell the inventors of the Internet to not even bother. What a disappointment.

Labels: apachecon, culture, narcissism

Cycling is a very popular hobby in Cary, but for all of the people riding around town in their ill-advised spandex outfits, we have seen little improvement with regard to cycling-friendly roadways and parks. Many of Cary's main roads are finally being expanded to meet the demands of last decade's population growth, but only a few of them have cycling lanes. I often encounter situations where people approach cyclists who are coasting in and out of the breakdown lane and then swerve around them at full speed, with barely a look to see what's happening alongside them. It's irritating and dangerous, all at the same time.

But unlike most residents, I'm not upset because our transportation department has failed to recognize the plight of the avid cyclist; I'm upset because I'm not a cyclist and I hate sharing the road with them. In fact, one of the things I hate most about sharing the road is the phrase sharing the road. I see this admonition on traffic signs and bumper stickers across Wake County, and it's one of the worst ideas I've ever encountered. The cyclist is traveling with a vehicle that he can lift off the ground with one finger; I am traveling with a two-ton steel bullet that's moving at twice his speed. We cannot share the road. Asking automobile drivers to share the road with cyclists is a red herring that pits cyclists against drivers and draws attention away from the fact that our civil engineers have dropped the ball.

Physics aside, there is another reason that I don't like sharing the road: cyclists are bad motorists. Every cycling enthusiast I've ever met[1] is quick to complain about automobile drivers that try to run them off the road, throw things at them, or otherwise treat them as second-class motorists. They talk about state laws that give equality to cyclists and other slow-moving vehicles, but they always gloss over the parts about cyclists being restricted by all of the same rules and signals. The same cyclists who want me to coast patiently behind their peloton as we try to conquer a hill at ten miles per hour are quick to pedal through a red light if there's no oncoming traffic. I also like it when they piggyback with cars that have been waiting at a stop sign; nothing says "responsible motorist" like hanging out in my blind spot through a busy intersection!

Ignoring traffic rules is fine for ten-year-old kids parading around town with their friends[2], but if you want equality in the eyes of the law, you had better sit at that red light and wait for it to change, even if traffic is low and you don't have a license plate. You had better wait your turn on the stop sign merry-go-round. And you had better hope I never run for office, because in Dan Jemiolo America, all cars will be equipped with high-powered lasers.

So much anger.

[1] An enthusiast is anyone who has one or more cycling-related bumper stickers on his car or wears cycling shoes to the office.

[2] Assuming they're smart enough to avoid my car.

Labels: cary, culture, narcissism

I don't like Halloween. It's a boring holiday whose resulting ennui is trumped only by Thanksgiving and its multi-day torture of lukewarm turkey, awkward conversations, and Detroit Lions football. That said, I know that a lot of you are still excited for Halloween and want to impress your peers with a clever costume[1], so I feel obligated to share with you what is probably the best Halloween costume idea you have ever heard; I can't remember if I came up with it myself or not, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I will take credit for it here. Prepare to be inspired.

A surefire way to be a hit at your next Halloween party is to dress like a Flintstones vitamin. I'm sure you've seen lots of guys dress as Fred Flintstone, but it's always in the official orange and black outfit; it's a pretty popular costume and you can get it at most stores. To be truly innovative, though, you need to take this costume and paint over it so that it's monochromatic[2] while still allowing the pattern to show through. You can then use face paint to make your face, arms, and legs the same color; if you're really committed, you'll get some temporary hair dye so that your hair will match as well. When you're finished, you'll look just like the Fred Flintstone vitamins that you used to have each morning with breakfast. The public will adore you.

Extra Credit: Children of the 70s and 80s will recall that there was no Betty Rubble vitamin in the original Flintstones Vitamin collection (she first appeared in 1996). If you're a woman who wants to get in on this great idea, you could dress as a Betty Rubble vitamin and impress the socks off of all the trivia geeks who ask about your costume.

[1] Unless you're female, in which case you'll probably be dressing as a vampish [noun].

[2] I suggest purple or red.

Labels: culture, narcissism

Bridgid and I went to Pittsburgh a few weekends ago, and on the way home we witnessed a ten-mile traffic jam on the other side of the West Virginia highway. It was painful to watch people sitting in such an awful mess, especially as we encountered those people who had only been in it a few minutes and had no idea what they were in for. Both of us become extremely frustrated in traffic - the feeling of helplessness, combined with the knowledge that four out of five traffic jams are caused by trivial events on the side of the road[1], just fuels the rage minute after minute. I would rather be attacked by flying robot sharks that shoot lasers out of their eyes than sit in traffic that I know is caused by people who are hoping to see a cool accident and have (apparently) never used the Internet before.

The tragedy in West Virginia brought to mind other instances where we had seen horrible traffic jams that continued to grow because the people driving in the opposite direction had no way of warning the oncoming victims; soon we were discussing ideas for a universal signal that drivers could give to people on the other side of the road to let them know that all hope was lost, and what the rules would be for using it. This post will be my first attempt at harnessing the power of the Internet to start a nationwide trend[2].

First, we need to define some vocabulary:

• highway - A stretch of road on which there is less than one traffic signal per mile and the average speed limit is fifty miles-per-hour or higher.
  


• traffic jam - A situation that requires vehicles to move at less than half the speed limit for five miles or more.
  


• free-flowing traffic - The normal rate of travel for a particular road at a particular time of day.
  


• bicycle turn signal - The act of raising your left arm so that it forms a ninety-degree angle, often used by cyclists who wish to make a turn signal when riding on a major road. Like this.
  

If you are driving on a highway and you see a traffic jam, the driver should stick his arm out the window and make a bicycle turn signal from the fifth mile of the traffic jam until one mile after you encounter free-flowing traffic. People who see this signal should assume that the traffic jam is truly a nightmare from Hell, the kind of nightmare where you're falling off a cliff, but instead of waking up when you hit bottom, you slam into the ground and break your leg, and then murderous clowns chase you into a cave filled with robot sharks[3]. In other words, it is not going to get any better. They should get off at the next exit, even if it means buying a map to figure out how to get past the traffic jam on other roads; if no exit will become available in the next mile, they should break the law and make a U-turn on the median. Anything to avoid the soul-crushing agony of whatever the people on the other side of the road have seen.

Some may say that the turn signal is sub-optimal, and that may be the case. Bridgid and I spent a long time[4] brainstorming on this, but we're willing to consider other ideas. Another criticism that I'm expecting is that the amount of time one is required to use the signal is too long; frankly, I think it's a small price to pay when you realize that you stand to benefit greatly if others reciprocate in your own time of need. Our experience through West Virginia was kind of extreme (ten miles of traffic through the Appalachians, with limited exits and supporting towns), but at a law-abiding seventy miles-per-hour, I only would have had to keep my hand out the window for five minutes in order to help my fellow citizens.

Now, before you all go out and start using this new signal, I must warn you to be conservative and stick to the rules. If we have people driving down the interstate with their hands out the window every time there's a five-minute backup, people will start to ignore the signal and it won't be useful anymore. This isn't like flashing your headlights to warn others of an upcoming speed trap - overuse of the signal could do more harm than good. The next time you're on a long trip and you see a never-ending train wreck piling up in the opposite direction, wait for the fifth mile, and then open your window and fulfill your duty as an American motorist.

[1] Sixty-five percent of people read this statistic and believed it without even checking my footnote to see if I made it up.

[2] If you're outside of the United States, I apologize, but I don't have any experience with your cross-country traffic, nor have I learned all of your offensive hand gestures. You'll have to start your own trends.

[3] The danger that flying robot sharks pose to humans is only exacerbated by their ability to navigate in the dark.

[4] A solid ten minutes.

Labels: culture, narcissism

I recently finished Jan Crawford Greenburg's latest book, Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, and I have to say, it was remarkably even-handed given its topic. Details from the personal notes and memos of nine current and former Supreme Court justices provide some insight into how the Court runs; a revealing interview with Justice O'Connor adds some extra drama, explaining her early retirement and how we came to have two SCOTUS vacancies at the same time. It was all very personal, and not terribly political. I would recommend it to anyone who finds the judicial branch somewhat mysterious and wants to understand how it affects the lives of average people.

There were two things that came up repeatedly in Supreme Conflict, and neither was particularly encouraging. The first item was how small the political network is in and around Washington. The book covers SCOTUS appointments from the Reagan Administration through Samuel Alito, but during those thirty years, no more than a dozen or so candidates are considered by other side of the American political spectrum. It is clear that if you were not able to land an appointment to the 4th circuit federal appeals court (which requires knowing and having worked with one or more of the president's advisors), the cards are stacked against you and your dreams of serving in the Court. Judges from other appellate courts in other parts of the country are occasionally considered (like the aforementioned Alito), but the vast majority were nominated because top advisors wanted to push their favorites, and said favorites had the opportunity to participate in the Washington, D.C. social network. Geography-based judicial nominations seem incredibly... injudicious... even for politicians.

The second item was how abortion became the primary issue - if not the only issue - that influenced a candidate's support from legislators and the public. No other issue even comes close. In reading the notes and transcripts provided by multiple instances of the executive branch, it is hard to find more than a token concern paid to other issues that the Court might face. Homosexuality, education, property rights, medical marijuana, the Pledge of Allegiance, government surveillance - these things were mentioned, but none was ever a deal breaker. Abortion is the ultimate deal breaker.

I think it's fair to say that putting so much weight on one issue is bound to negatively affect decisions made on other issues. In every case that does not involve abortion, a justice is forced to spend lots of time and mental energy weighing how his opinion in the case may affect current or future abortion-related cases; he may be pressured to make a sub-optimal decision because he is afraid the optimal one may eventually lead to politically unpopular action on the abortion front.

Justices may not face elections or popularity polls, but they certainly face pressure from politicians, friends of the Court, and talking heads who can demonize them as the face of the enemy. Even notoriously independent and aloof justices like Stevens and Thomas must be affected the pressure. No one wants to go into the history books because of a decision that was really a side effect. That's a lot of stress to put on a person who already has pages and pages of case history and legal arguments to absorb.

Finally, I know that if I were appealing a decision that had a major impact on my life and revolved around, say, privacy, I wouldn't want to be short-changed because Justice Bob was worried about the implications to the pro-X crowd. Despite its prominence in the national discussion over Court rulings, abortion-related cases don't make their way onto the docket very often, and yet these potential cases have a significant affect on topics as disparate as gay rights and terrorism. I'm sure this is a fun twist for the lawyers arguing before the Court.

Despite these common themes of cronyism and questionable priorities, the book was great and I enjoyed the opportunity to blog about one of my favorite subjects: consitutional law. Did you like how I mixed in issues that were "critical" to both liberals and conservatives and used variables in order to hide my own opinions? Aren't corporate blogs fun?

Update: I shouldn't have tried to write this post in such a short period of time. I've cleaned up some of the minor problems, but I still wish I had let it simmer a while longer.

Labels: books, culture, narcissism

I have been sending and receiving email for a decade, and during that time I've deleted a lot of spam. I've never been particularly annoyed by spam - before I signed up for Gmail (which is unmatched when it comes to intercepting spam before I see it) I would just delete the messages and move on with my life. I didn't receive that much to begin with, so I was never able to sympathize with people who claimed to have thousands upon thousands of spam messages clouding their inboxes.

Still, I was not completely apathetic about spam; while I may not be as inconvenienced as some by their mere presence, I have always been disappointed in the quality of spam messages. In the early-to-mid nineties, I shrugged off the obvious subject lines, the poor English, and the ridiculous formatting because I figured that the people creating the messages were amateurs who were experimenting and didn't have any experience to tell them what would work and what wouldn't. They were true spammers: throwing millions of messages into the wind in the hopes of making profits in volume.

What's disappointing is that today, ten years later, most of the spam that I see in my Gmail spam folder is no different. I don't understand how such a lucrative business could still depend on such amateur content. I realize that the messages will always be a little zany because of the never-ending battle between spammers and spam blockers, but I don't think that should preclude the spammers from sending advertisements with proper English sentences and appropriate color schemes.

Every time I read a news article about the arrest or trial of a spam kingpin[1], they always mention how large the spam market is and the potential for huge profits; I find it hard to believe that the successful people in this business are not interested in creating higher-quality, more professional advertisements. I'm not saying they need to create corporate-level advertisements, but they should be willing to spend thirty minutes or so on a message to make sure it's legible and credible. Thirty minutes seems like a small price to pay for a significant increase in one's click-through rate.

The only really creative spam I've ever seen arrived around the spring of 2006. All of a sudden I started seeing emails from senders such as Felix Q. Marvelous and Burger F. Luscious, with subjects that, while not valid English, were at least entertaining[2]. Sadly, the message content was the same old boring stuff... but I shared a lot of laughs with my friends by exchanging great spam names. If the authors of this genre of spam had just applied the same creativity to the actual content, they might have convinced someone to take their emails seriously, but instead, they never evolved beyond an amusing self-parody. As of today, the spammers are back to their Plain Jane, WE ARE READY TO ACCEPT YOUR LOAN REQUEST ways.

Only one group of people disappoints me more than spammers, and that's scam artists. People who are trying to scam other people into giving up their bank account number or other important data have the opportunity to make more in one hit than spammers do in a year. And yet, it wasn't until late 2005 or early 2006 that they thought to replace their poorly-formatted messages with HTML and images copied from real bank web sites. Hello? The media is always going on and on about how clever these online scams are, but I see them as incredibly inept. Yes, they stole one old lady's life savings and her home is in foreclosure, but how many people did they lose because they misspelled Citibank? Twice? That's beyond lazy.

Sometimes I feel like I should have gone into the spam business. The amount of wasted potential I've seen over the last decade tells me that someone with my ambition could really clean up. With a few college classes on psychology, advertising, and information technology, the will to work for more than five minutes on an advertisement, and the email automation software that has existed for years, I bet I could double the average click-through rate and make a killing.

Sigh. I could have been a kingpin.

[1] Always kingpin. Not executive. Not owner. Kingpin. Like he's gunning people down and sneaking cocaine through customs instead of clicking a few buttons from a non-descript apartment in Poughkeepsie.

[2] A little too entertaining to reproduce here.

Labels: culture, narcissism

Bridgid and I don't have many conflicts, but one of the things that forces us to compromise is the fact that we both match well-known gender stereotypes when it comes to our work habits and attention spans. This can be amusing and frustrating at the same time.

For those of you who never made it through Psych 101 and don't work for a company that requires lots of diversity training, allow me to summarize: men are incredibly single-minded and perform well on tasks that require deep concentration, long hours, and not talking to anyone; women are excellent multi-taskers who are most productive when they are faced with disparate tasks that exercise social as well as academic skills. This is why you meet so many male programmers and female marketing executives. There are exceptions, but in my experience this stereotype is more accurate than most[1].

In fact, in the case of me and Bridgid, it is incredibly accurate. Bridgid is a biochemist who gives cancer to fish and does experiments on "genes". The fact that she's a geek would lead you to believe that she is an exception to the female stereotype, and in many ways, she is; however, when it comes to multi-tasking and the desire to work on disparate tasks, she is a perfect match. Bridgid can switch contexts almost immediately and not lose a step. Her need for long-term scheduling is limited to her need to set up multi-day experiments in such a way that she can balance her classes with her time in lab.

I am a different animal. I exhibit classic programmer behavior when I'm at work, and it's even more obvious after work, when there are no meetings to distract me. I like to block off hours of time for one project, one feature, or one set of related bugs. I save big-ticket items for days when I work from home so that any communication that I have with other people is routed through email or IM, which allows me to manage it in the same way that I manage my list of tasks. Even when I'm working on a feature that touches code shared by multiple people and requires lots of questions and communication, at some point I will buckle down and write code by myself, with no distractions to knock down the house of cards I am building in my head.

Context switches can kill hours of my day if they are timed right: three consecutive meetings with thirty minutes in between each means that I lose an hour because I can't start anything significant before I'm pulled into the next meeting. The flip side of this is that, once I am working on something, I find it very hard to put it down. I wish that I had Bridgid's ability to let things go when a context switch happens; instead, it takes upwards of an hour for the thoughts surrounding whatever it is I'm working on to leave my brain. Of course, sometimes the delay is caused by thoughts about co-worker frustration or bureaucracy, but I think that is more understandable to the average person. Thinking about Ant's classloading behavior on the way to dinner is not.

The reverse of this behavior is interesting. A large project may require many days of intense concentration and occasional t-shirt re-use on my part, but when I'm done[2], I am suddenly aware of all of the great things that are happening around me. Things to do. Fun to be had. My non-programming intensity is as strong as my programming intensity, but the two cannot coincide. This can be very confusing for Bridgid and other female humans.

I try to temper this conflict by keeping an a personal schedule that extends at least two and usually three weeks in advance, identifying those times when I will be able to work consecutive days on larger problems without forgetting to eat or talk to my girlfriend; the other days become targets for meetings, smaller bugs, and tedious work that will not leave me distracted at the end of the day. This need for order and preservation means that I am constantly scheduling, with the ability to remake two weeks of plans in ten to fifteen minutes. Frequent re-ordering means that no "to do list" software is fast enough or natural enough for me; whether it's Microsoft Outlook or some Web 2.0 app with Atom feeds and rounded corners, I always come back to a plain text file on my desktop. I don't have time for calendar widgets and status markers. When something is re-scheduled, I cut and paste it. When it's done, I delete it. At the end of each day, I open todo.txt one last time, delete the current day's entry, Ctrl-S, Alt-F4, and turn off my monitor.

On that note, Fri PM (8/24) - blog post is complete. It's time for a trip to Fujisan. With my lady.

[1] I'm sure you've already thought of a few co-workers who completely defy these stereotypes. Good for you. I'm telling my story anyway.

[2] Where done means that it works on someone else's machine and I've found most of the edge cases.

Labels: culture, narcissism, programming

Beg The Question: To beg the question does not mean "to raise the question." This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word "question" in the phrase to refer to a literal question.

Sites like this play to my inner-stickler, which means that I find them irresistible. This one in particular reminds me of times during grad school where I'd be sitting in class, waiting for some amateur philosopher to finish his point about some technology-related issue that didn't deserve as long a monologue as he was giving it, when all of a sudden I would be jolted back into reality by said philosopher's repeated misuse of the English language and its more interesting phrases. Like most of the time I spend in airports, time spent listening to proud-yet-inaccurate college philosophers generates an incredibly loud, scornful rage... in my head.

External Dan: (calm, expressionless, silent)

Internal Dan: STOP SAYING BEGS THE QUESTION YOU ARE CLEARLY VERY PROUD OF YOUR LINGUISTIC DISCOVERY WHY COULDN'T YOU TAKE THE TWO MINUTES TO GOOGLE IT AND MAKE SURE YOU DON'T SOUND LIKE A FOOL VNI3POQE48IJEVGI3PDFN9KEQ1FNJD ANGER!!!

Anyway.

They also have cards that you can hand out to people on the street. The cause doesn't give me the same bold self-assurance as the one behind SHHH cards, but if I ever go back to grad school, I'll be sure to print off a sheet or two.

Labels: culture, narcissism

Each time I re-start my blog or re-design my site, I usually look over my old content and decide to throw it out. Despite my best intentions at the time, I always discover that my past writing is laden with ignorance and sullen tripe about Cindy Lou Girlfriend and the highs and lows she had inflicted upon me. No one wants to read that.

Since graduating from college, I've tried to keep my writing more interesting from the perspective of Future Dan, and I think I've done a decent job (not great, but decent). My last blog was mostly free of the aforementioned tragedies, but I didn't include it in my latest re-design because I was too lazy to refactor those posts whose content did not fit well with the new layout. It was just easier to start over. Fortunately, I saved a few of my favorite posts from that blog, and that brings us to today's post.

I don't want to waste a lot of posts (or even multiple posts) on old material, but I was reading an article the other day that related to an interesting topic that I had previously covered in great detail. The article was about a Carnegie Mellon research project that demonstrated success in patching incomplete or damaged images using a catalog of disparate image fragments found online; this news represents another step in the long journey towards accurate and accessible image search that does not rely on pre-existing metadata or titles[1]. Very cool stuff. It also has potential with regards to today's topic, which is the patterns of the human face and the way the brain processes those patterns.

Here is what I wrote a few years ago on the topic of facial patterns:

I think it would be really interesting if someone created an ontology of the human faces for each generation. It is my belief that there is a finite number of possible faces, and that, unlike snowflakes, we have a lot more look-a-likes than people care to admit. A comprehensive face catalog would tell us exactly how many unique faces are out there. I think that we would all be astonished at how small the number is.

Here's an experiment for you to try: gather a high school yearbook from a friend or family member that you did not go to school with, and look through the senior photos (which are always larger and more detailed). I guarantee that you will recognize numerous people despite the fact that you don't know them. You will find photos of people that look exactly like people you went to school with, met at a bar, etc; furthermore, you will find faces that you've seen on multiple people, in their exact form.

Straight-haired brunette, thin face, pale complexion, wears a little too much makeup, squints too much when she smiles, mouth is thin as a piece of paper. Square-faced, black hair with too much gel, clear blue eyes, chubby nose, has a grin that makes him seem uneasy. I'm telling you, the similarities are there. There are very few people in this country that I have not "met".

This does not mean that people who have popular faces are mundane or unattractive; if you do the yearbook experiment, you will find a lot of gorgeous people that happen to look just like some other gorgeous people you know. My hypotheses are simply that a) a significant percentage of the population has more twins than they could ever imagine, and b) this is the exact opposite of what most people believe.

And that brings me to my social circle. I don't think that I look like a significant number of other people, but then again, there is nothing very remarkable about my appearance. Mike, who agreed with my theory when I related it to him this afternoon, is also an uncommon face. Or not. It's not very likely that my small circle of friends has somehow escaped this phenomenon. This leads me to my final theory: c) even people with a twin in every city don't realize that they have a very common face.

The only time I see exceptions to my theories is when someone happens to look very similar to a current celebrity. I am guessing this is due to the fact that our brains are able to put a name to the famous face and more easily remember it during day-to-day life.

Now, what's really interesting is that the types of faces seem to change from generation to generation. My analysis might be skewed by different fashions, trends, etc., but it seems like facial patterns are limited to two decades or so. What I would like to see is an American face ontology for my generation; the real challenge would be providing a mechanism for efficient lookups. If that were possible, you could categorize any of your friends as, say, a #52, which is both amusing and scary at the same time.

Note the last paragraph: the real challenge would be providing a mechanism for efficient lookups. Well, science marches on. Projects like the one at Carnegie Mellon continue to chip away at the seemingly impossible task of finding images based on natural language descriptions or imperfect renderings (such as sketches, or photos of things that are only conceptually similar to what you are looking for). Within a few decades, we may be able to study the American facial spectrum without the manual and tedious processes I imagined when I wrote my original post. My only hope is that it will be used for good[2].

[1] For an example of some really innovative research in this area, check out Retrievr, which allows you to search images on Flickr by drawing sketches or uploading photos with similar content. Make sure you have JavaScript enabled when visiting the site.

[2] A more likely scenario: two days after such a project is announced, there will be a Firefox plugin that lets you stalk people you knew in high school and find out if they're single and miserable.

Labels: culture, narcissism