Weapons of civic mass destruction
I am struck by how broken our political process is. I'm not the first nor the last to make this observation, How did we get here and what are the underlying reasons?
Here's one way I have started to look at it: we have perfected the science of persuasion to such a point that it is now destroying us. Here's what I mean:
In the world of CNN and YouTube, all questions, answers, comments and remarks are all very carefully honed with an eye towards what it would look like out of context, or as a soundbite in a commercial.
Each candidate has top notch advisers and trainers, the best in the business. They are like world class athletes at the olympics. Every move is rehearsed and practiced to perfection. No mistakes are allowed.
They make sure that whenever they open their mouths whatever comes out is what's most effective (statistically, scientifically, whatever) to persuade.
To persuade who? Of what? That too is science. Who exactly , demographically, sociographically, are the folks who need to be convinced so that I win? What do they have to be convinced of?
The effect of all this is that every word we hear spoken by the candidates is programmed. Programmed to have certain effects on the electorate. We aren 't hearing the real person, their real beliefs or ideas, in either case.
Anyway that's my interpretation of why campaigns and political speech has devolved as much as it has, and why we all shake our heads in amazement at what passes for political discourse.
We have created and perfected this weapon which I think of as the science of persuation and we are watching two parties engaged in what amounts to mutually assured destruction ("MAD").
Originally posted on Oct 11, 2008. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.
The torture discussion back in 2001
Recently of course, because of the 'torture memos', the topic is all over the papers and cable 'news' programs. It's brought back to mind a discussion that was raging hot and heavy, starting back in 2001, about the idea of allowing the issuance of 'Torture Warrants '.
Alan Dershowitz, famous Harvard Law Professor first espoused that in 2001 (as best I can determine) in this article in the LA Times. If you search google you will see lots of hits on the topic, starting then leading up to today.
This is from the New York Times:
"Torture warrants, Dershowitz insists, are one way to shine law’s light on this darkness, especially if one believes there are times when torture should be permitted. Many will be horrified that Dershowitz even allows himself to think such thoughts. But for those willing to think the unthinkable, a brief but thoughtful discussion of the entire torture question including Dershowitz’s torture warrants, written by Belinda Cooper, a specialist on human rights with a position at the World Policy Institute, can be found here.
Even those who believe in an absolute prohibition against torture would be well advised to ponder the legal paradigm shift that Dershowitz says has occurred and that so worries him. If torture is inevitably going to take place in a preventive state, should we be content to allow it to exist outside the law? At the end of his new book, Dershowitz warns: “We need to develop a jurisprudence for the emerging preventive state. … Black holes in the law are anathema to democracy, accountability, human rights and the rule of law.”
The idea of torture warrants sounds crazy on first or second blush, but I do see the point he's making. Technorati Tags: torture, warrants, law, dershowitz
Great proposal re: http://data.gov from Sunlight Foundation
Check out this post Redesigning
the Government:
Data.gov:
"One thing we’ve been most excited about here at the Sunlight Foundation is the concept of Data.gov. Due later this year, new federal CIO Vivek Kundra will release a new central repository for government data and research.
And while in this series we traditionally re-design federal websites, we thought we’d actually take the opportunity to design data.gov right off the bat to show you all what we’d like to see happen." (from: from Sunlight Labs blog)
This is great! Instead of talking about it, actually showing some well thought out samples and sketches of how http://www.data.gov might actually work really makes the ideas come to life. If you are interested in government transparency, like I am, you should take a look at the proposals
Inside the Shot Heard ‘Round the World
Did you wonder how those snipers were able to shoot those pirates when both groups were on boats on the open sea? Check out this post Inside the Shot Heard 'Round the World:
""These guys can put three rounds onto the head of a quarter at that range," Allen told me. " (from: from Defense Tech)
[GEEKY] How DataRSS might work
Editors Note (that 's me, Pito): I've decided to change the name of this thing to "Decentralized Data Discovery - DDD" because I learned from more than one person that calling it Data RSS was misleading and confusing. I need to go back and update the papers and blog posts.
I've just finished writing part 3 of my series about DataRSS. Part 1 gives the background and justification for the concept, and Part 2 worked through a semi-believable scenario where having DataRSS would be a good thing.
In part 3 I try to get into more technical detail. I hope that you take the time to read it because that's the only way I will get technical feedback on it. The reason I wrote the first two parts is that realistically I expect to lose 99.5% of you guys once you open up part 3. That's why this post is labeled [GEEKY]. Here's some of what I cover in part 3:
"Data RSS is a simple protocol and a simple data format. It can be implemented in any programming language.
Importantly, the Publisher and Accessor software need not know (can not know) what language the counterparties software is written in. " (from DataRSS: Technical Overview)
and
"DataRSS is used between two parties, the Publisher , who ‘owns’ some data, and the Accessor , who wants to use that data. Publisher and Accessor are organizations with people in them. The Publisher wants to offer a technical means to allow an application program simple and standardized access to their data.
The Accessor wants to write an application program that accesses and does something useful with data coming from any Publisher. Accessor and Publisher don’t know each other. " (from DataRSS: Technical Overview)
Delicious isn't it? One final tease, I also have worked out some detailed examples of how DataRSS might work with the New York Times API, with the Sunlight Foundation API and with the Follow The Money API.
An excellent paper about Curaçao Politics
This is probably not high on your radar, but if you have interest in the island of Curaçao you may have heard about the big referendum issue that is being hotly debated these days.
I won't even try to capture the sides of the argument, rather I want to refer you to this outstanding paper written by people from Harvard Law School that cover the issues and sides thoroughly. It is, by the way, extremely well written.
Here's a taste:
"These issues were counterbalanced by a major advantage we brought to this study: being European, currently based in the United States, and without any past, present or future connection with the Antillean islands or the Kingdom of the Netherlands, we could offer each and every respondent a neutral ear; whilst many a probing question may have been challenging an interviewee’s perception, we strived to maintain strict neutrality whilst gathering data in order not to prejudice our findings." (from A Look Through the Constitutional Prism)
Has Paula gotten Smarter?
I've been an American Idol fan for a while now, in fact from the very start. I've been commenting to the TV Set that Paula is seeming much smarter, incisive and interesting this year than in the past. I see I am not the only one to notice 🙂
"Advantage Paula, who, over and over again this season, has managed to emit little nuggets of wisdom. While the numerically challenged Kara tends to ramble and repeat stock phrases - "Who are you as an artist?" "What we're looking for is artistry. . ." - Paula finds an apt analogy or suggests a useful bit of stagecraft. She told since-departed Megan Joy Corkrey, who danced like one of those plastic Hawaiian hula dolls, that she should sit on a stool beneath a spotlight. She told blind pianist Scott MacIntyre that he was boring us by sitting behind a piano every week. And while Simon poked fun at her in both cases, Paula happened to be right." (from Globe.com)
If you think stronger regulation is a good answer, heed Buffett
Check out this post If you think stronger regulation is a good answer, heed Buffett:
"Warren Buffett gave a three-hour interview in August. Here's an interesting bit from the transcript:
QUICK: If you imagine where things will go with Fannie and Freddie, and you think about the regulators, where were the regulators for what was happening, and can something like this be prevented from happening again?
Mr. BUFFETT: Well, it's really an incredible case study in regulation
because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them. And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200 employees now. They have a budget now that's $65 million a year, and all they have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than two companies.QUICK: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BUFFETT: And they sat there, made reports to the Congress, you can get them on the Internet, every year. And, in fact, they reported to Sarbanes and Oxley every year. And they went-wrote 100 page reports, and they said, 'We've looked at these people and their standards are fine and their directors are fine and everything was fine.' And then all of a sudden you had two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history. You had all kinds of management malfeasance, and it all came out. And, of course, the classic thing was that after it all came out, OFHEO wrote a 350-340 page report examining what went wrong, and they blamed the management, they blamed the directors, they blamed the audit committee. They didn't have a word in there about themselves, and they're the ones that 200 people were going to work every day with just two companies to think about. It just shows the problems of regulation.
QUICK: That sounds like an argument against regulation, though. Is that what you're saying?
Mr. BUFFETT: It's an argument explaining-it's an argument that managing complex financial institutions where the management wants to deceive you can be very, very difficult.
" (from: from Newmark's Door)
…
Originally posted on Oct 04, 2008. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.
Great paper about Harri Hursti’s demonstration of ballot scanner security concerns
I recently saw the movie Hacking Democracy. It's absolutely fascinating and basic background for anyone interested in election reform. In it you learn about some of the heroes of election reform, including Harri Hursti who demonstrates in a pretty dramatic manner some of the weaknesses of commonly used election technology.
This is from the wikipedia article:
"Seven participants made out their ballots using the opti-scan paper sheets (Hursti remaining outside the test area). Sancho then went to Hursti and gave him a ballot which Hursti filled out. Hursti then gave Sancho the memory card to insert in to the machine. The operation of the machine was explained by Sancho to those in attendance and the card inserted and machine turned on which then produced the "zero total tape." The tape produced zero votes cast. The test ballots were then inserted in to the Diebold machine followed by the "ender card" (same size as ballot) was inserted telling the machine to turn off its counting function and start its reporting function. The machine then produced a paper tape with 7 yes votes and 1 no vote." (from Wikipedia)
I was curious about the back story and he pointed me to this paper which goes into extreme detail of how he discovered the weaknesses and how he was able to demonstrate them. There are many other descriptions of what he did, but this paper, in his own words, is great because of the dry scientific way in which he describes what was done.
Paul Simon’s Graceland Album: the back story
Ethan Zuckerman writes a great piece about how Paul Simon's Graceland album came to be, with some of the historical context, backstory and being a xenophile. A great read:
"At its best, Graceland sounds like Simon is encountering forces to large for him to understand or control. He’s riding on top of them, offering free- form reflections on a world that’s vastly more complicated and colorful than the narrow places he and Art Garfunkel explored in their close harmonies. In “Boy in the Bubble” (video above), the chorus, “These are the days of miracle and wonder, this is the long distance call” could serve as a tagline for anyone confronting our strange, connected world." (From Ethan Zuckerman)
By the way, while on the topic of Paul Simon, you should checkout the little known (at least as it seems to me) Simon Album "Songs From the Capeman". It's really excellent and worth a listen.