January 22, 2005
Why won’t Ashlee go away?
I posted a while ago and asked if Ashlee Simpson’s career was over yet. Traditionally, we as a society have not been very kind to people lip-synching. And considering that she’s not really all that talented to begin with, I really didn’t think she’d last this long. The Orange Bowl reaction made me think that my dislike of her “talent” is not in the minority. Granted, her core audience (13-year old girls) probably were not out in force at the Orange Bowl, but there was an obvious backlash.
Then it hit me: MTV and the record companies won’t let her fail! These people have so much time and money invested into Ashlee Simpson as “product”, that they certainly aren’t going to let that investment go to waste. They’re pushing her out there trying to overcome this major gaffe, rather than take the time to find new talent. I’d like to have confidence that the people being duped by MTV and the record companies will wise up and realize how badly they’re being played. Right now, though, those record companies are winning. I fear we’re stuck with Ashlee for at least another album or two before they toss her to the wolves.
January 20, 2005
Strict Constructionists
Bush has helped fuel the debate about judicial activist judges, vs. strict constructionist judges. I think that what I am hearing on the conservative side of the aisle is somewhat misleading, however. I am concerned that many conservative brethren don’t have a problem with judicial activism, they have a problem with liberal judicial activism. Too many conservatives would have no problem with the courts being activist, as long as their activism was on the right.
In that frame of mind, I’ve been doing some reading on the subject. I came across a debate from about a week ago at American University in Washington. The debate was between justices Antonin Scalia and Steven Breyer, on the Constitutional Relevance of Foreign Court Decisions. Unless you enjoy reading legal debate, I suggest staying away from it, but if you’re like me, dig right in.
I think Antonin Scalia is the living example of strict constructionism. In the debate, a question was asked by the moderator about whether, if foreign courts made a decision that the justice thought was right, whether it would be good to borrow the logic or reasoning used for the decision. Scalia responded:
Well, you’re begging the question. I mean, your question assumes that it is up to the judge to find THE correct answer. And I deny that. I think it is up to the judge to say what the Constitution provided, even if what it provided is not the best answer, even if you think it should be amended. If that’s what it says, that’s what it says.
But even if you disagree with me, and if you think, well, no, that shouldn’t be the test; the Constitution should keep up to date — but it should keep up to date with the views of the American people. And on these constitutional questions, you’re not going to come up with a right or wrong answer; most of them involve moral sentiments. You can have arguments on one side and on the other, but what you have to ask yourself is what does American society think? And the best way, the only way to determine that is certainly not to ask a very thin segment of American society — judges, lawyers and law students — what they think but rather to look at the legislation that exists in states, democratically adopted by the American people.
Scalia’s point here is that it’s not a justice’s job to determine whether the law is correct, whether the law is fair, whether the law is right. The justice’s job is to determine whether the law is applied correctly, and whether the law is Constitutional.
The true mark of Scalia’s objectivity is that he has admitted to having to make rulings that he did not like the outcome, but that were required by his role in the law. I worry Bush is going to find conservative justices. Bush needs to find a few more Scalias.
January 19, 2005
Am I a Salesman?
Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few days. I spent a few days out with the extended family at the Indian casino, followed by busy times as all the field sales engineers from my company came back here for our semi-annual kickoff meeting. I realized something during that time that shocked me. I’m more at home with sales engineers than I am with my fellow applications engineers.
Am I destined to be a salesman? Considering my lack of social skills growing up, how is it that I could even consider the option of sales? After all, I think of myself as a born engineer. I like nothing more than to find problems and solve them. But at the same time, I can communicate. And I can understand the big-picture view, looking outside the minutiae to see the delicate dance of capability, lead times, price, and relationships. In my field (electrical engineering), having an engineering background is a tremendous asset to a salesman.
To ask this question now, the answer is no. I am not ready for sales. It may be a future path for me to take, but I don’t yet have the stomach for it. Given some additional time visiting customers alongside sales engineers, I might pick up the necessary skills to be successful.
But for now, my desire to maintain my dignity is not yet eclipsed by the drive to win business and meet quota. For now…
January 16, 2005
The De-Lurker Question
I’ve been busy the last two days, and will be busy the next two, so I don’t know if I’ll have that much time to post. However, I can tell that I have gotten a fair number of repeat visitors here, so let’s see who the lurkers are.
I have a question that I’ve devised, which I think tells a lot about a person (men, anyway). I’d like to see a response from everyone here…
Which Do You Prefer?
1) The Shelby Cobra 427
2) The Shelby GT500
I think just about every man alive has a preference for one over the other. Let’s hear some responses.
January 14, 2005
The Secret to a Happy Life…
…is to start stripping!
It seems that “career day” speaker at an 8th-grade class in Palo Alto wanted to encourage kids to do “discover something they love and excel in.” So he told them about how lucrative it is to be a stripper.
Management consultant William Fried told eighth-graders at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School on Tuesday that stripping and exotic dancing can pay $250,000 or more per year, depending on their bust size.
I would never want my opposition to such a thing to construe that I’m anti-stripper, but I think this is a little bit ridiculous. I realize stripping is legal, but does this mean it’s okay to tell girls in Nevada to become hookers?
I guess here in California, the schools aren’t exactly preparing students for professional employment, but I think it’s a sad day when we’re actively encouraging students to strip. On the other hand, though, it definitely makes gym class more important as job training!
January 13, 2005
How Good are Those Writers?
I mentioned a few weeks ago how I’ve gotten sucked into The West Wing. Now, it’s near the end of Bartlett’s presidency, and they’re starting to get into campaigning among his prospective successors. They’re highlighting three possible Democrats battling through the primaries, with the only big actor being Jimmy Smits. The Republican isn’t followed much yet, but is played by Alan Alda.
Herein lies a difficult conundrum. It is obvious at this point that the race is going to come down to Smits and Alda, because none of the other actors are well-known enough to carry the series. If the Democrat wins, they can keep a lot of the supporting cast. One would think that this is the likely scenario, but at this point these actors might be going ‘Raymond’ on the producers, asking for more money. If the producers want to shake things up, this is the time to do it.
Could a bunch of Hollywood writers, who have spent the last 7 years vilifying Republicans on the show, suddenly start writing the Right? Alan Alda has enough TV clout to at least live out a single-term presidency on the show. But I fear that if these writers suddenly need to live the other side, it’s going to be dialogue about as realistic to politics as Biker Boyz is to motorcycling.
The series has hit a crossroads. The easy and predictable path is to keep most of the cast as Smits wins the presidency. The difficult path is to shake things up. One route runs the risk of being boring, while the other might not keep its credibility. I’ve got a prediction as to which way it’s going to go, but there’s enough suspense to obtain the producers goals: I’ll keep watching to see what happens.
19th Century Russia: Spring Break Destination?
Harvard has hired a fun-czar.
Following complaints that it does little to promote campus social life, the Ivy League school has hired its first “fun czar” — Zac Corker, a recent Harvard graduate whose job is to build community spirit and help stressed-out students unwind.
Maybe it’s just me, but the term “czar” does little to evoke thoughts of fun in my mind. Sounds to me like someone’s watched Van Wilder a few too many times.
January 12, 2005
Trivial News
The best purchase I’ve made in the past year (my TiVo) has caused my TV habits to change immeasurably. While I used to be a Fox News junkie, as there was nothing interesting on, I have now got so much interesting TV to watch that I can’t take time for Fox News. That, coupled with my wife’s daily dose of General Hospital (why is this TiVo so easy to use?), and I don’t keep up on much news outside of the internet.
Today at lunch, I decided to switch over and find out what Fox News was reporting. Oddly enough, it was the one thing that would always make me change the channel: celebrity criminal trials. Today, it was the Michael Jackson trial. I didn’t care about it much the first 12 months of the story, why would I want to keep track of it now?
While this is shameless inductive reasoning based on the first 10 minutes I came across, I assume that they’ve spent plenty of airtime on this, Scott Peterson, Robert Blake, and countless other trivial trials involving that 0.0001% of people that is horrendously evil or crazy.
I realize that to the same people who think Brad and Jen splitting is news, this is probably the same drama that brings in ratings. Not all that much different from the aforementioned General Hospital, come to think of it. But wouldn’t the world be better served by honest debates over social security reform, tax reform, in-depth discussions of school choice, and the like? For all the vitriol Fox News gets as a “bastion of the right”, sensationalizing depravity knows no partisanship.
January 11, 2005
Social Work on the Left and Right
2004 was the One state, two state, Red state, Blue state year. An obvious trend has been evident for many years. The red states were typically more rural. Blue states were typically more urban. Even within the blue states, the more remote areas were strongly red, while the cities were firmly blue.
It has become such an axiom that city voters trend heavily Democrat, and country voters trend Republican, that I don’t think anyone even bothers now to ask why. There are many possible reasons. Running the gamut from values to economic factors, security to social welfare.
Political sociology being a small interest of mine, I have a theory as to why, at least relating to social welfare, rural voters tend to be Republican, and city voters tend to be Democrat. This is a fledgling theory, and of course is not intended to be a final treatise on voting habits. I’d love to get some thoughts on whether you think this makes sense.
In rural areas, there is much more of a sense of community. The people who live in your town, the families you’ve grown up with, are the same families that you’ve known all your life. Your kids play with their kids, the dad works at the local factory with his neighbor, you all go to church together. Since there are less people in any given area, you are forced to live with, and see, the people near you. Then, when someone loses a job, or a house gets flooded, people pitch in to help. Since there is no real charitable infrastructure out in rural areas, and since you know your neighbors and the people in your community, misfortune of others affects you personally. And since there may be no organization around to help, people step up to do so as needed.
In city areas, that sense of community does not hold as closely. There is a much higher transition rate of the people living near you. With the increased population density, you have many more options to choose the people you associate with. While you may barely know the neighbors you’ve lived near for 2 years, the person you’re closest to is the coworker from 2 miles over. There is a strong infrastructure of private and public charities to help in the case of misfortune. Even when those close to you undergo misfortune, you help them by being there and friendly, but refer them to the institutions best able to help. You may contribute to and occasionally volunteer at those institutions, but the responsibility for organizing and maintaining such organizations is handled by the charitable institution or government.
I think for this reason, rural voters tend Republican. They are used to solving problems in their area by their own methods. They know their school board, see the mayor once or twice a year, have a neighbor on city council, and see the individual contribution to government. They don’t see the need, other than natural disaster, for the federal government to have a presence. They see a small government as the right government, because they don’t feel the federal presence in their lives.
City voters, on the other hand, are used to these problems being solved by institutions and government. Since a city brings increased population density, it naturally brings increased density of misfortune. The mayor of your city is a public figure you only see on TV, your school board oversees a district of 10,000 students. When your natural way of seeing problems solved is by large institutions, you see the way to affect change is to support the party that will further and expand those institutions. From education to social issues, you see the government doing a job too big for individuals to handle. Thus, solutions to problems invariably involve government involvement.
The real question, at this point, is how we can get these opposed groups to find a middle ground? My thought is that we have come to rely too much on government. Government needs to play a role in society, but government has reached a point where it supercedes private charity. I think we need to find a point where government is available for major disaster relief, but the day-to-day problems are handled by people on the ground. Private charities have much more flexibility to deal with the changing realities of the world. They can do the job, and they can do it better.
January 10, 2005
The Evil and the Stupid
I got into a debate over at MouseWords about the school system. It seems that those on the left thinks that the right is trying to destroy public education, so that we can close the circle on the “elite” class. As long as we can destroy the middle and lower class, we can become a true American aristocracy, right? Specifically, the “higher ups” in the group are pushing creationism to make the populace think the school system is horrible, manufacturing a crisis to push people into supporting vouchers.
From the comments that have been flying back and forth over there (boy, how I wish I’d get some more comments here), I’ve realized that to the left, there are two types of right-wingers: the stupid, and the evil. The evil is a very small, powerful group. Their goal is to find ways to destroy the country in such a way that it shores up their power, and makes them the ruling elite of the country. The stupid group is everyone else that votes Republican. They are pawns, too dim to understand that they are being manipulated by their evil string-pullers.
Now, I tried to defend myself and my right-wing brethren, and mentioned that we are not trying to destroy America as we know it. We have honestly weighed the policies, and believe that the policies that we are supporting are in the long-term interests of our nation as a whole. My frank response got me this:
Brad, I don’t think you do. I think the people who want to be our evil overlords dump millions of dollars into right wing think tanks to come up with arguments that everyday folks think sound reasonable enough and then manufacture crisises so that everyday folks think that we have no choice but to implement the plans that the right wing think tanks come up with.
Looks like I must have landed myself in the “stupid” group. Which undoubtedly has me a little angry. I don’t consider myself to be a slouch intellectually, and I’m enough of a skeptic to watch out when people are trying to exploit me. Despite my slight megalomania and delusions of grandeur, I’m not evil. The only explanation I have left is that they must be drugging my water.
This is the kind of mentality that we have to deal with from the left. Obviously our policies are absolutely atrocious, so to support them we must be evil or stupid.
I don’t have this hostility to the left, with the exception of a few particular individuals (Michael Moore comes to mind). I believe that their policies sound pretty good, but they typically have unintended consequences. The policies could be stopped, but the bureaucratic inertia in Washington keeps them going. And as any organism tries to do, those bureacracies actively work to expand and grow their scope.
I think both the left and the right are trying to do good. We have some widely different beliefs on how that should occur, of course. Why is it that the right is seen as such a vile, hateful group, while the left has an untarnished image of peace and love?
January 9, 2005
Is this Tropical Storm “Pestilence”?
Second of three storms pelts California.
Yes, you heard me correct. It has now rained in Southern California for the better part of 3 days. I think that’s the 2nd sign of the Apocalypse.
Every news station is reporting on the “Storm Watch”. NBC just broke into regular coverage for a “Special Report.”
Now, there is a lot of rain here. But this is ridiculous. I’ll bet this is getting more play than the big snowstorms a few weeks ago in Ohio. It’s just rain, people!!!
January 8, 2005
Guinness Gets Some Clothes!
That’s it. I am officially reporting my wife to PETA. This has got to stop.
California Schools
California is, and has been, the home of left-wing wackos for many years. The state is so overwhelmingly Democrat that there is not much opposition to them instituting all the pet projects they have swarming around their liberal little heads. As such, it’s always been a good test case to look at how policies and reforms may affect the rest of the country.
Well, EdWonk’s blog alerted me to a story by the San Jose Mercury News, that shows that on standardized tests, California ranks 47th out of 50 states. And it’s not even a bad spot here or there:
“The thing that struck me the most was the uniformly bleak picture,” Rand analyst Stephen Carroll said. “It’s not so much bad here and there, it’s unfortunate across the board.”
This, from a state with an economy bigger than that of France. Something in our public school system just isn’t working. It has gotten to the point that those with the means must either put their children into private school, or home schooling. And for those interested in home schooling, California may consider it illegal.
California may be the liberal’s test bed. And what has resulted? A state with high taxes and poor infrastructure. A state where the public school system is horrendous, but they are trying as hard as they can to ensure that your kids are stuck there. Something needs to change.
January 7, 2005
The Architect
I choose that title because he is the only architect that Americans have ever heard of. For me, growing up the son of an architect, I’ve heard of one or two others, but I’m the exception.
Of course, I’m talking about Frank Lloyd Wright.
The link above is a story about how Frank Lloyd Wright homes have become a tough sell. This is the case for two reasons. First, many of the homes, by design, are secluded and not suited to a daily commute into the city. This, of course, is much of the allure for many of the folks searching for Wright homes, but for us working shlubs, it doesn’t meet our needs. Second, the owners of Wright homes are very protective of those homes. It’s like selling your puppies, you want them to go to a good home. Wright homes need to go to good owners.
Normally I am not a big fan of forcing art on people. And in this case, I wouldn’t advocate something so severe as declaring these homes landmarks. But I completely agree with the selective nature of sellers. Frank Lloyd Wright is the American architect. Growing up in an architect’s household, and with the thought process of an engineer, I understand how the use of space and the fusion of form and function makes a house a home. Wright was a master of this. To those choosy sellers, interested in keeping the history of their homes alive, I salute you.
Get back in your hole, Gere
Another celebrity has opened their mouth about politics. This time, though, they didn’t lambast Bush or call Republicans fascists. Richard Gere decided to take the high road, and urge the Palestinians to vote in their upcoming elections.
“Hi, I’m Richard Gere and I’m speaking for the entire world. We’re with you during this election time. It’s really important. Get out and vote,” Gere says in the English-language advertisement. He repeats the phrase, “Get out and vote” in Arabic.
Now, I’m going to wait and see before I pass judgement that he is an idiot… Okay, too late. But he can redeem himself if he offers a similar TV spot to the Iraqis, as misguided and stupid TV spots by celebrities urging people in far-off lands truly are.
But the best part about this? The Palestinians have no idea who Richard Gere is!
“I don’t even know who the candidates are other than Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), let alone this Gere,” Gaza soap factory worker Manar an-Najar told Reuters Wednesday.
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Well… now for a man – all may have a preference…
but being a woman…
I will have to choose “both”!
Actually I am more of a Corvette woman…
I own, restored, and drive as often as possible in rainy Seattle my 1958 Corvette!
I do love both styles of the cobra’s though; and they both have their places in the history books along with Carrol Shelby (who I got to meet down at the Monterey Historic Races).
So… if I really had to choose one over the other – it would probably be the Cobra 427… “nothing like cruisin’ with the wind in ya face”!
~Denise
Comment by Denise — January 20, 2005 @ 2:01 pm
Nothing wrong with sales if you view it an any prospective other than car sales, which has had the most dubious of all sales reputations. It was the founder of IBM who said, “Nothing happens in this country until a salesman sells something.”
Sales is a learned skill. Though many people have natural people skills, sales is the art of discovering a need and matching the product or service to that need, and then persuading the client to buy. It is a skill and profession to be proud of, especially when done ethically.
Uncle Jack
Comment by Uncle Jack — January 22, 2005 @ 8:31 am