So Appalled

Posted on November 8, 2011 by | Comments Off

The recent allegations against former Penn State University coach Jerry Sandusky are nothing short of shocking. To quote the Kanye West song that the title of this entry is lifted from, the shit is fucking ridiculous.

Normally I take joy in the agony of the rest of the Big Ten’s athletic programs, but there is no silver lining here. The enormity of these crimes is such that I can’t feel anything but shock. If true, Sandusky used his position of power and influence to create a foundation serving needy children, then exploited that position to prey on them. The details available in the above linked article are nothing short of disgusting.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. It also appears that University officials, including the school president and beloved coach Joe Paterno, knew about the allegations but failed to report them to the authorities, as required by state law. Worse, two school officials appear to have lied to a federal grand jury…and have known about these charges for years. I believe in the concept on innocence until guilt is proven, but the feds have been building this case for years — and when they take the time and trouble to do so, there’s almost always a very strong case behind it.

Paterno himself did what he was obligated to do: he reported the allegation he heard about to his superiors. Unfortunately, due to his near-saint status in both the Penn State community and the respect and admiration bestowed upon him by almost everyone who follows college football, people (perhaps unrealistically) expected more from him.

Penn State was once known as the cleanest program in college sports -v the only one that succeeded in spite of their high standards and adherence to NCAA rules. This situation casts a greater pall on both the sport and all hallowed institutions of higher education that may never be lifted. There is nothing to feel but sadness.

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Posted in News, Rants and Raves, Sports, Uncategorized

The Tragedy of Palm and webOS

Posted on September 9, 2011 by | Comments Off

I could write pages about this, but others have done a much better job of dissecting the shitstorm of poor decisions that seem to have doomed Hewlett-Packard and, sadly, taken what was left of Palm and webOS and put them out to pasture.

I first used a Palm device back in grad school. It was 2002, and after being late for most of my life, I wanted a device that would give me an audible alert when I needed to get ready to do something important or be someplace important.  So I bought a Palm m105, and it changed my life: I was no longer late all the time.  Eventually, I got a Palm Treo 755p  in 2006 so I wouldn’t have to carry both a cellphone and a PDA around.  In 2009, I jumped to Sprint for the Palm Pre with webOS.  It was a great operating system crippled by shitty hardware and a company lacking the resources to support it.  This past July, I got a Droid 2 Global on Verizon…and soon after that, the fate of what was left of a once-proud pioneer company that invented the first mass-market smartphone seemed to get written in stone. At this point, I can only hope for a miracle to save them from the incompetence of HP.  But the reality is that Palm seems headed to the scrap heap of great ideas tragically doomed by poor execution.

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Posted in Geek Stuff, Musings, Rants and Raves

The Evolution of the Smartphone Market (or How Android Became King).

Posted on September 9, 2011 by | Comments Off

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for quite some time, so vacation seems like the time to do it.  As my Facebook friends have noticed, I’m a bit of a gadget nerd.  I don’t necessarily spend lots of money on said gadgets, but I like to know about them — particularly smartphones.  I’ve been rocking smartphones since I decided to switch from carrying a Palm m105 and a Sony Ericsson flip phone to a Palm Treo 755p.  PDAs helped me to be on time, and it made sense to combine my phone with my PDA.

Fast-forward to today, and we’ve come a long way.  Apple changed the game with their iPhone (which, it should be noted, was a copy — albeit an improved copy — of the LG Prada).  And, similar to the Mac-vs-PC wars, a competitor focusing on software (Android) has overwhelmed the market and snatched away Apple’s opportunity to dominate the smartphone market the way they dominate the mobile music market.

Apple has responded to this usurpation in the c0urts by suing Android handset makers for patent infringement,  There are pending lawsuits and ITC complaints filed by Apple against Samsung, Motorola, ,and HTC. Tellingly, these lawsuits weren’t filed until it became clear that Android could eclipse Apple in the smartphone arena.

And eclipse Apple Android did.  In fact, Android eclipsed every smartphone OS.  So how did this happen?  Why was Apple unable to seize the lead in the smartphone space, despite their release of a phone and ecosystem that changed the entire market for the better and garnered them the single best-selling handset in the world today?

There are several reasons for this.  First, let’s clear up a misconception held by far too many people. Apple did not invent the idea of a simple, ”high-end” smartphone with a capacitive touchscreen aimed at the top of the market. LG did, as outlined above.  Their Prada won several design awards, and came out 7 months before the first iPhone.  LG has gone on record to say they believe the iPhone to be a copy of the Prada, but they didn’t sue.  Apple also did not include the App Store in the first iPhone: it was an add-on concept that was incorporated into the iPhone OS after it launched.  The first iPhone OS did not allow users to change ringtones or notification tones.  It did not allow any icon location changes, or allow users to remove unused icons.  Users could not set their own background wallpaper.  Third-party apps could not run at the same time as core apps, or at the same time as another third-party app.  In other words, despite its market-changing innovations, the first iPhone was in some ways much more backwards than the smartphones (and some feature phones) that preceded it.  But in many important ways, it was light-years ahead of most others.

Once Apple realized they had a hit on their hands, they did what they usually do: they released one phone per year that was only a slight improvement over the previous model.  To this day, the iPhone hardware hasn’t changed much fundamentally since it came out.  The hardware is prettier and more sophisticated, but it’s still a slab with a virtual keyboard and a 3.5-inch screen.

Android, recognizing the paradigm shift that the iPhone represented, shifted their OS development completely.  They went from a RIM-style OS to a more graphical, touch-based OS to compete with Apple.  However, their model was different: Google, the parent company of Android, was not a hardware company — and was not looking to become one at the time.  Instead, they made the Android OS ‘open-source’ and allowed hardware manufacturers to use it for free.  The OS received a major update at least once per year.  Users could change or alter Android phones however they chose, even replacing stock Android apps if they so desired.

Adoption was rapid; hardware manufacturers appreciated the ability to customize Android in their own unique way.  Almost overnight, big-time players like Palm and Microsoft became obsolete.  RIM stayed entrenched due to its enterprise ties, but began its slow death spiral.

By contrast, Apple maintained strict control of both the software and hardware of the iPhone, focusing on simplifying and improving the user experience. No apps could be added by carriers.  No third-party manufacturers could produce Apple-branded hardware.  All changes, additions, and interactions to change the contents of the phone had to be made through iTunes (with the obvious exceptions of the calendar and mail apps).  Users could not install unapproved third-party apps.  Apple released software updates specifically designed to wreck phones that had been ‘jailbroken’ to punish users who dared to defy Apple’s terms of service by installing unapproved apps.

Though Android was clunkier and not as smooth to use as iOS, Android quickly caught up to and surpassed iOS in features.  Palm threw a Hail Mary by developing webOS, which in some ways also surpassed iOS in features (wireless syncing, multitasking, synergy) and was just as simple (if not more simple) to use.  Unfortunately, Palm did not have the resources to compete with the tech giants: their lack of apps and lack of cash doomed them to failure and an eventual purchase by Hewlett-Packard (who proceeded to flush both webOS and their #1 computer business down the toilet in a series of horrible business decisions).   Microsoft, recognizing that Windows Mobile was no longer competitive in the consumer space, withdrew and returned with Windows Phone 7.  Though the core OS seems promising, it has thus far failed to gain traction in the market.  Nokia eventually threw in the MeeGo and Symbian towels to partner with Microsoft.  Though WP7 has not yet taken off, many analysts predict the Microsoft-Nokia team will eventually garner the #2 spot behind Android.

Android soon surpassed RIM as the #1 operating system for smartphones worldwide.  Apple grew tremendously, eventually passing RIM at #2 — but ultimately failed to keep pace with Android growth worldwide in spite of the fact that the iPhone 4 has long been the world’s best-selling single phone.  Eventually, Android’s runaway growth began to hurt Apple’s market share.  Today, Android OS phones make up 48% of the smartphone market, while Apple is second with about 19%.

There are several reasons for this, but first I’ll debunk some persistent and inaccurate theories.  First, there’s the notion that the iPhone’s exclusivity on one carrier held them back from surpassing Android (and RIM).  That might well be true in the United States.  However, there are many countries worldwide where the iPhone is available on multiple carriers.  Android-based phones outsell the iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 on almost every network in the world where both are offered, which accounts for Android’s substantial lead worldwide.  This also ignores the fact that when the iPhone was offered on Verzion and AT&T, the iPhone soon became the best-selling phone on America’s largest carrier…yet Android’s market share in the United States actually GREW during that timeframe.  These data points lead to the indisputable conclusion that people are in fact choosing Android phones instead of iPhones when offered a choice.

Another theory is that Android phones are simply grabbing the low end of the cellphone market, while Apple only seeks the high end; thus, Android’s lead is due to the millions of phone users who want the cheapest phones they can buy.  Again, this notion ignores some inconvenient truths, particularly in the United States (but also overseas).  Apple sells a cheaper iPhone (the 3GS).  In the United States, that phone can be had for as little as $50 on a 2-year contract.  So Apple does have a presence in the bargain-hunter market, at least for postpaid subscribers.  Apple currently does not offer prepaid iPhones, but that is their choice.  They could if they wanted to, and I have little doubt that they will in the future — but they do not today.

Additionally, the two biggest U.S. carriers are pushing Android phones because they are available with 4G connectivity and they have some exclusives to offer.  Since the iPhone is not an exclusive, Verizon and AT&T have less incentive to push them heavily.  Moreover, Samsung has sold millions of high-end Android phones.  Their Galaxy S and Galaxy S II phones have broken sales records in some countries, and the GS2 has been hailed by many reviewers as the world’s greatest smartphone – even besting the iPhone 4. The GS2 is selling even faster than the original Galaxy phones did, and Samsung’s smartphone sales have increased by 421% over the past 12 months.  Since the Galaxy phones are Samsung’s most popular devices, and because 4G and other heavily-pushed Android phones are as expensive (if not more expensive) than the iPhone 4, the “low-end market” theory simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.  Apple’s pricing is competitive, so other forces must be driving sales of competing products.

There are some consumer-oriented reasons for Android’s dominance as well.  Android’s OS has become more advanced than iOS in some important ways.  Heck, even webOS and WP7 are (or were) more advanced.  All other iOS competitors have offered a PC-free experience for years: there is no need to sync non-iOS phones directly to a PC to use them.  The iPhone will finally offer this with iOS 5, due next month.  Android and webOS offer an unobtrusive notification system, something that Apple will again finally offer with iOS 5.  Both competing platforms offer multitasking; Apple introduced a limited, clunky multitasking function with iOS 4, and will improve on it with iOS 5.  At this point, the only truly clear advantage iOS offers is the quality and breath of its App Store.  Anyone who cites Apple’s “ecosystem” as superior is referring to the App Store.  They certainly cannot be referring to iTunes, which has been a crappy piece of bloated inefficiency for years.  Thus, the previous iOS4 update and the next iOS5 update both pitched new features that catch up to the competition rather than surpassing them.

Consumers also gain something else by not choosing iOS: control over both hardware and software.  Android, WP7 and webOS software can be easily manipulated to improve functionality, and the software makers encourage this.  Apple actively tries to prevent such changes, and punishes users who engage in them.  Other platforms allow apps in their markets that are superior to the stock offerings.  Apple denies such apps, then incorporates developers’ ideas into their own core updates.

Much like Windows, Android does everything well enough (and in some cases, better) compared to iOS that people are willing to sacrifice a bit of hardware inconsistency and take a few more chances in exchange for extra flexibility.  It might not be quite as seamless and smooth as Apple’s OS, but it gets the job done and has become user-friendly enough for most people.

But this isn’t as big a deal to the average user as hardware choice is.   Apple sells 4 different iPods: the Touch, the Nano, the Shuffle, and the Classic.  all are different sizes, have slightly different interfaces, and are completely different hardware packages.  Inexplicably, they only sell two iPhones: the current one and the old one.  Why?  Who knows?  All I know is that it makes little sense if maximizing market share is a goal.  The company can certainly afford to make multiple iPhones for different users with different needs, just as they do the iPod.  Today, you can buy the following devices with Android installed: slates, touchscreen-only, tablets, phones with slide-out landscape keyboards, phones with portrait keyboards, phones with multiple touchscreens, phones with flip-out keyboards, phones with small screens, phones with large screens, phones with massive screens…the list is practically endless.  By contrast, Apple tries to push the same form factor to everyone, insisting it is the best choice for the most people.  Perhaps this is why we’ve heard so many rumors about what the next iPhone will look like, and why the rumors have varied so wildly (an iPhone with a keyboard?  Two new iPhones?  A bigger screen? Etc).  In the face of brutal competition, Apple needed additional time to determine what tweaks to make to their overall hardware/software/market strategy to stem the Android tide.

A big problem Apple faces today is that they cannot (or will not) release hardware as quickly as all the Android handset manufacturers can — particularly Samsung.  Samsung’s product turnaround is so fast that they scrapped a planned iPad competitor tablet when the iPad 2 came out, then released a new tablet only a few months later that was thinner, lighter, and had a nicer display than the iPad 2.

Apple simply cannot match that pace — and reacted to that chain of events by suing Samsung in as many places as they could in an attempt to block the release of the Samsung products that threaten Apple’s own offerings in both features and quality.  Most of the patent claims have no merit, but some clearly are aimed not at the manufacturers but at Android itself.  Even if just a few of them stick, Apple can at the very least position themselves to collect licensing fees from Android manufacturers.  The problem for consumers is that Apple appears to want much more than that: they seem to want the products blocked from the marketplace entirely.  I am not confident they will succeed everywhere in their efforts, but it does show that Apple fears the Android juggernaut will relegate them to the same level in the mobile space that they occupy in the PC space.

Actually, given the current market numbers, that destiny might have already come to pass.  That’s why I cannot wait to see what Apple does in October, when both the next iPhone and iOS 5 are scheduled to be released.  This might be the most important release for Apple since the original iPhone came out.  It may provide us with a sense of whether Apple can manage the continuous expectation of releasing amazing, mind-blowing and eye-popping new products in the space that has become the company’s lifeblood.  If the next iPhone is sufficiently impressive, perhaps they will begin to ascend the marketshare ranks again.  If not…well, they’ll still make craploads of money and be very successful.

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Posted in Geek Stuff, Musings, Rants and Raves

OBX 2011

Posted on September 8, 2011 by | Comments Off

I’m in the Outer Banks staying with a group of friends spread across two beach houses, as I’ve done the past two summers before this one.  The friends have been coming down here together for the past decade or so, and invited me 3 years ago for the first time.  It’s the longest vacation that I take each year, and the cheapest vacation I’ve found: $450 or so pays for room, board, and food.  In the area we stay in, there’s really not much to do in terms of going out.  This forces us to hang out together, play games together, sit and read books, catch up on our blogging (see what I did there?), and relax on the beach.  Our group welcomes significant others, but no kids are permitted.  It’s a great way to recharge the batteries, reflect on life, think of the future, and get drunk in private.  Hopefully I get to keep doing this for years to come.

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Posted in Events, Rants and Raves, Travels

The Devil You Don’t Know

Posted on August 5, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Friend of OP The Rob recently posted a pointed analysis of the recently-averted debt crisis.  While OP agrees with most of his conclusions and opinions, there are some key differences of opinion as well.

We agree that the Obama administration and Congress enabled hostage-taking.  We also agreed that Obama could have at least threatened to use the 14th Amendment to solve the crisis — though we disagree on the outcome of such a gambit.  We also agree that the standoff has ended up harming the United States in a manner similar to the default: with economics, perception is often reality, and the Republican hostage-taking strategy killed the confidence of both domestic and global investors in the United States economy at the worst possible time.

However, we disagree in some important areas as well.  We do not believe that the concessions to Republicans do not fit into Obama’s overall strategy.  Rather, OP thinks that the president continues to position himself as a moderate, and the sane adult in the room of Washington politics.  If anything, I think his strategy is far too focused on the 2012 election — and not focused enough on standing up for what’s best for the country.  At the same time, a second Obama term — free from the burder of campaigning for re-election — would provide him with a much better opportunity to take those principled stands so many left-wingers wish he would take.  Is he correct?  We will find out soon enough.

Many lefties decry the histrionic, tyrannical brush Obama is painted with, yet they rage when he compromises too much.  This doesn’t make much sense.  The fact is that gun sales skyrocketed when Obama got elected.  I actually have met people who believe he is a secret Muslim who is trying to establish a global empire.  Though the number of people who actually believe this is relatively small, their numbers are still far larger than they should be…as is their political power and influence, as many of the posters at Tea Party rallies will attest.  I know people who believe Obama’s appointment of czars is an attempt to circumvent the democratic process.

It is in this climate that liberals somehow are peeved that Obama didn’t threaten to use the 14th Amendment to force the issue.  It is in this environment that they wish Obama would cleave closer to liberal principles and be ‘tougher’.  So they believe his compromises appear weak.  Really?  I have news for those who haven’t quite internalized this core issue: just because the country elected a black president doesn’t mean the perceptions of his actions and behaviors are not subconsciously colored by bias.  I don’t believe any of Obama’s political actions have been any more controversial than the highlights and lowlights of any of the past 5 presidents before him.  In fact, I would argue that the most controversial thing Obama has done so far in office was give the order to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty in order to kill Osama bin Laden.

Reagan traded arms for hostages and supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons.  Reagan also raised taxes.  Clinton essentially ended the welfare state as we knew it (obviously the perjury was a “bigger deal”, and treated as such by the press and public).  W started two wars while lowering taxes, gutted FEMA to the point that the agency was unable to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina, and told people to go out and buy stuff two years after 9/11 and immediately after starting those two wars.  By comparison, Obama passed a landmark health care reform bill which may save money…but will also funnel even more money towards medical insurance companies due to his many compromises.  He also passed a recession stimulus package without raising taxes.

Yet when you compare the public perceptions of those Presidents, none of them had the type of off-the-wall accusations that Obama does.  Radical leftist idiots may have compared W to Hitler for starting two wars…we get that.  But lets be honest: starting two wars (one based on false pretenses) is a really big deal.  It’s a much bigger deal than passing a stimulus package and a health care bill.  They cost a lot more money and a lot more lives.  Yet far too many conservatives deny this inconsistency or ignore it completely.  Not too many conservatives or liberals accused Reagan, either Bush, or Clinton of a conspiracy to establish an Islamic caliphate in the United States, or a conspiracy to merge the United States into a world government with the help of George Soros, or a conspiracy to cover up their true religious affiliation, or a conspiracy to alter their birth certificate, or a conspiracy to cover up a nuclear meltdown in Nebraska, or…well, the list goes on and on and on.   Just Google any of those and you’ll see what we mean.

Those conservative acquaintances I have are totally missing the point when OP brings up how prejudice shapes people’s thoughts about President Obama.  They assume liberals believe that anyone who disagrees with his policies do so because they are racist, and think this this accusation is wielded like a club.  That might be true of the dumbest liberals, but it isn’t true of most.

What OP has been saying all along is that people’s prejudices alter people’s perceptions of and reactions to Obama subconsciously. The difference is subtle, but profound.  These prejudices are what lead otherwise-rational, intelligent people to believe that Obama’s health care plan is somehow worse than the second Iraq War or worse than Iran-Contra.

By the way, this type of perception-altering prejudice doesn’t just affect white people. Jesse Jackson once admitted that he is sometimes relieved when he suddenly senses a group of men close behind him in an urban setting when he realizes the men are white.  Some people latched onto his comments in order to validate their own racism.  However, what it actually reveals is that Jesse Jackson possesses an awareness of his own biases that the vast majority of people either lack completely or are incapable of confronting.  OP admits to prejudice at a similar level: these are the reactions one cannot control.  The reactions that are below most people’s level of awareness.  They are on our conscious fringes — but they affect all our interactions with people.  And there is plenty of psychological, peer-reviewed evidence to back it up (and you can Google even more than that).  It’s not even a personal failing: these attitudes are reinforced by the images and stories we get bombarded with every day of our lives.

Obama doesn’t look like past presidents.  He isn’t from a state that has produced any past presidents, or one that most Americans have visited.  He has a different religious history than any past president.  One of his parents is from a continent most Americans will never set foot on in their lifetimes.  All these facts affect people’s perceptions of his statements, gestures, attire, policies — you name it.

It’s the difference between attending anti-Clinton rallies around the country and attending Tea Party Rallies with guns. Do you remember any of the anti-W liberals showing up to rallies around the country with guns?  Neither do we.  It’s the difference between saying a President is a disgrace and a serious political candidate insinuating that armed insurrection may be needed to take back the country.  The militant left-wing Black Panther Movement took place in the 1970s, and was in part a reaction to more than 400 years of slavery and over 100 years of Jim Crow.  These right-wing incidents are from the past 2 years, and are a reaction to…what, exactly?  It’s not like Obama has even hinted at changing the Constitution in any way, particularly the Second Amendment.

So if subconscious prejudices aren’t at work, what else could explain this away?  Because the argument that Obama’s policies have hurt the country more than any of the policies or behaviors of the 4 presidents before him just doesn’t hold up under even semi-objective scrutiny.  About the worst that can be said is that the jury is still out on health care, the stimulus,  and the war in Afghanistan…but neither of those policies have yet made the obvious negative impact of the worst moments in the presidencies of his recent predecessors.  Republicans hailed Clinton (in a muted way) for helping to reform welfare laws, and hailed Bush for catching Saddam Hussein — yet when Obama made the risky and successful decision to hunt down bin Laden, most of the right-wing establishment acted as if Obama had little or nothing to do with the mission’s success.  It’s hard to imagine such a disdainful response to any of our prior presidents under similar circumstances.

It’s one thing to assert that one’s personal opposition to a particular policy does not equate to overt racism.  But it’s quite another to deny that the overall attitudes towards the president’s persona, statements, and policies are not in any way colored by subconscious prejudice.  There’s too much evidence floating around to the contrary.

And Obama knows this.  That’s why his administration is so easily baited by sleazeballs like Andrew Breitbart. When you’re a minority in a powerful position, you have to take extra care to avoid even the slightest hint of prejudice against the majority — lest you stoke the festering fears and expectations of a majority that is already uneasy about you for opaque reasons.  On a personal level, it’s why OP is extra careful around police, and extra-conscious of how I walk in the vicinity of non-black strangers after the sun goes down.  I’ve seen too many purses clutched, and had too many white people slow down and avoid me in (subconscious) fear to NOT fret over many seemingly-mundane moments with the knowledge that I may be “docked points” for nor presenting a religion/ethnicity/race/geographical origin/accent that the people immediately around me in a given moment are most comfortable with.  As one might imagine, those in the minority face this much more than those in the majority do.  Over time, you learn to pick up on the reactions.  The people doing the reacting usually do not.  When confronted about it directly,  denials flow stridently from our lips.  Few people are willing to admit these types of biases…even to themselves.

This is the reality in which Barack Obama’s presidency resides.  Obama will always be somewhat more compromising than he should be because his opposition is somewhat more vitriolic and inflexible than it should be. He will reach out harder towards the broad base of Americans than liberals would prefer because most Americans are a bit less tolerant (and more suspicious) of him than they should be…for the very simple reason that he isn’t part of a group that we are bombarded with positive images of from the day we are born.  This reality does render him weaker than he should be.  It does render him more powerless in certain situations.  But despite the liberal beliefs to the contrary, it isn’t his fault, he doesn’t deserve it — and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it besides playing the cards he’s been dealt.

There are a lot of people who don’t want to believe this, because they want to cling to the notion that the USA is a place where these forces can be overcome through sheer talent and willpower.  For the record, I am one of those people.  But my desire is tempered with a firmer belief that reality doesn’t always fit our ideals.

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Posted in Events, Politik, Race, Rants and Raves

Losing His Republicanism

Posted on August 2, 2011 by | Comments Off

A conservative friend of mine recently told me that he no longer considers himself a Republican. When I asked him why, he said it was because of the party’s newfound over-the-top anti-tax zealotry.

This friend is both politically and socially conservative.  As a religious man, he sees the adamant refusal by Republican leaders to even close existing tax loopholes as possessing most of the trappings of ecclesiastical fervor.

The United States is a country that taxes corporations, like most first-world countries do.  Except that the larger the corporation is, the less they pay.  The absurdity of the existing tax code has resulted in companies like GE and Google paying zero corporate taxes in 2010.

Other nations would consider this state of affairs a disgrace.  Individuals get punished for not paying taxes, but corporations are allowed to legally avoid them? I can guarantee these companies pay taxes and/or tariffs to the governments of most of the countries they operate in…but not their own.

It’s not a stretch to liken this corporate behavior to those who attend church each Sunday, partake of the occasional free meals and services, but never put money in the collection plate.  Except that paying taxes isn’t supposed to be voluntary for either individuals or corporations – it is supposed to be mandatory for both.  Private nonprofits lack the resources to aid the sick, needy, and poor on their own; moreover, it is government’s responsibility to provide defense and infrastructure to protect us from enemies both at home and abroad.

Goods and services don’t get cheaper year over year: these things cost money.  The only way governments can get more money is through taxation.  This burden is not just for individuals to bear: it is also the responsibility of businesses to bear, since their activity is facilitated by government expenditures on entitlements, infrastructure, and defense.

So it makes some degree of sense that my friend is repulsed by the rhetoric coming out of his now-former political party.  In theory, this country’s individuals and businesses should be willing to sacrifice to pay the bills that the government has accumulated primarily on behalf of the entities it serves.  In practice, many seem unwilling to pay a dime if they can find a way not to.

On an individual level, a pious man does not accumulate debt and then refuse to tap into his life savings to pay it off.  What one-income family facing extreme financial difficulty would refuse to become a two-income family if the situation was extreme enough?

It is an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance that so many Congressional Republicans have insisted that the government needs to pay down its debts and stop deficit spending without arming the government with additional resources to do so.  In this fantasy world, the federal government got to this point without anybody outside of government voting for its leaders or supporting unfunded policies.  We put these people in charge over the years.  Since we helped to create and perpetuate government’s problems, we should reasonably expect to sacrifice to solve them as well.

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Posted in Events, Friends, Politik, Rants and Raves, Uncategorized

[Review] The Lonely Island: Turtleneck and Chain

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | Comments Off

I obtained the new Lonely Island album with a great deal of anticipation.  After all, I loved their debut Incredibad, an album that has seen many of its tracks reach legendary status by way of several Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts shared virally.   Incredibad was like a hip-hop-only Weird Al Yankovic for the modern era: edgier, slicker, and less milquetoast than any of Al’s albums.  The songs were catchy even without lyrics…and the lyrics were ridiculous, funny, and easily enjoyed again and again.  Incredibad was a random bolt from the blue: Nobody could have predicted that “Lazy Sunday”, “Dick In A Box” and “I’m On A Boat” would end up featured on an album where even the unreleased tracks were catchy and funny.

But this is 2011, and this time around The Lonely Island released this album that had actual expectations attached to it.  Turtleneck and Chain is a decent sophomore effort, but it fails to live up to them.  The slick production is still there in spades, and shines particularly brightly on the opening track (“We’re Back”, which brilliantly and perfectly lampoons every overblown rap album intro track ever recorded).

Sadly, it’s (almost) all downhill from there: “I Just Had Sex”, “Jack Sparrow”, and “Threw It On The Ground” are almost as strong but not as novel.  Even though the album ends on a high note with “No Homo”, there are too many tracks that rely on a single joke to sustain their value.  (This in spite of the fact that the group deliberately limits song lengths to 3 minutes or less.)  Tracks like “Attracted To Us”, “Motherlover”, and “After Party” are worthy of re-listens.  Unfortunately, too many tracks (“Mama”, “Rocky”, “Shy Ronnie 2″, “Trouble on Dookie Island”, “Japan”) are far too reflective of the negatives that have crippled Saturday Night Live for at least a decade: they feature one joke repeated over and over; that single joke isn’t very funny to begin with; and the ‘skit’ certainly doesn’t hold up to repeated ‘viewings’ once the initial shock value of the joke has worn off.  The seemingly-arbitrary omission of the highly amusing “Iran So Far” from the album doesn’t help.

Though the album isn’t really bad, Turtleneck and Chain leaves the impression that The Lonely Island’s fake rap career might be best served with some time spent away from the show that helped make them famous.
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Posted in Events, Music, Rants and Raves

An important event happened two weekends ago, or so I heard. (Updated)

Posted on May 9, 2011 by | Comments Off

For about the first 36 hours, I was stunned: a secret Muslim who isn’t even a real U.S. citizen and might possibly be the Antichrist, and who seems determined to use his position as President to push communism onto real Americans, somehow managed to pull off what Bush Sr., Clinton, and W all failed to when they were president: he gave a successful order to kill Osama bin Laden in a high-risk operation in a foreign country.*

*Above statements about Obama may be satirical.

Naturally, some U.S. residents responded either with wildly-inappropriate public displays of joy, or by promptly avoiding crediting Obama with his decision, or by glorifying the military-industrial complex, or by advocating torture and interpreting the event as a sign that all the civil-rights-violating that has gone on since 9/11 was justified.  Or with conspiracy theories that bin Laden isn’t really dead.  Even the birthers haven’t entirely quit.

It’s amazing how much more a non-white person has to do to impress white people, isn’t it?  Before you go off and claim this isn’t about race or parental national origin, ask yourself: was the scrutiny of McCain’s birth on a military base in Panama this high while he was running for president?  Was it this high for anyone who has ever run for president, since Obama isn’t the only presidential candidate (or President) who has had one or more foreign-born parents?

Being born a United States citizen of foreign-born parents, I have watched the exploitative media coverage and the continuous attempt by white American birthers to “otherize” our President with great disgust.  Having foreign-born parents doesn’t make you less of an American.  Being born in Hawaii doesn’t, either.  And my own copy of my birth certificate sucks, for the record.  If the birthers think Obama’s copy is unconvincing, they’d have a field day with mine.  It’s just absurd — and the coverage puts paid to the notion of a “liberal media”.  A truly liberal media would do with the birthers what every other news outlet would have done with them in the 1980s: ignore them and pretend they didn’t exist.  That’s how people with crazy ideas were treated in the past.  Sadly, the media (both old and new) have realized that they can leverage crazy into clicks and ratings, so here we are in 2011 having to put up with a ton of useless noise.

This is why my parents always told me that I had to do much better than my peers in schoool and at work.  It wasn’t enough to outperform them, they said; I had to kick their butts.  Sadly, that didn’t work for Obama now that he is president, despite his academic achievements.  People like Trump now want to see his college records.  Nobody asked to see W’s mediocre college records, but something is fishy about Obama’s…for some reason.  Certainly a reason completely unrelated to implicit racism or “otherness”, I’m sure.

If GWB had pulled this off, wouldn’t he be receiving credit?  How fast would the conservative pundits gotten on their knees to fellate W if he had managed to catch and kill bin Laden?  Oh wait–some of them fellated him anyway.

It’s simple, really: there was no other way for the wingnuts and Birthers to react.   In the face of overwhelming evidence that a Democratic president dedicated the requisite resources, risked failure and international hostility, chose a dangerous course to minimize civilian casualties and recover valuable evidence, and managed to take out the United States’ most wanted man by utilizing some of the best-trained soldiers on earth to the applause of most of the world…well, the Obama-is-Satan crowd either had to reinvent reality to fit their ongoing narrative or watch their own heads explode.  The truth — that Obama’s decision took gigantic brass balls to make, that he took decisive action, and that his oversight helped make it happen — is simply too contrary to their opinions of him to accept.

What makes this even better is re-watching the way Obama eviscerated Trump as the correspondents’ dinner.  He said all that with a perfect poker face, and by playing along with everything — even as he was making a legacy-defining decision.  It makes Trump’s flailing accusations seem even more absurd than they already were.  Who knew that was even possible?

None of this schadenfreude is intended to suggest that OP generally endorses extrajudicial (or even interjudicial) killing.  Nor does OP shamelessly root for Obama regardless of what he does.  The President’s record on civil rights and the War on Terror is a hypocritical joke compared with what he claimed he would do as a candidate.  He has embarrassingly walked back on promises to close Guantanamo, scale back the Patriot Act, and try foreign terror suspects the same way we try everyone else.  His Congress-assisted giveaways to the financial and health insurance industries may cripple this country in the long term.  OP also does not celebrate when someone is killed, regardless of how bad that person was in life.

But we are realists, and real life doesn’t always present ideal circumstances or choices.  Some people won’t come quietly.  Some people prefer death to capture.  Some countries won’t extradite criminals, and some flout international law egregiously, just as the United States does.  It seems clear that Osama was living in Pakistan, right under the noses of the military establishment, for the better part of a decade in a conspicuous house that the Pakistani government claimed to have no knowledge of.  It is also clear he was continuing to plan attacks against the United States.  Given his murder toll, the bottom line is that the world is almost certainly better off without bin Laden in it.  Thus, a sense of relief is warranted.

OP also does not support the various fringes who have used this event to piggyback their own causes by denigrating the accomplishment.   I’m looking at you, libertarians and progressives. I agree with little pieces of each of those articles, but both of them go way too far.  I don’t see anyone credible arguing that killing bin Laden justifies everything that led up to his execution.  I also don’t see anyone credible arguing that killing bin Laden makes the erosion of our rights (or the failure of the USA to adequately take care of its citizens) acceptable.  Attacking strawmen might generate discourse, but it isn’t very convincing to anyone but the choir.

Though the removal of such a powerful figure might allow us in the first world to breathe a bit easier, it does not make us any less vulnerable to attack.  So our suggestion is to reflect, express some relief, take stock in what we’ve lost over the years, and figure out how to remain focused on both safety and prosperity without compromising the principles that our governments claim to defend.

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Posted in News, Politik, Rants and Raves

Being Politically Incorrect vs. Being a Jerk

Posted on April 8, 2011 by | Comments Off

There are certain people and groups in this country that hide behind their rude, prejudiced and sometimes out-and-out racist behaviors and attitudes that use accusations of ‘political correctness’, stand-up comedy, and/or moral relativity as cover.  This short video provides a thorough response to all of them.

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Posted in Humor, Race, Rants and Raves, Websites

Bojangles Verdict

Posted on April 4, 2011 by | 2 Comments

I finally got to try Bojangles, fried chicken and biscuits because they opened their first DC branch ever.  Friends of mine raved about it.  The grand opening featured a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a pre-ribbon-cutting prayer, a muscular chicken mascot, free food samples — and a line longer than a football field for the first couple of days it was open.  Pretty amazing for a chicken chain opening a branch in a food court.

I grabbed some on my way home from work on Friday night.  I’d never had Bojangles before, so I was intrigued.  The verdict?  Meh.

The ‘dirt y rice’ was decent, but not as good as Popeyes’ rice varieties.  The chicken was good, but not great; again, I’d place the taste ahead of KFC and behind Popeyes.  The biscuit was the only thing that met expectations.

I can only imagine the lines are so long because it’s new.  Given a few weeks, the line there should revert back to levels appropriate to serving fried chicken in a city whose yuppie SWPL population is growing.

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Posted in Events, Musings, Work