Social

A memo to the world… I don’t care about your hierarchical BS. I know that hierarchy seems to be important to people because we have kept it around from the time we roamed as east African plains apes (h/t Brad DeLong) to today’s corporations, but frankly, I don’t care. The fact that a person occupies a higher position in the hierarchy does not mean that they are necessarily better, smarter or more deserving of respect than anyone else. Hierarchies may seem like a good idea if you want to keep people in their place; but they are based on intimidation and are undemocratic and destructive. If you feel differently, and are concerned, then it might be best if I was kept away from people you worry might take offense to my treating them like I treat everyone else. That is all.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, mostly because, for the first time in 5+ years, I’ve gotten somewhat addicted to a video game. Some friends are leaving for CA soon and they were giving away things they didn’t want to bring. This included a handful of games. I grabbed “Neverwinter Nights since I knew it would run under linux. Since I installed it, I’ve been spending way too much time playing (to K’s annoyance, I’m sure). ...

I had lunch yesterday with our scholarly communications officer – basically, copyright guru. We were meeting because I (and apparently a few other people in IT) had commented that we were looking for the scholarly communications officer to take the lead in positioning the university on different copyright issues. He thought that was interesting because that’s what he thought he had been doing. We discussed a number of issues, only a few of which he had been working on. From memory, the following are the copyright concerns that I have and that I would like the university to take a position on: ...

If you’ve read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, it’ll be pretty obvious why Walmart’s continued quest for efficiency is bad for employees and workers. The latest example? High-tech scheduling software designed to dynamically tune employee schedules to meet real-time fluctuations in the number of customers. The result will be low wage workers on-call to meet customer surges and the possibility of being asked to go home during lulls. This will make paychecks even less stable. Add to that, dynamic checks on whether an employee is reaching full-time status or overtime so that their schedule can be scaled back, and you have the makings of an increasingly unfair workplace – regardless of value of the minimum wage.

I’m reading the collected writings of Ben Franklin from the Library of America (yes, all 1600 or so pages of it), and I ran across the following passage: It is remarkable that soldiers by profession, men truly and unquestionably brave, seldom advise war but in cases of extream [sic] necessity. While mere rhetoricians, tongue-pads and scribes, timid by nature, or from their little bodily exercise deficient in those spirits that give real courage, are ever bawling for war on the most trifling occasions, and seem the most blood-thirsty of mankind. ...

I had a chance last week to read a few books, all of which I would recommend in some fashion or another: National Geographic’s “The Ultimate Field Guide to Photography This is a very good, basic field guide to photography. It covers a huge range of subjects and, not surprisingly, has some beautiful photographs. The book covers both film and digital photography, editing, archiving, composition, and has a great inspirational chapter describing Robert Clark’s photographic travelogue using only the camera in a cell phone. My only complaint about the book is that it covers too many topics, but not much in depth. It’s a great book for a beginner, but there wasn’t too much I hadn’t seen already. ...

It’s nice to have one’s predictions shown to be right. But perhaps the scariest paragraph stated: Overall, the study concluded that 37% of consumers were shopping in stores on Black Friday – and 41% of those were out between midnight and 8 am. 80% mentioned special as their motivation to go on a shopping tour, while 28% said that the “tradition of Black Friday was a factor in their decision to spend money that day. Despite long lines, 64% indicated that they enjoyed their Black Friday experience and said they would do it again next year. ...

It’s taken me a bit to write about Admiral Poindexter’s visit and the small group talk we had with him. Let me start by reminding folks that here’s a guy who was convicted of lying to congress. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality. He’s also very politically savvy. I once asked my father if he would ever pursue becoming a general in the army. He told me that he was hoping to make full colonel (he later retired as a lt. colonel), but that becoming a general required a literal act of congress and that you needed to become a politician. I would assume the same thing is the case with an admiral and doubly so in the case of Poindexter who managed to become the highest ranking geek in government. All of which is to say take my impressions with a grain of salt. ...

The Disney illustrated Communist Manifesto… p.s. fwiw, some of this is Warner Bros. and Hannah Barbara (but who’s keeping score)

In case you are looking for something interesting to do next week, go to Love Auditorium at Duke University on November 15th at 5pm. Admiral John Poindexter will be giving a talk: “ A Vision for Countering Terrorism Through Information and Privacy Protection Technologies for the 21st Century. It should be an interesting and thought provoking discussion of where Poindexter draws the line between security and privacy. I’ll be meeting with Poindexter and a small group at 3pm – quite the birthday present. ...