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Palin's unpopularity in Alaska is an interesting sidebar but ultimately pretty irrelevant to a possible 2012 Presidential bid. What's more relevant is that a majority of voters in every single state we have polled so far on the 2012 race has an unfavorable opinion of her. And her average favorability in the Bush/Obama states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia that are most likely essential to Republican chances of retaking the White House is 36/56. Democrats can only hope...
December 2010 Archives
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It's been about eight years since the far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page came up with the notion of "lucky duckies." The label was used to describe the millions of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes because they don't earn enough money. Conservatives, it seems, still aren't quite comfortable with these folks' "luck." George Will chatted with incoming House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), who intends to make things deliberately harder on those at the bottom end of the income scale
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As was true for the debates over War on Terror detainees, one's views of Manning are totally irrelevant to the issue here (that's aside from the fact that he's been convicted of nothing; is not, contrary to many claims, charged with espionage or treason; and what he's alleged to have done has resulted in no deaths). The only relevant issue is whether -- after reading Gawande's New Yorker article -- you believe that prolonged, 23-hour-a-day pre-trial solitary confinement is acceptable and humane treatment. It may or may not fall short of actual torture -- it's good that the U.N. will now formally investigate that question -- but either way, it's designed to degrade both Manning's psyche and resistance to incriminating WikiLeaks and is highly likely to achieve both.
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Greg Gillis: I go in and out of work mode. And the stuff I sample, I like it to be Top 40. I like it to be familiar songs. I like to take the bits and pieces and try to recontextualize them. I still buy CDs, and I like listening to full albums. So when I throw in the new Lloyd Banks release to check it out, certain things may jump out at me...But at the same time, when I’m listening to a whole record, it’s easy to forget about the sampling aspect, just because there are a lot of non-singles, a lot of B-sides, a lot of stuff that could work as a sample but might not have that same power as the song that will hit the radio. When I throw on CDs, I just sorta listen and don’t think about it much. But when I’m walking around in the grocery store or driving my car, things are always popping out at me. It’s not always so intuitive – Oh, that would go well with this other thing. It’s more, Oh, that’s a nice isolated part — I should cut that up and try it out with a hundred different things.
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It certainly helps pull in an audience that might be more interested in seeing Bristol Palin shoot skeet than in seeing Sarah Palin compare her fence to the U.S.-Mexico border. Reich tells POLITICO that "Total Facebook 'likes' [for the website] surpassed 33,000 in the past week" and that 42 percent of the Facebook audience is between the ages of 18 and 44. As for gender, just shy of 70 percent of Facebook "likers" are female, and tend to be from the South and Midwest, with Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago boasting the highest numbers.
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According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits Manning twice a month, he is starting to deteriorate. "Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing," he said. "His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness." ... On 3 November, House, 23, said he found customs agents waiting for him when he and his girlfriend returned to the US after a short holiday in Mexico. His bags were searched and two men identifying themselves as Homeland Security officials said they were being detained for questioning and would miss their connecting flight. The men seized all his electronic items and he was told to hand over all passwords and encryption keys – which he refused. The items have yet to be returned.
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Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.
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It used to takes decades for legends about the supposed last words of famous people to seep into the culture and morph through constant repetition, until some enterprising scholar would look for hard evidence and soberly conclude that the well-known observation was most likely a myth or misunderstanding. In the case of Richard C. Holbrooke, the hard-charging diplomat who died on Monday, in the Internet age, that process took less than 24 hours...
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RIM's real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it'll drift into in a situation where it can't afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It's very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.
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The American public apparently blames college students for low college graduation rates. According to an article by Eric Gorski in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
A Little Respect from Andy Bell and the LGBT youth of the Hetrick Martin Institute:
Erasure have announced the release of a brand new version of their top 5 single, A Little Respect -- HMI Redux, out on 5 December 2010. A colourful new video for the track, shot in New York City and featuring Erasure lead singer Andy Bell, HMI youth and many other passers-by, will be released as well.Proceeds from the track will be donated to The Hetrick-Martin Institute, the home of the Harvey Milk High School, in New York, and the True Colors Fund. The Hetrick-Martin Institute, the nation's oldest and largest LGBTQ youth service organization, provides a safe and supportive environment to all young people -- regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity so that they can achieve their full potential.
The HMI Redux features a youth chorus from the Hetrick-Martin Institute who also appear in the music video, directed by filmmaker Jason Stein.
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One refrain we keep hearing against Wikileaks is that the cable releases aren't really "whistleblowing," because they're not really revealing anything. However, it seems like each day there's another big revelation of rather horrible things being done (and covered up) by the US government. The latest, pointed out by Boing Boing, involves a report from a cable that US-based private security contractor DynCorp, who was hired by the US to train Afghani police, was apparently supplying drugs and young boys for a sort of sex party.
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DecorMyEyes founder Vitaly Borker — also known as Tony Russo and Stanley Bolds — was arrested Monday and charged with defrauding customers of his online eye wear company and making repeated and violent threats to customers who attempted to return defective goods.
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Today, when reading the dozens of comments about DecorMyEyes, it is hard to decide which one conveys the most outrage. It is easy, though, to choose the most outrageous. It was written by Mr. Russo/Bolds/Borker himself. “Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.” It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales.
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The egregious problems identified by Justice Stevens (and other prominent Americans who have changed their minds in recent years about capital punishment) have always been the case. The awful evidence has always been right there for all to see, but mostly it has been ignored. The death penalty in the United States has never been anything but an abomination — a grotesque, uncivilized, overwhelmingly racist affront to the very idea of justice.
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In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books, he wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with “regrettable judicial activism,” had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria. The essay is remarkable in itself. But it is also a sign that at 90, Justice Stevens is intent on speaking his mind on issues that may have been off limits while he was on the court.
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The Family Research Council (FRC) is calling for an apology after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) decided to classify the Christian conservative organization as a "hate group" because of their anti-gay rhetoric. FRC president Tony Perkins accused the SPLC of engaging in a "deliberately timed smear campaign." This week the SPLC listed 18 "hate groups" -- the FRC among the most prominent of them -- which the law center says "have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities."
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If a preternaturally cautious Southern Democrat like Pryor thinks the U.S. is headed inevitably toward a more open and tolerant attitude toward gay sexuality, then the kinds of weak rationalizations and absurd fears he offers for his "no" vote must be losing ground everywhere.
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Data: Data is the raw building blocks; it consists of raw numbers, but lack context or meaning. 1,200, 9.6%, and $170k are all piece of data. Information: Is the application of structure or order to data, in an attempt to communicate meaning. Knowing the S&P500 is at 1,200 (up 5% YTD), Unemployment is at 9.6% (down from 11%), and GDP is 2.5% (revised from 2%) are examples. Knowledge: An understanding of a specific subject, through experience (or education). Typically, knowledge is used in terms of a persons skills or expertise in a given area. Knowledge typically reflects an empirical, rather than intuitive, understanding. Plato referenced it as “”justified true belief.” Wisdom: Optimum judgment, reflecting a deep understanding of people, things, events or situations. A person who has wisdom can effectively apply perception and knowledge in order to produce desired results. Comprehending objectively reality within a broader context.
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There's a whole new world of data emerging, along with cheap and easy tools for processing it. Unfortunately a lot of snake-oil salesmen have spotted this too, and are now eagerly mis-using 'big data' in their pitches. I was reminded of this when I read the recent Wall Street Journal article on health insurance companies looking at social network data. There's been detailed demographic and purchase data available for every household in the US for decades, so why haven't they used that existing data if the approach is as effective as the many hopeful consultants claim?
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Nick Denton, a founder of the format, "The 2011 template represents the most significant change in the Gawker model since the launch of Gizmodo and Gawker in 2002. One could go further: it represents an evolution of the very blog form that has transformed online media over the last eight years. The internet, television and magazines are merging; and the optimal strategy will assemble the best from each medium."
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The age of private information. There was a time when information gave an advantage, when there was an edge to getting information ahead of others. Rothschild famously received early news of the British victory at Waterloo; commodities traders hired teams to wander the cocoa fields on Ghana counting pods; equity managers used their influence to get a jump on earnings announcements.
The age of too much information. The push toward transparency eroded this advantage. But the requirements for transparency throw out so much information that it is difficult to find what is relevant. Information can hide in plain sight...
The age of viral information. Information is moving from being the bedrock of market efficiency to a source of crisis. The risk for the market is not the news itself, but what news gets drilled home through so many channels that people act on it...
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Among the interesting: By 2015, 10 percent of your online "friends" will be nonhuman.Social media strategy involves several steps: establishing a presence, listening to the conversation, speaking (articulating a message), and, ultimately, interacting in a two-way, fully engaged manner. Thus far, many organizations have established a presence, and are mostly projecting messages through Twitter feeds and Facebook updates that are often only an incremental step up from RSS feeds. By 2015, efforts to systematize and automate social engagement will result in the rise of social bots — automated software agents that can handle, to varying degrees, interaction with communities of users in a manner personalized to each individual.
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You may remember, back in 2006, one of the DMCA "exemptions" granted by the Librarian of Congress was for jailbreaking or unlocking mobile phones, for the purpose of moving them to a different carrier. This move was most seriously fought by one company: Tracfone, which offers prepaid phones at a steep discount...Tracfone just kept suing people for jailbreaking and many caved and settled. What was really troubling though, was that people were being put in jail for this. Now, in the first trial involving such a case, a guy (who has already spent over a year in jail for unlocking phones) has been found guilty of violating the DMCA. ... But what's scary is that this seems to clearly go against the very exemption the Librarian of Congress made for jailbreaking phones. And we're not even talking about a civil copyright complaint here, but a criminal one... for doing something that the Librarian of Congress has already said is legal.
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August profile: "He spent part of his childhood with his father in the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small, remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for being gay."
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