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John Leo blogs that Bill Clinton typifies the head-in-the-sand attitude of Democrats when it comes to terrorism. I think John Leo is flat out wrong. Bill Clinton is wrong too - terrorism should not be 3rd on our list, it should not even be in the top ten when it comes to world problems. In fact, it rates well under theocratic regimes such as Iran and what used to be Iraq and Afghanistan - neither of which are really a large scale world problem. There are 6 billion people on the planet and most of them will die from heart attacks, cancer, preventable accidents and curable diseases. There are millions of species of life on this planet of which humans are exactly one - that is to say that we as a species represent less than one millionth of the diversity on this planet. Drastic changes to the earths climate may endanger thousands of those species if not more.

So, do we have to address issues of dictatorships and terrorism?
Sure.

Should we devote a steady stream of effort to promoting democracy through education to improve the lives of billions of people living under totalitarian governments?
Of course!

Is this a hit and run war or a marathon or diplomacy, economics and education?
It is a marathon.

Does terrorism matter?
In the long run - not at all.

Alan Turing defined a test (coined the Turing Test) by which to judge whether an artificial system was intelligent. The double-blind test involves participants communicating with at least two different unknown entities over terminal that masks their true identity. If most participants could not tell the difference between the natural and artificial entities then, Turing reasoned, we might deem the artificial one just as intelligent as the natural one.

A recent study at Purdue University tested psychological and biological reactions to Sony’s AIBO electronic dog. Based on the results it seems we’re not far off.

Full disclosure: My wife and I are the proud owners of a 1 year old AIBO. He’s due for a software upgrade next week.

There’s an article in Boston Globe Magazine today about the Commuter Rail - why ridership is down, whether it’s worth improving and how to increase ticket sales. The thing most missing from at least my commute is a reliable wireless network. If I’m going to spend an hour on the train, it would be ten times more productive if I had a fast reliable Internet connection. Currently I use T-Mobile’s data service but reception is spotty. If the MBTA wants to increase ridership, before they pour millions into upgrading the trains inside, go ahead and make the service better and while we’re waiting, give us free WiFi at the station and on the train.

The key war issue that the Democrats have been blind to for 4 years is that Bush is not a war president. Politicking aside, Bush does not play offense. He’s a defense guy and has been so from the get go. In the 2000 debates, Bush proclaimed:

“When it comes to foreign policy that will be my guiding question. Is it in our nation’s interests?”

This selfish line of thinking is defensive and is a recipie for bad leadership. Bush never wanted to engage the world - his platform was and continues to be selfish and he won over the 50% of Americans who think selfishly. To contrast, Gore was almost prescient about what would happen if Bush was elected:

“The power of example is America’s greatest power in the world. And that means, for example, standing up for human rights.”

As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and it was not readily apparent then that Bush was a defense player. After all, he took us to war with Afghanistan, he lead the charges against Saddam, he took us to war with Iraq. But while these were strong actions, they were not offensive moves. We went to Afghanistan because they were harbouring those who planned attacks against us. We were responding to Saddam’s perceived threads. We coerced the UK (and Poland!) to go to war in Iraq. We’re fighting the terrorists over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here. Now we’re being goaded by North Korea and Iran and playing defense again.

Bush’s foreign policy is to defend the American way of life. Bush coerces but he doesn’t engage and coercion never won a war. America needs to lead and to play offense. We should secure our citizen’s privacy. We should stand firm against torture because regardless of their malice these are fellow human beings. It’s time to play offense; it’s time to lead and it’s time to oust or defensive, selfish, reactionary officials: the Bush Administration, their supporters and their blind and toothless detractors.

It’s an election year so ask yourself: is my Congressman or Senator a leader?

Reference: Karl Rove’s address to the RNC.

The GOP isn’t post-9/11 and no one in this country is pre-9/11. If anythig the GOP is post apocalyptic. It’s hard to claim the GOP as evil or, as a fond manage of mine would call it, bone-heads because they are smart people. What they have yet to realize is that the World Trade Center and Pentagon plane crashes did not change the world they just drew the curtain back from the eyes of Americans. America is no more at war than we were on September 10th. While terrorism is a relatively new threat to Americans but to the rest of the world it’s all old hat.

What the GOP fail to grasp is that they didn’t discover terrorism any more than Columbus discovered colonialism. The act of causing terror, as opposed to traditional or even guerilla warfare simply involves targeting civilians who are not accustomed to being targeted as a means of influencing policy. When you’re out gunned, you go after the the guy giving the orders or his boss (the public). This has the long term effect of turning non-combatents into weaponless soldiers - witness the attitudes of Israelis or the British during the IRA years.

Rove is right that for America this is a new kind of war, but the war isn’t on terror because terror is just a tool. You cannot wage war on terror or terrorism (the use of terror) any more than you can wage war on guns, knives, drugs or fists. Terrorism is a tool to achieving a goal. That goal is and has always been land and people. Al-Qaeda wants control over some amount of land and its peoples. Whether that is Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East or the World, the people of the those lands disagree and they need to figure out how to stand up to a guy who, at the end of the day, is a bully with an army of suicide bombers.

Red Rover, Red Rover come over Karl Rover. Figure it out. Be part of the solution.

Oh boy is this a step in the wrong direction: “New and Improved” Draft Broadcast Flag Bill. I often have to pay to listen to music or watch a video. If I want to watch it again, I have to pay to store and catalog it. I’m an American Citizen, the Constitution says my Congress can artificially restrict what I can and cannot do with music and video that other people create[1]. I don’t want to have to select, purchase, store and catalog every single piece of media that I might ever potentially want to again hear or watch. I want to google for that cool song I heard on the radio and hear it again, or the replay the podcast I downloaded last week for my friends. My Congress is letting Big Media limit my ability to lose everything.

[1] U.S Constitution - Article 1; Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”

Why does Excel default to three sheets in every new file? Do most people use three sheets when they open a new spreadsheet?

I was watching West Wing on DVD and when I turned of the player Emeril was on. Emeril is an amusing host and spends a lot of time repeating himself or explaining what he just said using different works. It’s an effective technique when you’re playing to a crowd. Seems to me George W. Bush would be a great TV chef - or TV something, preferably one that stops when I turn off the TV.

Business Week interviews Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen about his Innovator’s Dilemma and the future of Apple Computer. The money shot has nothing to do with Innovation or Apple. Christensen’s last comment is the take away:

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot — about whether managers ought even to think about what Wall Street says. In the 1960s, the average investor held shares for over six years. In that world, it made sense to frame the job of the manager as maximizing shareholder value. But today, 10% of all shares are owned by hedge funds, and do you know what their average holding period is? It’s just 60 days! And another 85% of the equities are owned by mutual funds and pension funds, and the average tenure there is 10 months.

Their time horizon is shorter than even that of even the shortest-term managers. So I don’t think it’s right to think of [these investors] as shareholders of your company. They’re investors who temporarily own securities in your company at a particular point in time. They’re responsible for maximizing the stock value of their investments. You as the CEO are responsible for maximizing the long-term health of your company. “

If CEOs should no longer align themselves with these short term shareholders who drive the stock price, how do you give them the right incentives to maximize long-term health? If the board, to whom the CEO reports, represents the shareholders, and their best measure of shareholder satisfaction (aside from getting voted out) is stock price, how do they measure whether a CEO is maximizing long-term health?

Christensen is on to something and he opens the door to a bevy of questions that could drastically change the foundation of corporate structure.

Cory over a Boing Boing has an a-ha moment after reading John Battelle’s The Search. If I follow Cory’s thinking, at some point it must become cheaper to lose what you’ve finished using instead of filing and keeping it When you need it later you just search.

In the real world you give away or sell your books, music, videos and when you want one, just search and buy it again. If the cost of acquisition means you don’t need the square footage to keep it then the only question is “how long do you have to wait between wanting it and getting it?”

In the virtual world, storage means hard drive space or maintaining your folders and backups. If you found something you like on-line use it and delete it - or keep it in a bin, but don’t bother categorizing it and backing it up. When you need it again, just search. Better yet, just add it to Greg’s Group Networked Backup and you’ll never have to keep track of anything ever again.

Is there a law like this in Massachusetts? If not, can we enact one?

Update: Mr. Raiz of Greg’s Head kindly pointed out Massachusetts June Trooper Safety Tip regarding Massachusetts General Law 89-4B.

Oblivious drivers be ware!

The BBC lists 100 things they didn’t know this time last year.

My favorite:
“19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.

Scariest:
“92. You are 176 times more likely to be murdered than to win the National Lottery.”

Pete Ashdown is running a new kind of campaign for Senator Orin Hatch’s seat in Utah. What Pete is doing is exactly what the framers had in mind - someone who’s willing to find out what people want and pledge to represent them fairly in our government. If someone like Pete is running in your state or district then I encourage you to get involved, tell them what you want and go vote for them. If someone like Pete isn’t running in your state or district then why don’t you? All it takes to get started is some friends who support you, a blog and a wiki.