Quotulatiousness

June 28, 2011

The Daily Mail tries to drum up moral outrage (again)

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Patrick Hayes views with disdain the latest Freedom of Information trolling exercise performed by the Daily Mail in an attempt to spice up their “news” coverage:

Is Britain in the grip of a hidden crimewave? Are thousands of crimes being committed each year by feral youths, which the police know about but are powerless to prevent? Is Britain being stalked by troublemaking toddlers, committing vandalism with no comeuppance for their ‘crimes’ because of their tender age?

In a word, no. Though you’d never know that by reading yesterday’s hysterical news reports. ‘As many as 3,000 criminals, including rapists, robbers and burglars, escaped punishment last year because they were too young to be prosecuted’, declared the Daily Mail. The paper published the results of a pretty shameless trawling exercise, having placed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to police forces around Britain about underage crime. It managed to dredge up various accounts of childish ‘criminal’ activity, including a ‘rape’ in Levenmouth committed by two eight-year-old boys, a ‘kidnapping’ in Rochdale also carried out by an eight-year-old, and a ‘spate of vandalism’ conducted by a three-year-old boy and four-year-old girl.

The Mail received responses to its FOI request from 30 out of 52 police forces, discovering that ‘1,605 crimes were blamed on someone aged under 10 in the last financial year’. Guestimating how many crimes might have been committed by kids in those parts of Britain policed by the 22 forces that did not respond to its requests, it came up with a total of 3,000 offences. And rather than caution its readers that these figures only cover accusations of a crime, rather than guilt having been proven, the Mail implies its findings could be the tip of the iceberg: ‘Many police forces do not even record crimes where they believe youngsters under 10 have been responsible.’

June 27, 2011

Bodyhacking is closer than you may think

Filed under: Science, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:15

An occasional meme in science fiction stories is someone being able to control the actions of another using remote control. We may be closer to that, um, “vision” than we expect:

Now that pacemakers are to be loaded with firewalls and bionic-man body parts are appearing on production lines, the concept of body hacking has become a spooky possibility. Researchers in Japan have begun to try to teach people how to play instruments by remotely controlling their hands.

Developed by the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs, the aptly named PossessedHand stimulates muscles that move our digits, New Scientist reports.

A belt with 28 electrode pads is strapped to the arm, sending signals to the joints between the three bones of each finger, with two for the thumb.

“A substantial expansion of the FBI’s power to monitor innocent Americans”

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Julian Sanchez on the changes to the FBI’s domestic rulebook:

The change in the rules will remove a crucial deterrent for any of the 14,000 FBI employees who might be tempted to use their government access to all kinds of databases for improper personal ends, or to flout rules prohibiting religious, racial and political profiling. This is no hypothetical concern: Shortly after the new guidelines were announced, a former CIA official alleged that the Bush administration had asked the spy agency to dig up dirt on academic and blogger Juan Cole, whose fierce criticism of the war in Iraq earned the ire of the White House.

The new manual will also give agents who have opened assessments greater authority to employ physical surveillance teams. If the FBI thinks you might make a useful informant, agents will be free to dig through your garbage in hopes of finding embarrassing trash that might encourage you to cooperate. And they will be able to do this without first having to show any evidence that you are engaged in wrongdoing.

The FBI, predictably, is downplaying the changes in its rulebook, characterizing them as “clarifications” and “tweaks.” But all these tweaks add up to a substantial expansion of the FBI’s power to monitor innocent Americans — power Congress wisely curtailed in the 1970s in light of the bureau’s ugly history of spying on political dissidents. The law set broad limits on the most intrusive investigative techniques, such as wiretaps, but the details of who could be investigated and how were largely left to executive branch regulation. As statutory restraints on surveillance have been peeled back over the last decade, Americans have been asked to rely more than ever on those internal rules to check abuses.

The Economist calls for Greek debt restructuring

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

A Greek default. It’s stopped being a possibility, moved into being a probability, and it’s starting to look inevitable:

There is an alternative, for which this newspaper has long argued: an orderly restructuring of Greece’s debts, halving their value to around 80% of GDP. It would hardly be a shock to the markets, which have long expected a default (an important difference from Lehman). The banks that still hold a big chunk of the bonds are in better shape to absorb losses today than they were last year. Even if Greece’s debts were cut in half, the net loss would still represent an absorbable proportion of most European banks’ capital.

An orderly restructuring would be risky. Doing it now would crystallise losses for banks and taxpayers across Europe. Nor would it, by itself, right Greece. The country’s economy is in deep recession and it is running a primary budget deficit (ie, before interest payments). Even if Greece restructures its debt and embraces the reforms demanded by the EU and IMF, it will need outside support for some years. That is bound to bring more fiscal-policy control from Brussels, turning the euro zone into a more politically integrated club. Even if that need not mean a superstate with its own finance ministry, the EU’s leaders have not started to explain the likely ramifications of all this to voters. But at least Greece and the markets would have a plan with a chance of working.

No matter what fictions they concoct this week, the euro zone’s leaders will sooner or later face a choice between three options: massive transfers to Greece that would infuriate other Europeans; a disorderly default that destabilises markets and threatens the European project; or an orderly debt restructuring. This last option would entail a long period of external support for Greece, greater political union and a debate about the institutions Europe would then need. But it is the best way out for Greece and the euro. That option will not be available for much longer. Europe’s leaders must grab it while they can.

Stephen Gordon: The “broken window” fallacy of “green” jobs

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

It’s always nice to see a reference to Frédéric Bastiat in a modern day setting:

But it is possible to oversell the green jobs theme. Job creation should not be a goal of environmental policy, no more than it should be a policy goal in the fields of health or national security. If, instead of hiring people, we could use magic to stop disease, crime and environmental degradation, we would. Pointing to jobs ‘created’ to fix these problems is an error that Frédéric Bastiat identified in his ‘parable of the broken window’. Broken windows generate work for glaziers, but that doesn’t mean that breaking windows will increase national income.

An often-quoted statistic goes something like this: “wind energy produces 27 per cent more jobs per kilowatt hour than coal plants and 66 per cent more jobs than natural gas plants”. This could well be true, but it is hardly a strong argument in favour of the employment opportunities that would be generated by investing in wind energy: hiring more people to produce less energy is not a strategy for prosperity. Similar gains in employment could be obtained by outlawing mechanical excavators so that all digging must be done by hand. It may make sense to encourage the development of wind power, but increased employment is most emphatically not one of the reasons for doing so.

A review of The Declaration of Independents

Filed under: Books, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:33

Timothy P. Carney talks about the new book by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch:

Libertarians today are mostly considered a variety of conservative — Ronald Reagan with fewer bombs and more pot. But Welch and Gillespie don’t cast libertarianism as one of many political ideolgies. Instead, they portray it as a truce. It’s unpolitics. The authors see evidence of a “libertarian moment,” not so much in public opinion on policy matters (though outrage about bailouts helps), but in cultural trends that spill over into politics.

Younger Americans don’t like being told what to think. Gone is the voice-of-God Walter Cronkite figure. Younger adults assemble their own news feeds a la carte, following trusted voices on Twitter and RSS feeds. Even walking through a shopping mall, the authors argue, shows how we’re much more individualistic as a culture than we used to be. The authors say there’s a proliferation of cliques and types in high schools and among adults, too. The Internet has helped people find kindred spirits both near and far, making it less necessary to modify your interests to match an existing group. Americans, increasingly, choose their own way.

And there, in a nutshell, is the traditionalist’s core argument against the internet (grounded in their remembered high school experience): it allows geeks and nerds and other unpopular kids to find solace, support and fellow feeling outside their immediate physical surroundings. That undermines the traditional rule of the jocks and the beautiful people.

Welch and Gillespie see our cultural trends as evidence that “decentralization and democratization” are taking territory from “the forces of control and centralization.” The political corollary, naturally, would be a movement that creates more space for individuality. It would be almost an anti-political movement.

But this is where every dream of an independent or libertarian uprising crashes into reality. You don’t win at politics without being good at politics. The people who are best at politics are the people who stand to gain a lot from it — special interests and people who get like to play the political game. Neither group is likely to include many anti-political decentralizers.

What about the libertarians who are already caught up in politics? The think-tankers, the activists, the journalists? Well, they’re another obstacle to a libertarian revolution. For one thing, this is a group famous for infighting. The Libertarian Party has been racked with strife, splits and feuds for its entire existence. Welch and Gillespie want to pitch a big tent, but Beltway libertarians are famous for imposing “purity tests.” (Q: Should vending machines marketing heroin to children be allowed on public sidewalks? A: There shouldn’t be public sidewalks.)

That last quip is quite true: the very first time I walked in to a libertarian gathering, I was besieged with purity testing of that sort. I nearly walked right back out without a backward glance.

June 26, 2011

Skype’s PR problem over their sneaky options plan

Filed under: Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:35

Over my career in the software industry, I’ve worked for several companies who provided a stock option plan as part of their employee compensation scheme. Exactly one of those companies’ programs ever provided me with any actual tangible benefit (the company was bought, and the options were bought back at market rate). It netted me a couple of thousand dollars. Options may have been a way to get rich in the early 1990s, but they’re pretty much a longshot lottery ticket now.

Skype has found a sneaky way of making that longshot chance even more unlikely to pay off:

Employees aren’t even able to keep the vested portion of their stock options. The vast majority of stock options granted to startups have a vesting period, typically four years, with chunks of those options becoming vested during that four year (or whatever) period. If options are vested you can exercise them, pay for the stock and own that stock. At least that’s the way things have been done over the decades.

Skype did things differently. With Skype stock options the company has the right to not only terminate unvested options, but also vested ones. And any vested options that you’ve exercised (meaning you paid cash for them) that were turned into actual shares could simply be bought back by the company at the price you paid, regardless of their current value.

Turning your potentially lucrative stock holdings (if the value was higher than your strike price) into a mandatory zero-interest savings account. Nice.

The fact that Skype adopted this plan in the first place isn’t in itself “evil.” But they’ve done two things wrong from what I can tell.

First it appears that employees had no idea what they were signing and they probably expected it would be a normal stock option type deal that everyone in Silicon Valley has done for decades. If Skype wasn’t crystal clear with them, and explained it in normal human language that they understood, then these employees were intentionally misled. Skype had an incentive to make things unclear, because employees would demand far more compensation if they had understood. The fact that employees are so surprised that this is happening suggests that they didn’t understand the agreement. This is what lawyers call fraud.

The second thing Skype did wrong was not to waive this clause with the looming acquisition. The company can deny all day long that they fired these employees for cause, not to save a few dollars on stock options. But the appearance is the exact opposite.

How much did the salary cap change the NFL?

Filed under: Business, Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:14

If this analysis of the 1975 Minnesota Vikings roster by John Holler says anything, it shows that the biggest change in NFL history was probably the introduction of free agency and the salary cap:

Many players believe the 1975 Vikings were the greatest team in franchise history. But, in the free agency era, there would have been no chance they could have kept the team together. Fortunately for Vikings fans, those players were locked into contracts that didn’t allow them leave. But, what would the ’75 Vikings have cost in modern-day dollars? Too much. Consider the following:

Fran Tarkenton was nearing the end of his career, but had never missed a game and was viewed by many as the best quarterback in the NFL. Given the current wage paid the top QB, Tark could easily have been given $15 million or so.

Chuck Foreman would have been entering the third year of his rookie contract and, most likely, would have held out in order to get a better deal in the current era. The Vikings would acquiesce and he would sign a deal of about five years for $45 million, with $15 million or so up front. Current cap total about $30 million.

On the offensive line, Mick Tingelhoff would likely not be earning top dollar, but would still be worth about $3 million a year. Guard Ed White would likely be coming up for free agency himself and would probably cost another $5-6 million a year. Ron Yary, the first overall pick in the 1968 draft, would likely be in the second or third year of his second contract, which, given his five straight Pro Bowl appearances, would probably put him in the $12 million range. So far, five players would have the Vikings on the hook for about $50 million, without even touching the Purple People Eaters.

In short, free agency and the salary cap totally changed the economic side of the game, and ensured that more teams would be competitive over the long haul.

Anti-semitism at the University of Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:54

Post-graduate students at the U of T may have gotten a bit too honest and outspoken in class:

Picture the following: A discussion in a post-graduate university class on the topic of Jews turns ugly. The professor is uncritical when one student says he doesn’t want to be around Jews. Another student complains about “rich Jews,” implying their excessive power. In a subsequent class, the same professor, as if to validate those points, says half her department faculty are Jews and with her approbation, students conduct a ‘Jew count’.

While this sounds like an episode in Germany leading up to the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, it occurred more recently and much closer to home, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work. Now, more details are emerging under the exceptional circumstance of two U of T professors publicly criticizing a colleague for facilitating classroom anti-Semitism and the university administration’s inadequate response.

The controversy began when some visible minority students in a Social Work Master’s program at the University of Toronto expressed discomfort about being around “rich Jews,” in Professor Rupaleem Bhuyan’s class, regarding a proposed outing in 2009 to the Baycrest Centre, an internationally renowned Jewish geriatric and research facility. They were undoubtedly confident of a sympathetic ear from her. The previous year, Bhuyan denounced Israel as a satellite of the United States, unworthy of distinction as a separate country.

The few Jewish students in Bhuyan’s Master’s Program class were intimidated into silence for much of the discussion by a classroom culture slanted against them. Finally, one young woman spoke up, protesting her grandparents had come to Canada with virtually nothing and she was proud her family could now afford the fees for them to reside at Baycrest.

That must have rung an alarm bell for Professor Bhuyan, because startlingly, she then admonished her students not to divulge what transpired in class to outsiders.

H/T to Ilkka for the link.

Product warnings

Filed under: Humour, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:46

Many weird and whacky warnings get attached to products as a result of product liability concerns, but some of them must be generated without legal prompting:

Warning #2: Booze Blues

Seen on a Terrestrial Digital outdoor antenna: “Do not attempt to install if drunk, pregnant, or both.”

Of course, if you’re drunk and pregnant, you probably have bigger problems.

Warning #3: Three-Dimensional Danger

Seen on a Samsung 3D TV disclaimer: “Pregnant women, the elderly, sufferers of serious medical conditions, those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilizing the unit’s 3D functionality.”

Man, those drunk moms-to-be just can’t catch a break!

Warning #4: Options, Options

Seen on a computer software package: “Optional modem required.”

The writer’s mandatory English language class, incidentally, was not completed.

June 25, 2011

“How very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid”

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:23

I think my niece mentioned this show over dinner the other night. Ilkka explains:

I recently watched two episodes of “Swamp People“, another low-budget realimentary that sets the camera to follow people with exciting and physical jobs and edits the result down to a highlights reel of action and drama with some narrative added on top. The show not only reminded me of the essay “Rednecks” by Fred Reed, but also of Tommi’s old observation of how very lucky we humans are in that all other animals are so goddamn stupid, really just simple and predictable automata. Armed with but a boat, a baited hook and a shotgun, these fellows hunt, kill and pile up 500-pound prehistoric monsters that will then be given a more useful and productive existence as delicious meat, suitcases and boots. Come on, you can’t tell me that this show doesn’t beat the initially amusing but then later just repetitive and a little bit too obviously scripted “Pawn Stars” any day…

Taxes must rise to maintain “the overall size of government programs”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was being as honest as he knows how in talking to the House Small Business Committee this week. Reducing the size of government is literally unthinkable:

[T]he Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year — including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.

[. . .]

Geithner, continuing, argued that if the administration did not extract a trillion dollars in new revenue from its plan to increase taxes on people earning more than $250,000, including small businesses, the government would in effect “finance” what he called a “tax benefit” for those people.

“We’re not doing it because we want to do it, we’re doing it because if we don’t do it, then, again, I have to go out and borrow a trillion dollars over the next 10 years to finance those tax benefits for the top 2 percent, and I don’t think I can justify doing that,” said Geithner.

Not only that, he argued, but cutting spending by as much as the “modest change in revenue” (i.e. $1 trillion) the administration expects from raising taxes on small business would likely have more of a “negative economic impact” than the tax increases themselves would.

Reason.TV reporter arrested for “disorderly conduct” and “trespassing”

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:15

Tim Harford analyzes the ECB’s real problem

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Tim Harford puts the head of the ECB (Essex Community Business association) on the couch:

“With all due respect, doctor, I don’t think it’s me who needs to see a shrink.”

“Don’t worry. A lot of people feel a bit awkward when they first lie on this couch. This is a safe, non-judgmental space.”

“I wish the Essex Community Business association was as relaxed.”

“But you’re the chairman of the ECB association. Tell me why you feel that way.”

“Look, I always felt that the ECB association was supposed to be an informal talking shop, a way for people with shared interests to make new friends and perhaps even launch joint projects. Everyone was really happy when Georgios, the new owner of the Plaka Taverna, wanted to join — the more the merrier.”

[. . .]

“So if I understand the situation, you’re lending money to Georgios that you know he can never pay back, and demanding that his staff make sacrifices they are transparently unwilling to make, in order to protect Mr Saville’s bank, in order to protect José, who in some unspecified way is connected to Georgios’s fate.”

“It does sound a bit strange when you put it like that. I think the theory is that if we don’t throw money and yell impractical and unwelcome management advice at a transparently bankrupt business, then maybe a perfectly viable business will be damaged. Especially since there won’t be any money left, because we’ll have given it all to Georgios, who will have given it all to his waiters. Does that make sense?”

QotD: The game marketing game

Filed under: Gaming, Media, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

. . . here’s the long and short of it: A PR flack complaining about unfair representation of a videogame is like a mugger complaining about unsafe working conditions.

They say advertisers sell the sizzle, not the steak. Videogame companies regularly sell not the steak, not the sizzle, but a recording of the sizzle of aged Wagyū steak, the audio captured under ideal acoustic conditions and sweetened with frequencies proven to make people hungry. Then, often as not, they present you with a microwaved hamburger and a promise to remove the bugs — which in this metaphor are actual insects — just as soon as they can.

I don’t write many reviews these days, but as far as I’m concerned, eviscerating shitty games with snappy sarcasm is a public service. If 500 words of my resentment are more entertaining than 10 hours of your game, then you wrote a crappy game.

And let’s get this out of the way: Don’t come crying to me about the hard work of the developers and how they’re being abused by reviewers. You know what developers really hate? Working on crappy games. Nobody enjoys feeling like they’re being paid to tie ribbons on manure. You want happy developers? Let them make the best games they can and present them honestly.

So here’s the deal. I’m all for civility. In any future game reviews, I will completely do away with venom and mockery, but only if the ad agencies do away with exaggeration and hype. If you start lying, I start making vicious, spiteful fun of you.

Lore Sjöberg, “Alt Text: After Duke Nukem PR Fail, Terrible Games Are Fair Game”, Wired, 2011-06-24

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