So there's the rumors of Apple coming out with some kind of media tablet device. Apparently various magazine/newspaper publishers are all hot on this concept and we've seen a few prototype ideas for how this might work in practice. Here's an example from Sports Illustrated:


Okay... looks pretty. But can anybody tell me what the unique value add is here? Why would I spend a few hundred dollars on a tablet so that my magazines can look like souped up web pages? The value provided by the iPhone is that it gives a tremendous amount of functionality in a very portable form. Unless I'm totally missing something, I don't see how this tablet device offers something better.

Yes, I get the size is bigger, and thus it'll be easier to see. But under what circumstances do you use this device? I mean hauling it around with me would be a bit of a hassle. If I'm going to sit at home and look at Sports Illustrated wouldn't it be easier to look at the actual magazine or browse their website?

This is increasingly seeming like the merger of the desperation of Apple and the desperation of publishers. While Apple has had tons of success, where exactly do they go from here? They can keep improving on what they have, but there's not a lot ways for them to really revolutionize the industry as they have in the past. The publishers are seeing declining circulation and lower ad revenues. So both Apple and the publishing industry want something to change the game. But if that's going to happen for real, what they offer can't just be a jazzed up web page on a big iPhone.

As we get more details on what this tablet will actually be, we should be able to get a better sense of what the real value is, but so far I'm pretty doubtful.

You must see spinal tap...

So Obama has committed to sending an additional 30K troops to Afghanistan. His plan is to have these troops in the field by the summer of 2010 and begin withdrawing those troops in 2011. I can't say I'm thrilled by this because of recent developments in Afghanistan (fraudulent election, etc), but I'm resigned to it. I have a few thoughts on it though:

1. On it's face what Obama is doing looks little different than what Bush did in Iraq. Sending more troops, talking about withdrawal, but refusing to lock down specific milestones, time lines, etc. Obama does give the impression of being far more engaged in what's going on and seems to have given far more serious thought to how we get out of there eventually.
2. His commitment to begin withdrawing troops in 2011 demonstrates his seriousness about this effort. From a political perspective, setting the date to begin pulling out troops in 2011 means that, come the 2012 election, we'll be able to judge the success of his policy. Are we actually withdrawing? How fast? What's the current state of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban? Might even be time enough to launch a primary opponent against him if it's truly disastrous.
3. The scale of the increase is pretty huge. We're going to have substantially more forces than we've ever had in Afghanistan since 9/11. Since Obama took office we've seen troop levels go from about 30K to what will be 100K. Compare this to the Iraq surge where we had something like 130K and went to 160K. That was a marginal increase, this is an enormous escalation.

For now I will trust that Obama is doing the right thing because, frankly, there's not much that can be done to stop it even if I thought that was the way to go. Come 2011, we'll be able to judge this on it's merits, and see if he made the right call. The reality is Obama was handed the hugest shit sandwich when he got elected. A recession comparable to the Great Depression, two wars, massive debt, a health care system in crisis, and on and on. I think he's made some pretty huge mistakes, but so early on in his Presidency, it's hard to be sure.

I think it can be safely said that by the end of 2011 and into 2012, we'll know what to make of all of this. Until then I'll just try to be patient.

If you hadn't heard, there's been a big meltdown of the Dubai World conglomerate that had the implied but not actual backing of the UAE government. Specifically:

Imagine this for a moment. You decide to set up a new business, creating a storefront in a local mall somewhere. At this store front, you would allow people to place bets on stocks. If they bet that a stock would go up and it did, you'd pay them. If they bet that it went up and it didn't, you'd keep their money. You never actually own any stock, you're simply running a side betting pool on the performance of the stocks.

Imagine a second scenario for a moment. You decide to set up a new business, opening up on the floor of some office building near wall street. At this business you would allow large institutional investors to place bets on stocks. If they bet that a stock would go up and it did, you'd pay them. If they bet that it went up and it didn't, you'd keep their money. You never actually own any stock, you're simply running a side betting pool on the performance of the stocks.

The first scenario is referred to as a bucket shop and was generally made illegal under state gambling laws in the early 20th century. The second scenario is trading in naked derivatives and is completely legal.

A video that illustrates the problem I've been concerned about in China:


So they built an entire city, with houses, infrastructure and everything where nobody lives. The construction of such a city contributes to GDP growth in the short term, but this is just pointless spending if nobody lives there. So either they'll have to somehow convince people to live there through some kind of subsidies or some such, or the place will just slowly fall apart.

This gets back to my beef with how the press have generally treated China's economic story. They've heralded the way the Chinese government has been pushing the country forward, but they ignore what the ultimate costs are of that progress. They ignore the corruption and the inefficiency of the Chinese system. They ignore billions spent on worthless infrastructure. These all give the impression of strong economic growth, but they are really evidence of waste.

Remember back when we were talking about the initial stimulus bill in the US about "shovel ready" projects. That was about finding projects that need money right now to develop useful infrastructure. The benefit in such projects is you spend the money in the short run on projects that address actual needs. So this has a the initial positive stimulus effect, but added long term benefit from the use of the improved infrastructure.

In China, they are basically just dumping money out the door on anything. They don't have all of these elaborate rules about environmental impact studies, and cost benefit analysis. Instead, they are building whole cities from the ground up just to spend the money. It's taking the real estate bubble that we had in the US and pumping it up with government spending. Does that seem like a recipe for disaster to anybody else?

The problem is that China has become so desperately dependent on this unsustainable growth that they'll be compelled to keep doubling down on what's an already failing policy. Build yet more empty buildings with yet more empty roads going to them. Push out more subsidies to consumers to get them to buy more TV's, etc. But eventually, they'll blow through their vast reserves and find themselves at the limit of what they can possibly do.

So HHS secretary, Katheleen Sebelius has released a state by state break down of the benefits of the currently debated Senate health care reform bill. It nice illustrates what's right and what's wrong with the bill. So here's a few critical points as pulled from the Nebraska report:

• 220,000 residents who do not currently have insurance and 127,000 residents who have nongroup insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange.
• 139,000 residents could qualify for premium tax credits to help them purchase health coverage.
• 270,000 seniors would receive free preventive services.
• 48,000 seniors would have their brand-name drug costs in the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” halved.
• 33,100 small businesses could be helped by a small business tax credit to make premiums more affordable.

Okay, a two points to make:

1. What is the definition of "affordable coverage?"
2. The exchange that is referred to here isn't going to be in place until 2013

Then it goes on to outline what happens in the shorter time frame:

• Ensures consumer protections in the insurance market.
  
• Creates immediate options for people who can’t get insurance today.
  
• Ensures free preventive services.
  
• Supports health coverage for early retirees.

This all sounds good, however, nothing in this list does anything to address the cost of health care. The government spends a bunch of money to pay for subsidies, but ultimately private health insurers are still doing what they've been doing. Private insurers, now facing greater regulation are going to charge more money. If they have to keep people in that have expensive conditions, then they are going to have to charge everybody more money. So yes, people who don't have any options today may get some, but everybody is going to be paying more for their health care.

• 33,100 small businesses in Nebraska could be helped by a small businesses tax credit proposal that makes premiums more affordable. And these small businesses would be exempt from any employer responsibility provisions.

So we'll exempt them from being made to provide employees insurance but we'll provide a tax credit that might help them afford the premiums. Did I mention that premiums are going to go up due to the reforms about preexisting conditions, etc?

Look, don't get me wrong, there is a lot of good stuff in that health care bill. The problem is that while we're doing a lot to address coverage problems, largely by spending a lot of money, we are doing little to address cost containment. Yes, having more insured people will help contain costs by reducing the use of emergency care, etc. However, without a public option, the government will have no leverage to further reduce costs. Instead we're just subsidizing the existing broken system.

From TPM a staffer on the problems with getting health care passed in the Senate:

There is a lot of misplaced anger coming from many of our fellow progressives about Senate Democrats (which often is just shortened to "The Democrats") inability to pass a robust healthcare reform bill, climate change, etc.

A quote from a real estate agent on strategic defaults where somebody can afford to pay the mortgage but owes far more than a property is worth:


A mortgage is a business agreement and a legal contract. Embedded within that agreement are terms that set out what happens in the event that you no longer pay the mortgage. The consequence is foreclosure and, of course, the black mark on your credit that comes with it. If you choose to go into foreclosure because a property is now worthless, then that's a business decision.

So how exactly is this a matter of morality? More specifically, I think my beef with this attitude is that you would never apply this morality logic if it were a deal between two businesses. If you had a commercial real estate investor default on their financing, as is happening quite routinely now, nobody is saying that's immoral. It's a business decision, like countless thousands of others happening on a daily basis. But somehow that's different if it's an individual?

I'm sorry, but if business in this country is going to ignore any notions of morality, ethics, and fairness when dealing with individuals, then they should not get that in return. If a huge bank makes billions in terrible loan decisions, then they fucked up. If that causes the real estate market to implode and your house to become worthless, then you'd be a fool to keep paying on it. You shouldn't feel bad about that for a moment.

If banks start demonstrating ethics towards people they are loaning money to, maybe we can have this conversation. When they stop jacking up rates for no reason or pushing people out of houses they could afford if the bank would just take the time to adjust their mortgage. Until then, fuck them.

I have officially moved bigbrother.net e-mail service over to gmail. The transition will take a little bit as DNS propagates but you should now be getting e-mail through the Google apps service that I use to host all my mail. If you are having any problems with your e-mail, let me know and I'll look into it.

So there's been this massive effort to try to prevent Asian Carp from getting into Lake Michigan. It's an invasive species and apparently quite hearty. They went and built an electric fence to try to keep them from migrating towards the lake but it seems that at least one fish has managed to jump the fence and keep going.

So I found myself wondering why this is such a big deal. I mean, yes, the Carp will compete for resources with native fish and since it's apparently quite the ass kicker, it will win. So the lake will be populated with Carp instead of salmon, trout, and some other species. So I'm left wondering: what does it matter?

The only thing I've seen is suggestions that it would harm the sport fishing industry around the great lakes to the tune of $4.5 billion/year. Why? Because sports fisherman don't like catching 100lbs carp? I mean, why not just fish for Carp? Catching 100 lbs fish in a fresh water lake sounds like pretty exciting sport to me, but am I missing something?

This is evolution in action, and if Carp are the best, then they survive. Why are we going through so much effort to try to stop this? It's a change to what we're used to, but so what? We just get used to it. We start eating Carp instead of Salmon. Heck, make it out to be some kind of elite delicacy and convince all the foodies in the world to eat it. Then we can overfish it and, voila, problem solved!

Am I missing something? Apparently not:

"We used to fish for Buffalo and stuff, and we'd catch these [carp] accidentally," says commercial fisherman Orion Briney. He says bighead Asian carp began filling his nets several years ago and quickly cut into his ability to make a living.

So the third-generation fisherman changed course. And now the carp are Briney's bread and butter: He focuses his fishing on Asian carp.

The fish weigh at least 15-to-25 pounds each, and some are much larger. They fetch about 14 cents a pound. That's not a lot, but Briney says the huge volume of carp he catches more than makes up for the low price-per-pound. Since he started fishing for carp, Briney says he's doubled his income.

Briney used to think carp were ugly. "But now, I think they look pretty good," he says, laughing, noting that they bring "about $4 a fish."

Maybe i'll start asking for it at my local seafood restaurant and see if I can try it :)

Palin on ... well, just read it:


Iran... Iraq... What's the difference really?

Fool America once, shame on... shame on us... Fooled, can't get fooled again... I hope...

So, you've got these supporters of Sarah Palin who, support her because:

1. She's apparently a big supporter of the constitution
2. She's a real person and a breath of fresh air
3. She was against the bailout

Of course Sarah Palin was for the bailout before she was against it, but this shouldn't be a surprise because she doesn't know a damn thing about policy. She was saying what she was supposed to say because she was part of the McCain campaign and now she's saying what the people want to hear. The fact that the bailout kept our entire economic system from collapsing is irrelevant to her.

As for being a real person, she's the same kind of real person that Bush was. Somebody who had charisma, but ultimately did not give a damn about policy. Somebody who wants to become President to become President, but not so they can actually do some good for the country. But worse than Bush, she's a pathological liar. I don't make that statement lightly, but she has a pattern of lying purely to make herself look more interesting than she really is. Many of these lies are easily proven as such, but those folks who think she's down to earth will likely blame a liberal media conspiracy for this.

Then on her support of the constitution, I've come to realize that the constitution has become the American version of the bible. It is something most people haven't read except for a couple key passages somebody else mentions to them. These are largely focused on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments while they have no clue about separation of powers, etc.

With their limited understanding of our constitution they then build a belief system around what somebody else claims the document means, not what it actually says. The constitution doesn't say anything about big government. It does talk about federalism and the enumeration of powers to the states, but that's not the same thing. So sure, you can argue for a more limited role of the government and you can argue that it's not what the founders wanted, but I it's a stretch to say that somebody who wants limited government is somehow supporting the constitution.

*sigh* I hope to God these people are as small a segment of the country as I think they are...

Facebook is something that seems good on it's face. It lets you see what's going in the lives of all of your friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers who randomly friended you that you didn't have the heart to say no to. However, over time, I've found my irritation with it growing a bit.

The problem largely stems from the status updates and people's assumptions about them. Rather than going out of our way to tell our friends what's going on in our lives, we assume that they will be following our updates. That, whenever we have big news to announce, etc, we can do so by simply posting a status update. All our friends will get the word and we have remained connected to our friends in the most efficient way possible.

There are two side effects of this.

1. Good friends may ultimately be out of the loop about our lives because they aren't on Facebook or don't follow it all that actively. So we think we've told somebody about news in our lives and it turns out they didn't know at all. The side effect is that it actually creates greater distance with those people because we do not actively seek to inform them.
2. There's a compulsion to constantly make sure you're up to date on what your friend's on Facebook are posting. Should you lack the time to actually do this, you are left feeling out of the loop, unaware of what your friends have done.

The result is that it replaces one-on-one active communication with this kind of passive, asynchronous form of communication. I broadcast for the world to see, and maybe my friends actually see it. It gives the sense of keeping in touch while often serving to minimize the real connection with people. Whatever happened to old fashion instant messenger? And by the way, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Of course I say all this, but I'll keep using it. Just irritated because I haven't been keeping up with it and now have this back log of unread updates. I know it's unlikely that many of them are actually important but it's hard not to feel like I'm missing something.

From a blog post by Robert Reich:

So apparently there's a cabal of Senators who are looking to destroy our economy. Senators Bayh, Conrad, Feinstein, Lieberman and Warner have made a pact that they will vote against extending the debt ceiling of the US if Nancy Pelosi doesn't create an independent extra-congressional committee to decide the financial future of Medicare and Social Security.

I'm not going to go into the merits of such a committee, whether it would be effective, and how it would work because that's not really the point. The point is that if these Senators voted against extending the debt ceiling, then they would destroy the country. That sounds like hyperbole, but it really isn't.

See, what happens if we don't raise the debt ceiling is that we'd default on the entirety of the National Debt. See, part of the bills we have to pay with that borrowed money is the interest on the debt itself. If we can't borrow more money, we can't pay the interest, and the government goes into default on the debt. If you thought the credit crunch was bad, that's nothing compare to what would happen if we defaulted on the debt.

So it's not clear to me why these Senators would do this. Pelosi can't really give into such a seemingly ludicrous threat. If it is a real threat, then these people are dangerous clowns who really should be thrown out of office. If it's a bluff, it's a terrible bluff. It's like having NOTHING in your hand, putting them face up on the table, and then playing as though you have a royal flush.

I had been eagerly awaiting this game for months and finally got a chance to play it last night.  It's predecessor, Call of Duty 4, was one of the best FPS games I had played.  Unlike most FPS games the story line was actually well written and interesting.  It played out like a live action version of a Clancy novel, with dramatic turns and serious consequences.  It felt gritty and, for the most part, realistic.  The multiplayer was one of the better multiplayer FPS games, only surpassed very recently by Killzone 2.

So, how does the new one stack up?  Honestly, I'm disappointed so far.  I beat the entire single player mission in a mere six hours.  I got home last night, sat down to play after a run and dinner, and finished it before bed time.  Now, I grant that I'll likely spend the next several months playing the multiplayer part of the game, so it's not like I'm not getting value out of it.  But still, if they are going to bother having a single player story mission, at least they could have it be a little longer.  How many more development hours does that really cost?  My suspicion is they have plenty of additional content but want me to pay for DLC to get the rest. 

The Oscar for technical achievement goes to ...

Having said that, while it's brief, the game is absolutely gorgeous.  It's definitely one of the most graphically impressive games I've played.  There's some gorgeous scenes where there's smoke, snow, and sand blowing through that obscure your vision in pretty realistic ways.  I was really impressed when KZ2 came out and I would say this is definitely evolving things to the next level.  It still amazes me how much more power they are able to squeeze out of the next gen consoles.  It also further reminds me why I've come to prefer console gaming to PC gaming.  They try to get more out of what I already have rather than expecting me to buy a new system every 6 months.

The Oscar for best screenplay goes to... 

... Somebody else.  The storyline for the game, in all honesty, sucks.  It's very obvious that the whole thing was going for lots of artifical shock value.  You've probably heard about the controversial "No Russian" mission where you go through and massacre innocent civilians to protect your secret CIA identity.  This scene is completely egregious and I found my only enjoyment of it was marveling at the technical elements of it.  You're left with no choice but to just play along, and thus any real moral quandry is eliminated.

Beyond that scene though there's countless twists that are clearly supposed to be shocking that ultimately come off as nonsensical.  I also found more than a few things that grated on my liberal sensibilities, including torture, and quotes from Dick Cheney.  I'm not going to get into the details in the interests of avoiding spoilers.  But I found the whole plot to feel like a bad b-movie.  Not campy, but just the plot doesn't feel realistic in the slightest.  I grant this may be that I just know enough about how the world works that I don't think this scenario is at all plausible, but I suppose I should just get over it.  It's only a game, right?

Having said that, is it worth playing through the single player?  Absolutely as it is a hell of a lot of fun.  A very good mix of stealthy, slow, and precise tactics and run and gun.  I particularly liked the sequences that were more stealth focused because, generally, after being really careful for a while, suddenly the shit hits the fan and you go to "Plan B".  So the pacing change is a lot of fun and pretty engrossing. 

There were also some very unique game play elements where you come out of the standard FPS model for a moment that really worked well.  I'm not going to go into detail on this, but it reminded me a lot of some elements in Metal Gear Solid 4 that had impressed me in that game. 

Conclusion

I've not touched the multiplayer elements of the game so that will follow later.  Overall if you're buying this game to play the single player mission, do not waste your money.  It is 100% worth a rental, but it's so short that it's just not worth $60.  It's definitely a worthy successor to COD4, in spite of my disappointment about the overall story line.  What I'd really like to see is for Infinity Ward to make the single player a little more substantial with the potential for branches based on choices you make.  "No Russian," hints at how that could play out, but then forces you back into the linear, "follow orders," game play that takes a lot away from the game.

I understand that video game companies want to have their big titles out for the holidays.  So, as a result we're seeing release after release of big eagerly anticipated games.  This comes after a summer that was largely pretty quiet for new releases.  The problem though is that I only have so much time and money to allocate to my game purchases.

A few weeks ago I picked up Demon's Souls and today I got a copy of Modern Warfare 2, a game I've been waiting for with baited breath for some time.  So that's pretty much it for my game purchases for the next few months.  There's a bunch of games that, in the absence of other games to play, I'd probably look into.  Brutal Legend seems pretty fun after trying the demo.  Uncharted 2 is apparently quite good.  I've still got a couple Fallout 3 DLC's I haven't played.  Had any of this come out a few months ago I'd have probably gotten them, but I don't have the time to play them now.

Movie studios tend to suffer from the same problem where they all want to stack their movies during the peak summer and Christmas season.  They benefit from the fact that a movie only lasts 2 hours so they can stack multiple movies in back to back weeks without cannibalizing your profits too much.  But with a video game, you could play it for weeks or months, keeping you busy enough that you don't need to buy other games. 

I grant that 6 months for now I can still buy Uncharted 2, but by that point there will be other newer games fighting for my attention.  Mag comes out in January which will be on my short list.  Battlefield Bad Company 2 comes out in March.  So when exactly am I going to have time to sit down with some of these titles they are releasing for Christmas?

Drifting off politics, I will now write about religion.  I figure I want to cover all the topics bound to offend somebody :)

Anyhow, the primary reason that religion has found itself at odds with science is that religion wants to convince us that humanity is a unique and special creation.  The focus of intense interest by an omniscient God who orchestrates every moment of existence with precision and planning, give or take a little free will to keep it interesting.   But it seems to me that scientific discovery doesn't diminish the vision of God but actually expands it.

As humanity has evolved and come to better understand our world, the reality is that our awareness of our own insignificance in the world has expanded with it.  Our ancestors were at the mercy of the nature around them in a seemingly infinite world.  Now, we have all manner of civilization that protects us from much of nature but with our ability to see deeply into the universe we now know that this planet is but a speck circling a dot, orbiting the periphery of a bigger dot in a vast and ever expanding universe. 

You can either plug your ears, scream "la la la" and go back to talking about snakes and garden, or you can see this as fundamental lesson in humility.  That no matter how much you know or think you know that there's always more to it.  That no matter how much power you think you wield over existence, the reality is that you have effectively zero power in the grand scheme of the universe.  God didn't create a universe with us at the center using simple rules of math that any vaguely enlightened renaissance scientist could understand.  No, the universe has rules but the rules are so complex that even the smartest people today still have to guess at how large parts of it operate. 

Seems to me that, in the end, science has done a far better job of demonstrating the vast power and scope of God than religion ever has.  I mean, tearing down the walls of Jericho?  Yeah, whatever.  Compare that to smashing whole galaxies together and flushing them down enormous black holes?  Flooding the whole world?  Try a supernova on for size and see how that rates on your divine punishment meter. 

It seems to me that if you want to believe in an all powerful being, the all powerful being who's behind science kicks the ass of the old pestilence and brimstone God.  That it's only as we've expanded our technology and our science that we've fully grasped how truly big the universe is.  If there is a God It is truly a vast and powerful God if they could manage to run this whole contraption.

I normally find Fareed Zakaria to be pretty insightful, but I think there are a lot of flaws in the logic of his most recent article.  The article is titled "The Rise of the Right" and, not unexpectedly, I'm going to disagree :).  For example:

1. The Democratic candidate in Virginia lost support as he moved more towards the right.  He started off with lower than expected polling results amongst Democrats and made a move to the right.  This actually exacerbated his problem, driving Democrats away from the polls.  
2. Either party tends to emphasize whatever they see as the middle ground during general elections.  It's always been a tight rope to walk, to get your base fired up without scaring off the middle.  This tight rope has become far more difficult to walk for the Republican party because their base has become more extreme and less tolerant of centrism in their candidates.
3. The Democrats who did lose largely did so because of flaws in them as individual candidates.  See my previous comments about Virginia, and note that Corzine was long criticized in New Jersey.  I didn't vote for Blagojevic last election but it wasn't because of his positions of health care.
4. The label "independent" has long been flawed.  Many of those "independents" are people who were formally identified as Republicans.  So it's hard to tell if this is a real shift in sentiment.  Many of these people either skipped the 2008 election due to lack of viable choices, or voted for Obama because of the melt down of McCain/Palin.  2008 was a very different election for a number of reasons so using it as a bench mark is a bit flawed.
5. Ultimately in spite of this presumable improvement for republicans, Democrats netted a two seat gain in the house of representatives.

He goes on to say:

1. The status of the economy
2. The seriousness of Repulican candidates

If the economy improves in ways that people can tangibly see (i.e. jobs, not GDP growth), then Democrats should maintain their control and possibly gain ground.  If the economy doesn't improve, then Republicans can gain ground if they can prove that they are serious candidates with real policy proposals.  The odds, at the moment, don't seem to be favoring Republicans, but we'll see what it looks like next year.

The real long term threat to Democrats is that their "centrist" approaches to health care and financial reform will fall apart.  It will not be their liberalness that undoes them, it will be their refusal to be boldly liberal and do what works.  It will be their unwillingness to be bold and push for real changes that will cost them, and us, dearly.