— Updated: 8:35 am -->Not Waving But Drowning
Ireland 5-year CDSThe markets are evidently not reassured. But why should they be?
It’s hard to escape the sense that European policy makers are just completely out of their depth. They know how to deal with liquidity problems, but they cannot come to grips with the reality that this requires more than buying a bit more time. It’s as if we’re having the following dialogue:
“Ireland really can’t afford to pay these debts.”
“Here’s a credit line!”
“No, really, we just can’t afford to pay.”
“Here’s a credit line!”
It really is like watching a car wreck.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Not Waving But Drowning - NYTimes.com
The price of outsourcing
By Philip Lieberman, president of Liebsoft
At a recent CIO conference in Phoenix for insurance industry executives, I gave a presentation on how to improve the relationship between CIOs and their IT management. At the end of the presentation I received exasperated responses from some of the CIOs about how there was little to no need to enhance the relationship because for some of the attendees, all of their IT management and IT staff had been long ago outsourced and there was effectively no "relationship" or vision collaboration to improve.
What I saw was the logical end to an evolution of the USA insurance industry to minimize costs to the degree that essentially all IT was now the domain of non-employees for many insurance companies. With this delegation and discharge of employees has been the lost of corporate knowledge, loyalty, and innovation as well that ability to use the combination of CIO vision and IT technology to achieve a competitive advantage.
The road to this evolution was paved by the greed and shortsightedness of CEOs running some of the largest insurance companies to achieve maximum profitability by gutting their IT operations (some have virtually no in-house employees in IT), and outsourcing the work off-shore. Effectively assuming that IT is nothing more than a commodity that can be reduced at will and to the maximum extent possible with little to no effect on the operations of the company.
Having completed this over-optimization of IT these large organizations (most of which use SMB insurance agents), find themselves being challenged and beaten by newer entrants into the business that are totally on-line with no agents to be beholden to. In essence these new competitors have used IT as a technical/business advantage whereas the big guys have destroyed their IT investment and are now reaping the harvest of their money saving ways.
The ultimate conclusion of some analysts at this conference (and which I agree with) is that the insurance industry as it now exists with agents, small agent offices, and paper and pencil ways will be dead in 15 years or less as the next generation of consumers that are Internet savvy become financially dominant.
The lesson to be learned is that loyalty to employees and the ability to exploit the synergistic relationship between the CIO and IT can still be a powerful force for competitive advantage. For those that fail to plant their seeds for the future will end up in the mining or dust business. This appears to be the model for the future of companies where CIOs have no loyal IT staff that are full time employees. In the new model for many CIOs, they are nothing more than hanging ornaments at the C-level that used to be visionaries and leaders, but are nothing more than hatchet men to reduce costs and tidy up the deck chairs as well as pass out iPads to clueless executives as the Titanic slowly sinks.
As I understand it, this brave new world provides great financial incentives for CIOs that continue to drive down costs. Like a car that accelerates to a thrilling speed and then plunges off a cliff, these CIOs will be in for a hell of a ride...all the way to the end of the line.
via microscope.co.uk
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Stem cell spray heals burns
Stem cell spray heals burnsNovember 26th, 2010 @ 11:25pmBy Ed YeatesSALT LAKE CITY -- A spray solution of a patient's own stem cells is healing their severe burns. So far, early experiments under a University of Utah pilot project are showing some remarkable results.
What was once a serious burn on Kaye Adkins foot is healing nicely now because of a topical spray. With diabetes as a complication, the small but open wound had not healed after weeks of failed treatments.
Dr. Amalia Cochran with the university's Burn Care Center says, "With a wound that is open for several months, as this patient suffered prior to seeing us in our burn clinic, we worry about a pretty heavy bacterial load there."
But enter the evolutionary world of regenerative medicine, using almost a bedside stem cell technique that takes only about 15 minutes. With red cells removed, a concentrate of platelets and progenitor cells is combined with calcium and thrombin. The final mixture looks almost like Jello.
"I woke up and saw them with this big thin, looked like a needle, and I said you're going to put that in my foot? And they said NO, we're going to spray," Adkins said.
Though her own skin graft had failed before, the topical spray was used during a second graft. It "took" and healed. "I had never heard of anything like that. It was just amazing," Adkins said.
Adkins burn is healing and so is her heart. Coincidentally, stem cells were used during her bypass surgery five weeks ago to hasten healing for that procedure as well. While hundreds of heart patients have had stem cell treatments, burn patients are still few in numbers.
Cardiothoracic surgeon Amit Patel and burn care surgeon Amalia Cochran are experimenting on small burns for now. But down the road, both are hoping for large scale clinical trials on patients with much larger burns.
Patel asks, "Can we accelerate healing or improve healing. Then it's the quality of healing. And then, we hopefully advance to decreasing the scarring process completely."
"It's my hope that in my career," Cochran adds, "stem cells will completely revolutionize how we're able to take care of patients. Not just with small burns that are challenging to heal, but with massive burn injuries as well."
The military is keeping a close eye on the Utah project. The future for treating burns on soldiers could stagger the imagination even more. Patel says "regrowing your own skin in a bioreactor is very realistic and that's not five years away even. We start with a biological band aid and hope to end up with basically synthetic skin that's still derived from your own cells."
In this dream of regenerative medicine, Patel believes we can only imagine a day when sheets of pristine skin might be available to any patient off the shelf.
via ksl.com
A Waste of Money and Time - Room for Debate
A Waste of Money and Time
Updated November 23, 2010, 09:14 PM
Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of several books on computer security, including "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World."
A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.
Take all the money spent on new security measures and spend it on investigation and intelligence.This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.
It’s not even a fair game. It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.
There are two basic kinds of terrorists. The are the sloppy planners, like the guy who crashed his plane into the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin. He’s going to be sloppy and stupid, and even pre-9/11 airplane security is going to catch him. The second is the well-planned, well-financed, and much rarer sort of plot. Do you really expect the T.S.A. screeners, who are busy confiscating water bottles and making people take off their belts — and now doing uncomfortable pat-downs — to stop them?
Of course not. Airport security is the last line of defense, and it’s not a very good one. What works is investigation and intelligence: security that works regardless of the terrorist tactic or target. Yes, the target matters too; all this airport security is only effective if the terrorists target airports. If they decide to bomb crowded shopping malls instead, we’ve wasted our money.
That being said, airplanes require a special level of security for several reasons: they’re a favored terrorist target; their failure characteristics mean more deaths than a comparable bomb on a bus or train; they tend to be national symbols; and they often fly to foreign countries where terrorists can operate with more impunity.
But all that can be handled with pre-9/11 security. Exactly two things have made airplane travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money. Add screening of checked bags and airport workers and we’re done. Take all the rest of the money and spend it on investigation and intelligence.
Immediately after the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber’s plot failed, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called airplane security a success. She was pilloried in the press and quickly backpedaled, but I think it was one of the most sensible things said on the subject. Plane lands safely, terrorist in custody, nobody injured except the terrorist: what more do people want out of a security success?
Look at what succeeded. Because even pre-9/11 security screened for obvious bombs, Abdulmutallab had to construct a far less reliable bomb than he would have otherwise. Instead of using a timer or a plunger or a reliable detonation mechanism, as would any commercial user of PETN, Abdulmutallab had to resort to an ad hoc and much more inefficient detonation mechanism involving a syringe, 20 minutes in the lavatory, and setting his pants on fire. As a result, his actions came to the notice of the other passengers, who subdued him.
Neither the full-body scanners or the enhanced pat-downs are making anyone safer. They’re more a result of politicians and government appointees capitulating to a public that demands that “something must be done,” even when nothing should be done; and a government bureaucracy that is more concerned about the security of their careers if they fail to secure against the last attack than what happens if they fail anticipate the next one.
Topics: Transportation, airports
Comments are no longer being accepted.73 Readers' Comments
Post a comment »Bob SimpsonThailandNovember 22nd, 2010 9:57 pmI would also add that there are strong vested interest in installing billions of dollars of new security equipment. It would be noteworthy to check on the lobbying going on by the manufacturers in Washington. One has to remember that what happens in the USA will usually be replicated around the world. Here in Thailand, when they opened the new Bangkok airport, the scandals and corruption were rife concerning all the hundreds of millions of new GE X ray scanners. Now repeat that in thousands of airports around the world and tell me there is no incentive to push this new unnecessary made in USA tech.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 173 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedrothjjBoston, MANovember 22nd, 2010 10:26 pmHow exactly would current airport security stop a person from personally crashing his plane into an IRS building? Maybe shooting it down would, but it doesn't seem likely that would happen quickly enough. Psychological screenings of pilots? Again, I doubt that would stop all the depressed people out there.For all the talk that profiling misses some would-be terrorists, the vast majority of 'serious' terrorists (not one man operations) would be easily caught by profiling.
Recommend Recommended Recommended by 36 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedMarkWashington, DCNovember 22nd, 2010 10:42 pm"Exactly two things have made airplane travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers they need to fight back."Amen!
Recommend Recommended Recommended by 296 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedMelissaNYNovember 23rd, 2010 12:31 amAgree with everything except: "Plane lands safely, terrorist in custody, nobody injured except the terrorist: what more do people want out of a security success?"Given that the terrorist's own father warned the US about his son, I think this might go down as a failure to analyze intelligence, or at least as a barely averted catastrophe. "Success" seems like a stretch.
Recommend Recommended Recommended by 63 Readers Report as inappropriate Reported"Neither the full-body scanners or the enhanced pat-downs are making anyone safer. They’re more a result of politicians and government appointees capitulating to a public that demands that “something must be done,” even when nothing should be done; and a government bureaucracy that is more concerned about the security of their careers if they fail to secure against the last attack than what happens if they fail anticipate the next one."That says it all, except for one thing: There are in the public some people who do not demand that "something must be done." Unfortunately, we (I include myself) have played "put up and shut up" for far too long, and let the politicians and appointees get away with their "security" nonsense.
Recommend Recommended Recommended by 64 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedThanks, this was good and I should have read it before commenting on the first post. The other passengers are the best defense against another airplane attack. Not only that, they are everywhere and they cost nothing--they pay to be there.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 32 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedKnow It AllBrooklyn, NYNovember 23rd, 2010 4:55 amYou preach it, Mr. Schneier!Recommend Recommended Recommended by 11 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedI am surprised that the government has not ordered the removal of bathroom doors so that one may be kept under observation. (Maybe I should not have pointed that out. Now they'll do it!)Recommend Recommended Recommended by 34 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedAt the gate, I awaited my flight to Dallas from New Orleans. Three young Iranian men sat next to me. They were reading Farsi texts. As we boarded the Southwest Airlines Flight, security searched me. They did not search the three young me. The notion that an elderly (almost 70-years-old) man reading “The Wall Street Journal” would highjack the airplane and run it into some monstrously ugly building in downtown Dallas did not seem high. We--well not me--have lost our minds.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 45 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedCorrect -- this is nothing but security theatre. Nothing more than warm tummy (false) therapy that benefits functionaries and gadget-makers, but not the flying public.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 40 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedThe last line deserves special attention. The official bias is bound to be to do more, not less, indeed to do what is obvious and available, such as scanners. To fail to do so and to have an airplane explode would result in much more blame than installing scanners. Judge Learned Hand long ago set out the formula -- the burden is the probability of loss multiplied by the magnitude of the loss. Here the magnitude is high if the loss happens, but the probability is vanishingly low. Rationally, the decision should be to not install the scanners. Emotionally, however, for the traveling public and the official, the fear factor trumps all, leading to an irrational decision.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 20 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedOpheliaNew York CityNovember 23rd, 2010 6:40 amThis reflects my opinion as well. Body scanners may not have stopped the underwear bomber, but you know what would have? The intelligence community following up when Abdulmutallab's father walked into the U.S. embassy and said he was afraid his son had been brainwashed by terrorists and was planning an attack! Can you get a better tip than that??Recommend Recommended Recommended by 88 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedJohn-PaulCumberland, MaineNovember 23rd, 2010 6:45 amHow long will we live in this terror mentality? It's been almost a decade and we seem to be ever more fearful, ever more willing to give up our freedoms and values to thwart possible attacks. Even before the body scanners and pat-downs I thought the security checks at airports were ridiculous and I stopped looking forward to flying, but now inconvenience has become humiliation and many people will simply give up elective travel by air, curtailing visits to family who live at a distance. It's as if our own immune system is crippling us, and far more harmful than any outside pathogen.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 71 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedBravo Bruce Schneirer! You nailed it.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 30 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedTiberiusCharlotte, NCNovember 23rd, 2010 12:24 amIf the new "porno" scanners and pat-downs cannot detect a "body cavity" bomb then what use are they? Why are we harassing travelers and investing billions in a security system for which there is an easy and known way to defeat it? The investment makes sense if you want to *appear* to be solving the problem (aka security theater) but it is a waste of money otherwise.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 45 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedGee a MoronHashmonaim, IsraelNovember 23rd, 2010 2:18 amProfiling has also made airplane travel safer...but that's only one in IsraelRecommend Recommended Recommended by 15 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedThank God there are still reasonable people out there with a voice.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 20 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedThis is the best commentary on the subject I have read. We are being doomed by political correctness. We need to profile though we can't call it that. I have done extensive research on who is most likely to be a terrorist threat and it's not an elderly woman or a fat bald guy with a tattoo on his head or countless other fellow citizens whom if I were a screener would let pass with a look into their eyes and a smiling hello and "Have a good trip". It's the Muslim stupid. Sorry if you look like a potential Muslim terrorist male or female the odds are you're not...but we gotta check. So sorry.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 30 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedI second the "amen". We might add emergency ground override control to land airplanes in trouble, but outside of those, ban the TSA.Recommend Recommended Recommended by 16 Readers Report as inappropriate ReportedMosesMassachusettsNovember 23rd, 2010 8:11 amI completely agree with Mr. Schneier. The terrorists are creative and there are millions of plots they can use. It costs them nothing to come up with a new one.Security doesn't make us safe, because there's no such thing as safe. Security makes us safeR. It raises the bar for an attack to succeed. So for every security measure, the proper question to ask is how much safer it makes us, and whether that gain is worth the cost, in dollars or dignity.
Recommend Recommended Recommended by 41 Readers Report as inappropriate Reportedof 4 Next
via nytimes.com
Saturday, November 27, 2010
The Unemployed Held Hostage, Again
It is hard to believe, as the holidays approach yet again amid economic hard times, but Congress looks as if it may let federal unemployment benefits lapse for the fourth time this year.
Lame duck lawmakers will have only one day when they return to work on Monday to renew the expiring benefits. If they don’t, two million people will be cut off in December alone. This lack of regard for working Americans is shocking. Last summer, benefits were blocked for 51 days, as senators in both parties focused on preserving tax breaks for wealthy money managers and other affluent constituents.
This time, tax cuts for the rich are bound to drive and distort the debate again. Republicans and Democrats will almost certainly link the renewal of jobless benefits to an extension of the high-end Bush-era tax cuts. That would be a travesty. There is no good argument for letting jobless benefits expire, or for extending those cuts.
The recession that began in 2007 has led to the worst unemployment in nearly 30 years. We have record levels of long-term unemployment. The jobless rate, 9.6 percent, has been essentially unchanged since May, and nearly 42 percent of the 14.8 million jobless workers have been sidelined for six months or more.
Some opponents of unemployment benefits — mostly Republicans but a few Democrats as well — would have you believe those figures are evidence of laziness, enabled by generous benefits. They conveniently ignore three facts. One, there are five unemployed people for every job opening — a profound scarcity of jobs. Two, federal benefits average $290 a week, about half of what the typical family spends on basics and hardly enough to dissuade someone from working. Three, as unemployment has deepened, benefits have become less generous. Earlier this year, lawmakers ended a subsidy to help unemployed workers pay for health insurance and dropped an extra $25 a week that had been added to benefits by last year’s stimulus law.
Other opponents would have you believe that the nation cannot afford to keep paying unemployment benefits: a yearlong extension would cost about $60 billion. The truth is, we cannot afford not to. The nation has never ended federal benefits when unemployment is as high as it is now, and for good reason: Without jobs, there is inadequate spending, and that means ever fewer jobs. A wide range of private and government studies show that unemployment benefits combat that vicious cycle by ensuring that families can buy the basics.
Nor do jobless benefits bust the budget. Just the opposite. They do not add to dangerous long-term deficits because the spending is temporary. And because they support spending and jobs, they contribute powerfully to the economic growth that is vital for a healthy budget. Extending the Bush high-end tax cuts would be budget busting, because they are likely to endure, adding $700 billion to the deficit over 10 years. Tax cuts for the rich provide virtually no economic stimulus, because affluent people tend to save their bounty.
Ignoring facts and logic, several Republicans have said that any benefit extension must be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere. That would, in effect, be giving with one hand while taking away with the other. It is not only cruel, but foolish, because it would reduce the economic boost that benefits would provide.
President Obama should pound the table for a clean, yearlong extension of unemployment benefits, and should excoriate phony deficit hawks — in both parties — who say that jobless benefits are too costly, even as they pass vastly more expensive tax cuts for the rich.
via nytimes.com
What the G.O.P. Missed
If you did not spend last weekend tuned in to news from the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon, you probably missed the breakthrough on European missile defense.
NATO leaders agreed to jointly develop a shield intended to intercept short- and medium-range missiles. And Russia agreed to cooperate, sharing intelligence and radar. Iran was not mentioned as the most immediate threat, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind. Iran’s Shahab-3 can already reach European targets, mercifully not yet with nuclear warheads. Tehran needs to know that the world is running out of patience.
Republican senators who are now resisting ratifying the New Start arms treaty should certainly have been paying more attention to the Lisbon meeting. They have been so busy claiming, inaccurately, that the treaty would constrain future missile defense systems that they apparently failed to notice real progress toward the only effective system that current technology permits.
Unlike the troubled missile defense program here, the European shield can be built at a modest cost with already-tested systems. Claims that President Obama is shortchanging America’s nuclear arsenal are also off-base. The administration backs spending more than $85 billion on maintaining and modernizing nuclear weapons over the next decade, far more than we think is needed.
The Republican leadership also apparently missed the parade of East European leaders — so recently darlings of the G.O.P. — declaring that prompt ratification would make Europe more secure. As Hungary’s foreign minister, Janos Martonyi put it, ratification “is in the interest of my nation, of Europe, and most importantly,” of the trans-Atlantic alliance. He is right. The treaty would modestly reduce deployed American and Russian strategic warheads and restore on-site verification. (Whatever happened to “Trust, but verify”?) Failure to ratify would undermine American credibility as it tries to curb the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
It is probably too much to ask the Republicans to congratulate President Obama on moving European missile defense forward. But their indifference to all that happened in Lisbon is further proof that their opposition to New Start is nothing more than petty obstructionism.
via nytimes.com
The Real Threat to America
LONDON — The full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs that are fast becoming the norm at U.S. airports — just in time for Thanksgiving! — do at least provide the answer to what should be done with Osama bin Laden if he’s ever captured: Rotate him in perpetuity through this security hell, “groin checks” and all.
He’ll crumple fast and wonder that 19 young guys in four planes could so warp the nervous system of the world’s most powerful nation that it has empowered zealous bureaucrats to trample on the liberties for which Americans give thanks this week.
In his stupor, arms raised as his body gets “imaged,” arms outstretched through “enhanced” patting, bin Laden might also wonder at just how stupid it is to assemble huge crowds at the Transportation Security Administration’s airport checkpoints, as if hundreds of people on planes were the only hundreds of people who make plausible targets for terrorists.
It seems Abdulmutallab, a name T.S.A. agents must now memorize, is to blame. Abdulmutallab is the failed Nigerian “underwear bomber” of last Christmas. He joins the failed shoe bomber and failed shampoo-and-bottled-water bombers in a remarkable success: adding another blanket layer of T.S.A checks, including dubious gropes, to the daily humiliations of travelers.
Whether or not these explosive devices were ever actually operable remains a matter of dispute, just as it remains a mystery that the enemy — if as powerful as portrayed — has not contrived a single terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11. What is not in doubt is an old rule: Give a bureaucrat a big stick and a big budget, allow said bureaucrat to trade in the limitless currency of human anxiety, and the masses will soon be intimidated by the Department of Fear.
Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief, once said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” The T.S.A. seems to operate on the basis of an adapted maxim: “Show me the security check and I’ll find you the excuse.”
Anyone who has watched T.S.A. agents spending 10 minutes patting down 80-year-old grandmothers, or seen dismayed youths being ordered back into the scanner booth by agents connected wirelessly to other invisible agents gazing at images of these people in a state of near-nakedness, has to ask: What form of group madness is it that forsakes judgment and discernment for process run amok?
I don’t doubt the patriotism of the Americans involved in keeping the country safe, nor do I discount the threat, but I am sure of this: The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.
America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.
There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year. One of the people pushing them most energetically is Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security.
He’s the co-founder and managing principal of the Chertoff Group, which provides security advice. One of its clients is California-based Rapiscan Systems, part of the OSI Systems corporation, that makes many of the “whole body” scanners being installed.
Chertoff has recently been busy rubbishing Martin Broughton, the wise British Airways chairman who said many security checks were redundant — calling him “ill-informed.” Early this year Chertoff called on Congress to “fund a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems.”
Rapiscan and its adviser the Chertoff Group will certainly profit from the deployment underway (some of the machines were bought with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Americans as a whole will not.
Rapiscan: Say the name slowly. It conjures up a sinister science fiction. When a government has a right to invade the bodies of its citizens, security has trumped freedom.
Intelligence has improved beyond measure since 9/11. It can be used far more effectively at airports. Instead of humiliating everyone, focus on the very small proportion of travelers who might present a threat.
You can’t talk down fear simply by calling terrorists “violent extremists,” or getting rid of the color-coded terrorism alert system, as the Obama administration has done. During the Bosnian war, besieged Sarajevans had a word — “inat” — for the contempt-cum-spite they showed barbarous gunners on the hills by dressing and carrying on as normal. Inat is what Americans should show the jihadist cave-dwellers.
So I give thanks this week for the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
I give thanks for Benjamin Franklin’s words after the 1787 Constitutional Convention describing the results of its deliberations: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
To keep it, push back against enhanced patting, Chertoff’s naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear.
via nytimes.com
Michael's Insight: Insight’s Louisville network going all-digital
Insight’s Louisville network going all-digital
Earlier this year, we announced that Lexington and Northern Kentucky would be Insight’s first two markets to transition to an all-digital format. Once that transition is completed, customers will have access to more than 100 HD channels, multi-room DVR and the fastest Internet speeds available.
At that time, I told you that we planned to make this digital conversion in each of our districts and to “stay tuned.”
Today, we are announcing that Louisville will be our next market to transition to an all-digital service. As a result, these incredible TV and Internet products that we announced in Lexington and Northern Kentucky will also be coming to our customers in Louisville.
In early December, we will begin communicating with our customers to tell them what they need to to in order to prepare for this transition, called the Digital 6.10 Upgrade. Channels that are currently transmitted in analog will be provided in digital after this conversion.
As we’ve done previously, we’re committed to making this conversion as seamless as possible. In fact, you might be interested to know that we’re very close to reaching the 100% mark in Lexington of customers who have access to digital and we’re now well above 95% in Northern Kentucky. And that's no small accomplishment. Remember it's not just about the big TV in the family room (which is likely to be watching digital already) but also the seldom-used TV in the guest bedroom as well.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating; this is a complicated process that won’t happen overnight. We’ll be certain to keep you posted about our progress as we work hard to minimize any disruptions caused by the process. When we begin to transition channels in Louisville – something that won’t begin to happen until next year - we’ll be communicating to every customer to make sure the transition is as seamless as possible.
And as I previously mentioned, for those of you in other Insight markets, stay tuned. We will be announcing the timing of the rest of the districts as soon as we finalize our schedule.
Posted at 11:32 PM in Digital Video, Greater Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana, Insight Service Update | Permalink
Michael's Insight: Insight launches Broadband 50.0 in Louisville
Insight launches Broadband 50.0 in Louisville
On the heels of this week’s announcement concerning Louisville moving to an all-digital network, I’m pleased to make another big announcement concerning our largest market – Insight’s 50.0 broadband service is now available in Louisville.
It required a tremendous amount of work to upgrade our network to the DOCSIS 3.0 platform throughout the region (not to mention in our other markets we’ve already rolled out – Northern Kentucky, Evansville and Bowling Green), but that work is now complete and we’re thrilled to provide by far the fastest Internet available in the Louisville area.
As I’ve mentioned in previous announcements, this new service will offer 50 Mbps download/5 Mbps upload speeds to customers throughout Louisville.
And just as we did last week in Northern Kentucky, Evansville and Bowling Green, if you’re a Broadband 20.0 customer, you’ll be receiving an email today inviting you to become one of the first to experience Broadband 50.0. In the coming days, all of our broadband customers will be receiving communications letting them know that they are also eligible for the upgrade.
There’s a lot going on here at Insight right now and more will be more coming in other districts very soon. Stay tuned.
Posted at 04:02 PM in Broadband Internet, Greater Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana, Insight Service Update | Permalink
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New report on China's booming UAV industry - DIY Drones
China’s WJ600 Jet-Powered UAV
From my email, a promo for a new market research report. No doubt very expensive, but it's interesting (and appropriate) that China's UAV industry is finally being taken seriously. Those who think that the Chinese UAV companies are just cloning Western designs are badly out of date.
From the email:"As predicted in the two most recent Market Intel Group (MiG) technology and market forecasts on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), China is pushing aerial drone research and development aggressively. That is also the conclusion of a recent Wall Street Journal article on a major Chinese air show
Market Intel Group’s research reports, titled: “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Counter-Insurgency – Market & Technologies Outlook - 2010-2015” and “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Border Security – Market & Technologies Outlook - 2010-2015.” identify regions, applications, strategies and types of platforms that will lead the rapidly emerging Counter-Insurgency and Border Security UAV markets worldwide. As part of our analysis, we identify China as one of the more aggressive and unpredictable entrants into the heated UAV market.
The WJ600 pictured here is offered as an example of recent Chinese development that is designed to position this country’s UAVs at the forefront of this competitive market. Jeremy Page, in his WSJ article, writes: "China is ramping up production of unmanned aerial vehicles in an apparent bid to catch up with the U.S. and Israel in developing technology that is considered the future of military aviation.” MiG assumes that China would sell UAVs to nations boycotted by the US and Israel. Such an assumption was also confirmed in a round-about way in this article. Page quoted a Chinese official who told him: "I can't tell you which models we have sold overseas, as that's secret, but of course we're interested in exporting them." Since UAV deployment information is mostly public domain, as well as a major marketing tool for competing vendors, keeping information about deals under wrap points to the possibility that such deals were made with countries that current major UAV vendors are reluctant to do business with.
MiG’s new UAV reports analyze, among others, Concepts of Operation, platforms, payloads, evolving markets and applications, allocations, procurement patterns and resultant changes in the rapidly evolving UAV industry worldwide."
via diydrones.com
Why 'health' is not fit for purpose - opinion - 22 November 2010 - New Scientist
How can you be against health? (Image: Iechine/Flickr/Getty)
The idea of health has become too much of a sacred cow to challenge. Time to slaughter the beast, say Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland
WHY would anyone in their right mind be "against health"? Surely the only position possible must be "for" health?
Not if you talk to a growing band of dissenting academics in disciplines ranging from history and literature to medicine and law. In a new book, entitled Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, we've tried to capture some of the flavour of this critique.
The basic argument is that the time has come to stand against health as currently understood. Health now means more than the absence of disease or presence of a positive state of bodily flourishing. In 2010, health also describes an ideological and commercial tool, used to make moral judgements, convey prejudice, sell products, or even to exclude groups of people from healthcare. The near-sacred status of the word has protected it from criticism for too long.
We should stress here that the authors in our volume have absolutely nothing against penicillin, the germ theory of infectious illness, stem cell research, bike helmets, sunscreen, enteric-coated tablets, or a host of other advances. The objections are to the ways in which the rhetoric of health is being used to promote value judgements, hierarchies, and blind assumptions that speak as much about power and privilege as they do about well-being. This has become frustratingly clear in the US political arena, where battles over healthcare plans thinly veil divergent assumptions about health, responsibility, and what it is to be a person.
The ideological and moral functions of health also percolate down to the individual level. So when we see someone smoking, we might say: "Smoking is bad for your health," but mean: "You are a bad person because you smoke." Equally, with someone whose body size is deemed excessive, we say: "Obesity is bad for your health," when we mean: "We can't hire someone who looks like you."
We are not the first to attack the notion of health. In the 1970s and 1980s, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich famously delivered a series of lectures entitled "To Hell With Health", in which he bemoaned the negative effects of excessive preoccupation with health and the US industries that gained financially from promoting it. Health, he reportedly said, "is the most cherished and destructive certitude of the modern world. It is a most destructive addiction".
Thirty years on, the powerful forces controlling the health business are stronger than ever. From inventing and selling new diseases to the endorsement of narrow medical specialisms, western society - especially the US - is thoroughly medicalised.
The powerful forces controlling the health business are stronger than everAt the same time, despite the promise of President Barack Obama's reforms, average Americans must manage health risks on an individual level without much of a collective safety net. The expectation is that we will insure our own retirement through market investments earned through work (rather than relying on social security), receive health insurance as part of our employment package, and take personal responsibility for our health through diet, exercise, stress reduction, and keeping watch over ourselves, our children, and our ageing parents.
One of the many ironies is that at an individual level a health imperative reinforces the presumption of personal control deeply at odds with the reality of life. Cancer, accidents, Alzheimer's disease still strike those who do everything that they are told might save them.
The illusion of total self-care and independence inflates the sense of entitlement of those who think they have achieved it, putting unbearable stress on those who can barely achieve it, and conferring second-class citizenship on those who cannot achieve it at all.
At this point some people may feel like arguing that health is about empirical facts, that we are just social scientists making a fuss and that we should shut up and check out the scientific literature.
These would be cheap shots. We are in the tough position of understanding scientific knowledge and morality as deeply interwoven and also as deeply human constructions, while also acknowledging them to be indispensable in the modern world. So our book is not just "against" many of the current meanings of health, but "for" encouraging better conversations in our interactions with medical professionals - both intellectually and in our daily lives.
Suppose a patient is discussing test results that show borderline abnormality in bone density, cholesterol, or blood pressure. The usual presumption is that the test has detected some objective feature of the patient's body we can treat, just as if she or he had a burn or a broken bone. Perhaps there would be more tests, some drugs, and eventually a label, such as "osteopenia" or "pre-diabetes".
Shared scepticism between doctor and the patient could be helpful in removing some of the mystery from what is bound to be a stressful encounter. What did the test really measure? Would the treatment regime require giving up something pleasurable or convenient, and if so, what would all the pros and cons look like?
Bringing these questions into the discussion would mean the measure of health (the test) had been "denaturalised" - that it would no longer be taken for granted and instead become something that could be critically examined. That way, alternative notions of life and health would have entered the conversation.
This can only be a good thing. A process which allows the many, disparate meanings of "health" to be articulated and challenged is more likely to lead to deeper, more productive, and healthier interactions about our bodies, our politics and our desires.
Jonathan M. Metzl is a psychiatrist
Anna Kirkland is a political scientist and lawyer. Both are in the women's studies department of the University of Michigan. Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality is published this month (New York University Press)
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Preliminary poll results show Hitchens winner of religion debate with Tony Blair - The Globe and Mail
There is no doubt that “horrific acts of evil” have been committed in the name of religion, but even in a world without religion fanatics would remain, former British prime minister Tony Blair told a sold-out debate.
The Catholic convert relied heavily on that oft-repeated mantra during a two-hour debate with prominent atheist author Christopher Hitchens as they set out to answer the question: is religion a force for good in the world?
Preliminary results posted on the Munk Debates website from an audience poll suggest Mr. Hitchens won the debate, with 68 per cent of those who handed in a ballot at the end of the night saying they favoured the con side and 32 per cent agreeing with Mr. Blair.
Both, however, seemed to sway many people to their way of thinking, as ballots submitted before the debate put the audience of 2,700 at 57 per cent con, 22 per cent pro and 21 per cent undecided.
Mr. Hitchens, a fervent atheist who has written about his belief that religion is “poison,” argued religion exacerbates, if not ignites, many world conflicts and that it is divisive, rather than inclusive, as Mr. Blair argued.
“Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs, to appeal to our fear and to our guilt - is it good for the world?” Mr. Hitchens said in his opening remarks.
“To terrify children with the image of hell...to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?”
But Mr. Blair, who started a foundation two years ago to promote understanding between religions, replied that removing religion would not eliminate war and inhumanity.
“I agree in a world without religion, that the religious fanatics may be gone, but I ask you: Would fanaticism be gone?” Mr. Blair said.
“The 20th century is a century scarred by visions that had precisely that imagining in their vision and at their heart and gave us Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot,” he added.
Bigotry and prejudice are not “wholly owned subsidiaries” of religion, Mr. Blair said. But he added the most difficult argument for him to counter was that evil done in the name of religion is intrinsically grounded in scripture.
Looking at ancient religious texts one can point to many ideas that now seem “very strange and outdated,” but religions must be taken as a whole — at their essence, Mr. Blair said.
Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and author of “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” said for religion to be a force for good it would have to first give up all supernatural claims. He proposed a “pact with the faithful.”
“As long as you don't want your religion taught to my children in school, given a government subsidy, imposed on me by violence, any of these things — you are fine by me,” he said.
But he added that pact has never been honoured by “the other side.”
Mr. Blair drew a good-natured sarcastic response from Mr. Hitchens when he held up the Northern Ireland peace process as an example of how people of different faiths can bridge their differences.
“It's very touching for Tony to say that he recently went to a meeting to bridge the religious divide in Northern Ireland, but where does the religious divide come from?” Mr. Hitchens asked. “Four-hundred years and more in my own country of birth of people killing each other's children depending on what kind of Christian they were,” he added.
Although a lot of conflicts have religious roots, it's futile to try to drive religion out, Blair said.
“In the end, it's for politics and religion to try and work out a way in which religion in a world of globalization that is pushing people together can play a positive rather than negative role,” he added.
A question about the role faith played in Mr. Blair's decision to invade Iraq drew a chorus of nervous, sitcom studio audience-like “oohs” from the crowd, but Mr. Blair replied unequivocally.
“It was not about religious faith,” he said. Decisions he made as prime minister were “based on policy and so they should be, and you may disagree with those decisions but they were made because I genuinely believed them to be right.”
Mr. Hitchens, who is fighting cancer, said earlier Friday that he scheduled his chemotherapy treatments around the debate so he “wouldn't have to let anyone down.”
“I arranged my chemotherapy around this so that I wouldn't be demoralized. I'm tired, but I'm not fogged as one can be, so that was the main consideration,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview.
“This is what I do whether I'm sick or not. (Religion) is still the main argument.”
An Ipsos Reid online poll released Friday said 52 per cent of 18,192 global respondents believe deeply held religious beliefs promote intolerance and division in the world.
On the other hand, 48 per cent of the respondents from 23 countries said religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to thrive.
Of the 1,000 Canadians who took part, 36 per cent said religion was a positive influence while 64 per cent — almost two-thirds — said religious beliefs promote intolerance.
Ipsos Reid said the online panel included respondents aged 18-64 in Canada and the United States and 16-64 in all other countries. The respondents were polled between Sept. 7 and 23.
sexlies
Sex, Lies and Conversation; Why Is It So Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other?by Deborah Tannen
The Washington Post, June 24, 1990
I WAS ADDRESSING a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room -- a women's group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don't talk to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward his wife and said, "She's the talker in our family." The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It's true," he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn't keep the conversation going, we'd spend the whole evening in silence."
This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage.
The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late '70s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book "Divorce Talk" that most of the women she interviewed -- but only a few of the men -- gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year -- a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.
In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking, social arrangements and errands. Instead, they focused on communication: "He doesn't listen to me," "He doesn't talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives.
In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk. Linguistic Battle of the Sexes
How can women and men have such different impressions of communication in marriage? Why the widespread imbalance in their interests and expectations?
In the April issue of American Psychologist, Stanford University's Eleanor Maccoby reports the results of her own and others' research showing that children's development is most influenced by the social structure of peer interactions. Boys and girls tend to play with children of their own gender, and their sex-separate groups have different organizational structures and interactive norms.
I believe these systematic differences in childhood socialization make talk between women and men like cross-cultural communication, heir to all the attraction and pitfalls of that enticing but difficult enterprise. My research on men's and women's conversations uncovered patterns similar to those described for children's groups.
For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conversation as the cornerstone of friendship. So a woman expects her husband to be a new and improved version of a best friend. What is important is not the individual subjects that are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when people tell their thoughts, feelings, and impressions.
Bonds between boys can be as intense as girls', but they are based less on talking, more on doing things together. Since they don't assume talk is the cement that binds a relationship, men don't know what kind of talk women want, and they don't miss it when it isn't there.
Boys' groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so boys must struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group. This may play a role in women's complaints that men don't listen to them. Some men really don't like to listen, because being the listener makes them feel one-down, like a child listening to adults or an employee to a boss.
But often when women tell men, "You aren't listening," and the men protest, "I am," the men are right. The impression of not listening results from misalignments in the mechanics of conversation. The misalignment begins as soon as a man and a woman take physical positions. This became clear when I studied videotapes made by psychologist Bruce Dorval of children and adults talking to their same-sex best friends. I found that at every age, the girls and women faced each other directly, their eyes anchored on each other's faces. At every age, the boys and men sat at angles to each other and looked elsewhere in the room, periodically glancing at each other. They were obviously attuned to each other, often mirroring each other's movements. But the tendency of men to face away can give women the impression they aren't listening even when they are. A young woman in college was frustrated: Whenever she told her boyfriend she wanted to talk to him, he would lie down on the floor, close his eyes, and put his arm over his face. This signaled to her, "He's taking a nap." But he insisted he was listening extra hard. Normally, he looks around the room, so he is easily distracted. Lying down and covering his eyes helped him concentrate on what she was saying.
Analogous to the physical alignment that women and men take in conversation is their topical alignment. The girls in my study tended to talk at length about one topic, but the boys tended to jump from topic to topic. The second-grade girls exchanged stories about people they knew. The second-grade boys teased, told jokes, noticed things in the room and talked about finding games to play. The sixth-grade girls talked about problems with a mutual friend. The sixth grade boys talked about 55 different topics, none of which extended over more than a few turns. Listening to Body Language
Switching topics is another habit that gives women the impression men aren't listening, especially if they switch to a topic about themselves. But the evidence of the 10th-grade boys in my study indicates otherwise. The 10th-grade boys sprawled across their chairs with bodies parallel and eyes straight ahead, rarely looking at each other. They looked as if they were riding in a car, staring out the windshield. But they were talking about their feelings. One boy was upset because a girl had told him he had a drinking problem, and the other was feeling alienated from all his friends.
Now, when a girl told a friend about a problem, the friend responded by asking probing questions and expressing agreement and understanding. But the boys dismissed each other's problems. Todd assured Richard that his drinking was "no big problem" because "sometimes you're funny when you're off your butt." And when Todd said he felt left out, Richard responded, "Why should you? You know more people than me."
Women perceive such responses as belittling and unsupportive. But the boys seemed satisfied with them. Whereas women reassure each other by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because I've had similar experiences," men do so by implying, "You shouldn't feel bad because your problems aren't so bad."
There are even simpler reasons for women's impression that men don't listen. Linguist Lynette Hirschman found that women make more listener-noise, such as "mhm," "uhuh," and "yeah," to show "I'm with you." Men, she found, more often give silent attention. Women who expect a stream of listener noise interpret silent attention as no attention at all.
Women's conversational habits are as frustrating to men as men's are to women. Men who expect silent attention interpret a stream of listener noise as overreaction or impatience. Also, when women talk to each other in a close, comfortable setting, they often overlap, finish each other's sentences and anticipate what the other is about to say. This practice, which I call "participatory listenership," is often perceived by men as interruption, intrusion and lack of attention.
A parallel difference caused a man to complain about his wife, "She just wants to talk about her own point of view. If I show her another view, she gets mad at me." When most women talk to each other, they assume a conversationalist's job is to express agreement and support. But many men see their conversational duty as pointing out the other side of an argument. This is heard as disloyalty by women, and refusal to offer the requisite support. It is not that women don't want to see other points of view, but that they prefer them phrased as suggestions and inquiries rather than as direct challenges.
In his book "Fighting for Life," Walter Ong points out that men use "agonistic" or warlike, oppositional formats to do almost anything; thus discussion becomes debate, and conversation a competitive sport. In contrast, women see conversation as a ritual means of establishing rapport. If Jane tells a problem and June says she has a similar one, they walk away feeling closer to each other. But this attempt at establishing rapport can backfire when used with men. Men take too literally women's ritual "troubles talk," just as women mistake men's ritual challenges for real attack. [See box.] The Sounds of Silence
These differences begin to clarify why women and men have such different expectations about communication in marriage. For women, talk creates intimacy. Marriage is an orgy of closeness: you can tell your feelings and thoughts, and still be loved. Their greatest fear is being pushed away. But men live in a hierarchical world, where talk maintains independence and status. They are on guard to protect themselves from being put down and pushed around.
This explains the paradox of the talkative man who said of his silent wife, "She's the talker." In the public setting of a guest lecture, he felt challenged to show his intelligence and display his understanding of the lecture. But at home, where he has nothing to prove and no one to defend against, he is free to remain silent. For his wife, being home means she is free from the worry that something she says might offend someone, or spark disagreement, or appear to be showing off; at home she is free to talk.
The communication problems that endanger marriage can't be fixed by mechanical engineering. They require a new conceptual framework about the role of talk in human relationships. Many of the psychological explanations that have become second nature may not be helpful, because they tend to blame either women (for not being assertive enough) or men (for not being in touch with their feelings). A sociolinguistic approach by which male-female conversation is seen as cross-cultural communication allows us to understand the problem and forge solutions without blaming either party.
Once the problem is understood, improvement comes naturally, as it did to the young woman and her boyfriend who seemed to go to sleep when she wanted to talk. Previously, she had accused him of not listening, and he had refused to change his behavior, since that would be admitting fault. But then she learned about and explained to him the differences in women's and men's habitual ways of aligning themselves in conversation. The next time she told him she wanted to talk, he began, as usual, by lying down and covering his eyes. When the familiar negative reaction bubbled up, she reassured herself that he really was listening. But then he sat up and looked at her. Thrilled, she asked why. He said, "You like me to look at you when we talk, so I'll try to do it." Once he saw their differences as cross-cultural rather than right and wrong, he independently altered his behavior.
Women who feel abandoned and deprived when their husbands won't listen to or report daily news may be happy to discover their husbands trying to adapt once they understand the place of small talk in women's relationships. But if their husbands don't adapt, the women may still be comforted that for men, this is not a failure of intimacy. Accepting the difference, the wives may look to their friends or family for that kind of talk. And husbands who can't provide it shouldn't feel their wives have made unreasonable demands. Some couples will still decide to divorce, but at least their decisions will be based on realistic expectations.
In these times of resurgent ethnic conflicts, the world desperately needs cross-cultural understanding. Like charity, successful cross-cultural communication should begin at home.
Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is the author of "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation," published this month by William Morrow.
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