Lively Debate

James Robertson blogs about Enterprise and Farscape: The PeaceKeeper Wars.

The Peace Keeper wars does seem to tie up the FarScape series. I've just finished Tivoing the whole series. I can now say i've seen them all. I really enjoyed the show as a whole. I think that it had outstanding writing, characterization, and creativity. I thought the capping mini-serious was a little too fast and tried to cover too much ground. Its like they took their outline for an entire season and condensed it into 4 episodes. I think it would have been an incredible season. Some things that they didn't quite pull off in the mini-series (Rigel's temporary pregnancy) would have worked in a more extended format.

I watched the first few episodes of Enterprise, but that series has just never caught my attention. I have always been a trek fan, but the show is just boring. They need to bring in a new creative team. The series jumped the shark to corporate franchise dull.

I've also been Tivoing the Angel series. I am a huge Buffy fan. However, last nights episode stunk.

Well, I went to the bar last night and watched part of the baseball game, but through the magic of the PVR, I watched the debate this morning and here are my comments. As before, I have seen no third party analysis.

One thing that I noticed was that Kerry's standby topic, the one he used when he wanted to avoid a question or to use up time was health care. Bush's standby topic was education.

I think Bush did poorly addressing the issues of job loss and minimum wage. He mostly avoided them by going to his standby education answer. I think Kerry scored some points here, although I really dislike the idea of a manufacturing jobs tax credit. The last thing we need is another industry specific government subsidy.

I think Bush did a really good job of answering the question about why health care costs are so high: lack of accountability, lawsuits, and inefficiency. Kerry had a couple good points on the cost side too, namely drug re-importation and more preventive medicine.

Both candidates left one out. We are simply buying more health care. For example, if you got AIDS 20 years ago, you just died quickly. Now, you can live much longer, but with expensive treatment. There is more health care available to buy and we are eager purchasers.

The problems with healthcare costs need to be solved my reducing the costs, not simply re-distributing them.

One thing I noticed about Kerry is that he has a political poker tell. Whenever he disagrees with someone, instead of saying that, he says "I respect your views." Maybe I am simply stating the obvious. I've been accused of that before. A good example was in the religion question where Kerry says "I respect everything that the president just said." What he really means is "I disagree with everything the president just said." He uses that phrasing on the abortion issue, too.

Bush introduced the gay marriage amendment. I'm not sure, but I think this may be a politically better position for Bush. However, I do not think that the Constitution is the appropriate place to resolve this issue.

The debate was supposed to be about domestic affairs, but Bush had the opportunity to bring up Kerry's terrorism nuisance comments. Bush also brought up the fact that Kerry voted against Gulf War I, raising the question of just how many allies did Kerry think was necessary to go to war. I thought it was a good point and one that hadn't occurred to me before. Bush also tried to label Kerry's iraq policy as retreat and defeat. I think we will hear more of this phrase for the rest of the election.

One thing I noticed over the three debates is that Kerry seemed very well prepared for all three, while Bush did not seem prepared for the first one. I think I can understand why. Kerry's position of Iraq really was unclear and inconsistent. To Kerry's credit, he seemed to be able to forge a consistent message about Iraq about a week before the first debate. I don't think the Bush campaign was prepared for the possibility that Kerry might do that. The first debate was characterized by Bush's failure to rebut Kerry's new iraq message. He spent the next two debates in some way catching up for this original failure.

Overall, it was a great series of debates about real issues. I have to say that I think this election has been one of the more important with more real difference in opinion than any of the others that I have voted in.

Well, I watched the debate again tonight. Unfortunately, I missed the VP debate because I forgot to record it.

I thought this was a good debate with real discussion over the issues.

The first part about Iraq was a little more refined than the first debate. Kerry avoided talking about his summit idea. Bush had to bring it up himself. If you strip away the hindsight and recriminations and look at plans for the future, Kerry's plan for iraq seems to reduce to get more allies. However, he doesn't say who these allies would be and what they would do and why they would join him and not Bush. I think the Iraq point goes to Bush. It is good for Kerry that Iraq will be off limits in the last debate.

Kerry's best moment was the Canadian Drug reimportation issue. Its a good idea, Bush should have done it like he said he would.

I think Bush also has a point with medical malpractice and the real cost being the practice of defensive medicine. I've blogged about tort reform before.

Kerry's response on the abortion question was terrible and meandering.

During the Patriot Act question, Bush was almost going to quote the constitution and then stopped himself. I think if he hadn't that would probably been the quote of the day tomorrow.

I think this format was a little better for Bush. He was able to show a little personal warmth and make a couple of jokes.

I was wrong about the last debate, apparently, but I think Bush came out a little bit ahead in this one. As before, These are my impressions before I have seen any third party commentary.

Well, I watched the debate tonight. Who won? I think its a tie, but only due to Bush's dismal public speaking skills.

Bush's Overall Message: You are safer with me. What I am doing in Iraq makes you safer. Kerry has no consistent position on iraq.

I think bush did a good job of driving in the central message through sheer tongue twisted repetition. Every question came around to one or all of these points.

Kerry's Message: Bush an incompetent liar. I can do better.

Kerry's ability to actually answer the questions that he was asked dilutes his ability to come out of the debate with a memorable message. You try summarizing Kerry's overall messaage in 80 characters or less. When I typed out the bush summary above, it was a no brainer. I had to pause and think for a while to summarize Kerry's overall message. And I just watched the debate. What will you remember tomorrow? point to Bush.

My first impression was that Kerry wanted to trap bush in the "friendly tall man handshake of death" and that bush doesn't want to be seen anywhere near Kerry. minor point to Kerry.

I think Kerry had some inconsistencies in his responses that a more agile debater than bush might have taken advantage of to reinforce his message about Kerry's consistency. Kerry claimed that we didn't have enough allies in iraq, and that we have too many in North Korea. Kerry claimed that we relied too much on American troops in Iraq instead of allies, and that we relied too much on allies instead of American troops in Afghanistan (Tora Bora).

In a rare display of minor debating ability, Bush seemed to partially dismantle Kerry's claim that he can recruit new allies for Iraq. I think this claim will be further dismantled and disected by the press, pundits and surrogates over the next few days. As it should. It seems to be the central point of Kerry's plan for Iraq (assuming that summits are a part of recruiting allies).

Bush missed an opportunity when Kerry talked about not confusing the warrior with the war to bring up Kerry's congressional war crimes testimony. This may be the next swift boat vets ad.

Bush visibly changed on the war widow question. He seems more human and less politician at these moments. (unlike Kerry's fake laugh at the second question.)

Anyway, those are my impressions. I haven't seen any third party analysis of the debate yet. I'll catch up on that tommorrow.

Judge Richard Posner's arguments that global warming is a bigger problem that malaria seem misguided to me.

Malnutrition and malaria are serious problems too, but one effect of eliminating them would be to cause a population surge, which would in turn increase global warming, because added population means added energy demands (met primarily by burning fossil fuels) and added food demands (met in part by deforestation).

So it would be bad if less people died of malnutrition and malaria? I guess when you live in Chicago, Malaria and global warming are equally abstract and far off problems. The 300 million people who get malaria each year and one million people who die from it might set different priorities given the chance.

The Copenhagen consensus is all about reasonable priorities.

I'm sick. I had an ear infection / strep throat last month, but I misread the instructions on the antibiotics and took 1 twice a day instead of 2 twice a day (half dose). The antibiotics worked ok for the first few days. I felt well enough to wrap up some client work, and was planning on pushing out the next WACT release last week and the first three days of this week.

Unfortunately, about the time I started wondering why my anti-biotics weren't gone, my strep came back and with a vengeance. I went to the doctor and got a new antibiotic, but this one seems to be very slow acting, or I have some sort of nasty super bug.

I think I must look pretty bad, because no-one seems to want to get near me. Which is a shame. Yesterday was our annual family reunion. I understand that this one went well, adding some live music on friday night in addition to some of the other traditional activities over the weekend. I heard them announce 93 attendees at the sunday dinner. Unfortunately, none of them wanted much to do with me. My cousins did take some pity on me, especially my cousin Sara.

Anybody got a PHP job in Atlanta? Sara lives in Atlanta and I think she would really like it if I moved out there. I'm very tempted. I miss visiting her when she was in Ann Arbor.

So, I am completely and utterly sick of watching TV. My brother finally brought me the John Stossel book and I read it this weekend. I had no idea how much of a libertarian he was. I did enjoy the book and I'll probably post a more complete review. Reading stossel's book has prompted me to finally pick up Atlas Shrugged. I've read the Fountainhead, but have been putting Atlas off for some time.

I've lost almost 10 pounds since I've picked up this nasty infection. I'm Down to 168. Four more pounds would put me below a BMI of 25 and make me skinnier than 60% of the men my age. (Nice BMI Calculator) I was almost shocked to see my face in the mirror today. Gaunt was the first word to come to mind, but actually, I look more like did before hypothyroidism and McDonalds made my cheeks puffy.

I'll end this whining diary entry with that and return you to the normal professional / political content.

The horse race political story of the day seems to be why the DNC last week had such a small effect on the presidential race poll numbers this week.

The democratic spin is that no bounce was expected because the race is close and people have made up their minds.

I have my own theory. I tried to watch Kerry's speech last week, but I fell asleep sometime after his daughters hamster CPR story and woke up to a bunch of talking heads after the speech was over. I tried to find out what Kerry said, but the CNN analysis crew seemed to be more interested in complimenting each other than re-capping Kerry's speech. As I recall, only one sound bit clip was replayed. I tuned in to Lou Dobbs the next day, and the speech was hardly covered. My theory is that the speech wasn't memorable or newsworthy enough to fuel a bounce. I say this without having seen the speech, which I'd still like to watch.

It hardly matters if there is a bounce or not except to the the horserace watchers who will have to wait to see if Bush gets a bounce to evaluate the reality of the idea that everyone has made up their minds. Those attempting the "minds made up" spin might be setting themselves up for some uncomfortable questions should Bush eek out a bounce after the RNC.

Hopefully, I will be able to stay awake for Bush's RNC speech. At least he usually manages to avoid mangling the language in the highly rehearsed speeches such as this.

John Stossel has an interesting article on unintended consequences of lawsuits. I have wondered why the number C-sections keeps rising. Is it true that three fourths of all obstetricians have been sued?

I watched John Stossel on CSPAN and he made a compelling argument against some lawsuits. He talked about how as a consumer reporter for ABC, lawyers would try to hand him ready made stories on the supposed dangers of this product as the first stage in developing a class action lawsuit. After this, I think twice now about the objectivity and accuracy of the various X considered harmful stories when I see one on the news.

I told my mom about seeing Stossel on CSPAN and she bought his book and enjoyed it. She gave it to my brother to bring to me and I am looking forward to getting it one of these days.

I can see a need for tort reform when lawyers set up lawsuit factories to practice legal extortion. Would you vote for Edwards if he were formerly a lawyer for Acacia or SCO? I would like to see more information on Edward's trial cases before the election.

UPDATE: NYT article on Edwards trial work including more information on Cerebral Palsy C-section lawsuits.

This post was inspired by seeing a Marine's post on Kuro5hin: Marine fights Altovis charges.

With slick commercials designed to look like those of FDA approved drugs and the supposed cure to a nonspecific disease that everyone has (who is not tired?), I have to grudgingly admire Altovis as the pinnacle of the craft of selling snake oil.

It turns out that the same company, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, that makes Altovis makes Enzyte and Avlimil. If you haven't watched commercial TV lately, Enzyte is marketed as "natural male enhancement" (penis pills) with a series of slick commercials full of double entendre.

The non-specificity of Altovis for fatigue may only be exceeded by the non-specificity of their new product: Numovil for memory loss. Who doesn't forget things? Beware. Evil marketing genius at work.

There is an Enzyte class action lawsuit against the makers of these products claiming that they billed customer's credit cards without authorization. Corey Nahman's summaries of Altovis, Avlimil and especially Enzyte do a good job of documenting the complicated billing procedures that trick people and form the basis for the class action lawsuit. They also do a good job of explaining how BPN is very careful not to claim that their products actually do anything.

Acording to this article, the company employs 800 people and will make $260 million dollars this year. After reading this, I have to wonder, is it only in America that the headline here is "entrepreneur makes tons of money selling snake oil."

Quack Watch has a wealth of information about nutritional supplement scams.

I took this picture of my photogenic grandmother today. She recently had her 80th birthday and overcome cancer and is sporting her spectacular new post-cancer 'do. She has an iMac and is proficient at sending email.

Last week, we went to a church potluck. Although it was a somewhat poorly attended, they had rhubarb pie there, and I really like rhubarb pie. Those church ladies really know their pies. Afterwards, we watched some old home videos from the church that had been transfered to video tape. My great grandfather was in the movies, as he had helped build the roof to an addition on the church some 50 years ago.

Since I discovered how nice the park is here in town, I have been planning a lunch time picnic for us in the park. Perhaps I can take more pictures then.

I just got back from the last of a string of spring parties (graduation, birthdays, babies, etc.) I heard one of the most extraordinary lines of thought today. A woman in three sentences or less was able to draw a direct and dire connection between gay marriage and terrorist attacks on the United States. I came late to the conversation, but to the best of my ability to recall, her reasoning was as follows: The gay marriage is weakening the superior moral position of this country. The attack on 9/11 is a sign that God no longer favors this country and has withdrawn his special protection. Therefore, if gay marriage is made legal on a federal level, we can expect terrorist attacks right here in rural America. Apparently the vanguard of this local terrorism will be middle eastern doctors. (American born doctors don't want to service poor rural areas such as where this woman lives.)

I guarantee that this woman will vote. Part of this woman's pitch was to get others to vote.

After listening to this, I am struck by how little it actually matters if there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11.

I don't think those outside the US quite realize the deep and permanent effect that the attacks of 9/11 had on this country. They should not mistake a temporary political alliance between Bush's domestic political enemies and the anti-war effort as indicative of long term or deeply held American opinion.

I went shopping at Wal-Mart today. I live in a small, rural town, population 2,000. Until last January, there were only two grocery stores in town: Glenn's and Brian's Meat Market. Glenn's is a traditional grocery store and Brian's carries only meat and produce. Generally, Brian's produce was both cheaper and better quality than Glenn's, with some occasional fantastically good and cheap bulk seasonal produce. Since one store was across the street from the other, we generally bought our produce at one and then the rest of our goods at the other.

Six months ago Wal-Mart came to town. This was a pretty big event around here. Almost everyone from the area talked about it endlessly. On the first few opening days, the isles were clogged with people standing around chatting. (everyone knows everyone here). Gangs of high school kids roamed the store. This was the social event of the season. Almost everyone went to see the new store. The parking lots of Glenn's and Brian's were ghost towns.

Then a few weeks later, I started hearing people talk about how they liked the new store, but that the checkout lines were slow. They started to talk about how their prices on some goods wasn't really any lower than the other two stores. After the opening, Wal-Mart started adjusting its prices upward to match the other local stores. The parking lots of the other stores started to fill up again. The parking lot of Wal-Mart started to dwindle on weekdays. Wal-Mart missed their opportunity to fully capture the market in the area mostly because they didn't staff their checkout lines.

Now, six months later, there is another side effect of the Wal-Mart invasion: reduced quality. Wal-Mart has very low grocery prices on a lot of goods. However, if you look at the ingredients on their cheaper store brands you will find that these are often inferior quality goods. They are highly processed and loaded with high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. I bought chip dip there that was as awful as it was cheap. It contained mostly water and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, with enough food science magic to make it look like they weren't selling watered down white margarine and calling it chip dip. The produce at our Wal-Mart store is shameful beyond normal grocery store tasteless produce shame (R.I.P. tomato). I've seen mold on their lemons and grapes in the store.

Unfortunately, the reduced quality is not limited to Wal-Mart. The buzz around town is about how the other two stores, Glenn's and Brian's have lowered the cost and the quality of their goods to compete. I used to like to buy the french bread loaves from the Glenn's bakery, but since Wal-Mart, they have switched suppliers and the new loaves are inedible, but cost half as much. I won't buy the new loaves at all. Glenn's has stopped selling Stonyfield yoghurt, the only brand they sold that does not contain high fructose corn syrup. They still sell Breyers, which has less HFCS than others for .65 a container. Wal-Mart sells the same thing for .50 per container. Neither store sells a non-HFCS yoghurt, so why would I buy yoghurt at glenns? The Wal-Mart brand of yoghurt sells for .33 per container, but contains more HFCS than fruit. Today I heard that others have been complaining about Brian's produce quality going downhill.

Fast Company has a fascinating article on Wal-Mart and its relationship with suppliers. Apparently, they require their suppliers to reduce their prices every year on the same goods. For many suppliers, Wal-mart may sell 25% or more of all of their goods. They can successfully pressure suppliers to lower and lower prices. For some suppliers the demands force them to improve their operations and improve their business. For others, it forces them to simply cheapen their goods.

Based on my perception, the Wal-Mart juggernaught is not unstoppable. I would not want to compete with them in the area of price on brand name products, nor on price for store brand products. Their achilles heal is quality. It is not far from being known for carrying cheap products (low prices are good) to being known for carrying cheap goods (low quality is bad). Ask K-mart what its like to get a reputation for selling junk.

One last thing. I couldn't help but notice how many of the shoppers at Wal-Mart were, well, fat. I don't it is a coincidence that the seriously obese shop at the store with the cheapest most abundant highly processed foods and the worst produce.

Wired has an article, The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking, about Alton Brown and the Good Eats show. I have to admit that I am addicted to that show. I am not the only one of my geek friends who is and it seems from Slashdot that AB has a geek following. I probably have about 50 episodes saved on the PVR waiting for me to try the recipes. This weekend I made the Pate a Choux from Choux Shine and filled them with the Lemon Curd from the Egg-Files episode. Yum.

Rumsfeld talks about the power of words versus pictures in his testimony before congress:

Words don't do it. The words that there were abuses, that it was cruel, that it was inhumane, all of which is true, that it was blatant, you read that and it's one thing.

You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged...

I heard speculation on NPR this weekend that the power of pictures to create an emotional impact and a believable impression was due to the relatively new evolution of the use of language in our brains versus the relatively old processing of sight.

The combination of the internet and digital photography has left the US powerless to halt Iraq net images. Clay Shirky compares new free production and distribution of images to the free production and distribution of text from the printing press. He wonders what the Protestant Revolution of the Digital Image age will be.

While the shocking images of American wrong doing dominates the established newscasts, various blogs work to distribute images that tell a different story of the war in Iraq.

Congress can tackle some of the negative consequences of spontaneous photography. But I wonder if there is also a price to be paid for too much transparency? The sausage might be tastier without the images of what went into it. Focusing too much on one thing one can lose sight of the big picture. Observation changes the result. There may be some political problems that can be solved by a back-room deal between elected representatives that could never be solved under the scrutiny of the 24 hour news cycle and polarized watchful constituencies. Is there a role for secrecy in government just as there is a role for privacy for individuals?

I wonder what new institutions this revolution will bring?

It sounds like an over the top scene from an action movie, but this is not fiction:

While leading his platoon north on Highway 1 toward Ad Diwaniyah, Chontosh's platoon moved into a coordinated ambush of mortars, rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire. With coalitions tanks blocking the road ahead, he realized his platoon was caught in a kill zone.

He had his driver move the vehicle through a breach along his flank, where he was immediately taken under fire from an entrenched machine gun. Without hesitation, Chontosh ordered the driver to advanced directly at the enemy position enabling his .50 caliber machine gunner to silence the enemy.

He then directed his driver into the enemy trench, where he exited his vehicle and began to clear the trench with an M16A2 service rifle and 9 millimeter pistol. His ammunition depleted, Chontosh, with complete disregard for his safety, twice picked up discarded enemy rifles and continued his ferocious attack.

When a Marine following him found an enemy rocket propelled grenade launcher, Chontosh used it to destroy yet another group of enemy soldiers.

When his audacious attack ended, he had cleared over 200 meters of the enemy trench, killing more than 20 enemy soldiers and wounding several others.

Armed with this page for science fiction and this page for horror, I wonder if its possible to create a metric for television science fiction shows: percent cliche episodes per season.

PCES: A scientific method for determining when your favorite sci fi show has Jumped the Shark?

(Cliche links via boing boing)

David Coursey has a thoughtful, well written piece Offshoring is Bad for America.

Too bad he is wrong. There are several faulty premises at work here.

One would only worry about "lost" jobs to cheap foreign labor markets if one believed that those markets had an advantage in developing software. I do not believe this is true, or at least remains to be seen.

Martin Fowler summarizes a presentation given by the Standish Group.

SACWIS is a child welfare system that all the states in the US must implement. He stated that Florida began its SACWIS system in 1990 with an original cost estimate of $32 million for delivery in 1998 with a development team of around a 100 people. When they last looked the new cost was $170 million due to ship in 2005. He pointed out the state of Minnesota has to build the same capability with pretty much the same demographic issues as Florida - leading to very much the same broad system requirements. Minnesota started work in 1999, finished in 2000 with eight people costing $1.1 million.

This is a staggering example of the variation in productivity: A 200 to 1 cost differential between two nearly identical projects. To put this in the context of outsourcing, Minnesota could have paid each of the developers on their project $10 million per year and STILL developed a system sooner and cheaper than Florida. Labor cost is only one variable is a complex equation.

Do jobs in projects like Florida's deserve legislative protection? Do jobs in projects like Minnesota's need it?

I've seen the arguments of outsourcing doom sayers a decade ago in The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, which were followed later by the embarrassing retraction of The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer.

Coursey does admit one positive of outsourcing:

On one level, I support creating more jobs in underdeveloped countries. Economic injustice and underdevelopment was one of the key motivators for World War II as well as the current turmoil in the Arab world. It is in our best interest to spread the wealth, at least enough to keep the peace.

But he fails to draw the counter intuitive conclusions of the economic theory of comparative advantage. That is higher wages in underdeveloped countries mean larger markets for American goods, and thus more jobs here in America.

Self professed liberal Coursey thinks that higher prices is worth the higher costs of protectionism:

customers should be willing to pay a bit more not to purchase offshored products and services

But, trade protection is a regressive tax. It hurts the poor more than it hurts the rich. Increased buying power for America's poor is a frequently overlooked benefit of the lower costs due to offshore outsourcing.

Additionally, any protective legislation would amount to corporate welfare, much like the sugar industry protection has turned into a corporate welfare gold mine for ADM. Shielded from competition, American software development would be unable to compete overseas and jobs would be lost. Protectionism is a boon for lobbyists and corruption. Think of the shady accounting that Coursey's tax scheme would encourage.

Worse, holding people in jobs for which they have no relative advantage is an inefficiency that slows the growth of the entire economy. I don't accept that the United States cannot compete in the world software development market. But, if that were so, there would be opportunity costs for holding workers in dead end jobs, instead of allowing them to shift to the jobs that the theory of comparative advantage suggests will be available.

Easing the plight of workers caught in any such shift is a laudable goal and has the advantage of being temporary, while protectionism is notoriously difficult to remove. If this is a problem that requires government action, let the government give money to the workers in the form of training, education and small business grants and loans. Do not give money to corporations in the form of industry protections.

Interestingly the presumably conservative CEO of Intel and the liberal David Coursey can agree on one aspect of the outsourcing debate: The need for education reform.

I haven't really bought into the sky is falling outsourcing paranoia peddled by Lou Dobbs every night on CNN and his protectionist sympathizers. Projecting dire consequences by connecting a few dots on a graph and drawing a straight line into the far future is an old standby of sensationalist journalism.

Fresh out of the overly optimistic "New Economy" bubble, is outsourcing or off-shoring the overly pessimistic new "new economy?" Perhaps Not. Danieal Drezner has a more reasonable voice on the issue.