The Iron Yuppie

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few via Buzzmachine

Ok, I must admit when I am wrong. Now THIS is fucking journalism. I love it, and especially because it touches upon a major issue I have with the government and especially those in the government who try and dictate morals for the rest of us. Three people were enough to force the fine on Fox for Married by America. THREE. THREE!! Dammit, we need an accurate way to poll the populous so that decisions are not made simply by the number of people who decide to sit down and write a letter. And a minimum statistical bar before which any congressperson should be allowed to see that feedback so that they're not biased by a non-statistically significant sample. AND a stats 101 class for all incoming (and currently present) congresspeople. AND leaders who are elected based on their ability to look at the entire situation, evaluate and make a decision without being swayed by this crap. But most of all, we need a government who will allow people to make their own choices and if crap like this pisses them off, TURN OFF THE DAMN TV. Ugh.

Reason: A Swift Boat Kick in the Teeth: How the mainstream media grapple with partisans

My take? Really really badly. But the blogsphere is no better! In the MSM, they cover the story and do investigation of claims. But for time or space or opinion reasons, abbreviations are made and ultimately they get the partisan claims out there nearly as naked as they ever were. The blogsphere suffers the opposite problem; though they do not have time or space as constraints, writers are more naked in their own opinions, and mostly use other (similar leaning) blogs as their sources. A point I particularly agree with is the partisaness of writers who claim objectivity; they never fail to inject the worst kind of "sky-is-falling hyperbole". Even if the points are wrong, they still manage to bemoan the opponent or the messenger. It's almost too much responsibility too fast for these web authors. Oh well, give it time. With luck, the blogsphere will be able to provide what mainstream media cannot; a NON-partisan, independent look with the research to back their points. Example: there should never be a posting without checking with factcheck.org first.

Whidbey Update by ScottGu

This is cool for any number of reasons:

1. It's a cool product
2. I actually know ScottGu
3. It gives unprecedented insight into what developing an actual product looks like.

I remember thinking, before I was a release manager, how hard could it be to ship software? I mean, it's like anything else... you build it, you test it, you release it. Obviously this is wrong. One of the places that this thought is the most wrong comes from some of what Scott mentions about regressions. I'm not sure of too many other engineering disciplines where it is so common that for everything new you do, it has a fairly good chance of breaking something old you did. It's like you were building a building and constantly had to keep going down and checking the first brick you laid down.

Sometimes I hear phrases from lyrics or literature and I'm just stunned with how accurately they capture the thought. Today's comes from the excellent: Girl in the Flammable Skirt

"For fourteen houses back, the young man held Leonard in his arms like a bride. He hoped Leonard would ask him a question, any question, but Leonard was quiet. The young man answered in his head: Son, he said, and the word rolled around, a marble on a marble floor. Son, he wanted to say."

Marble on a marble floor. Incredible imagery. I wish I could write and inspire the same feeling of awe I have right now in my readers. For now, I guess I'll have to settle for this.

If you're interested in hearing the story read aloud: Enjoy (Fourth story in, though all are good)

Marginal Revolution: Prescott on Bush's fiscal policy

Interesting take on President Bush's financial tax cuts and the implications. I mean the guy won the Nobel, so he should know some significantly more about economics than, well, anyone! However, isn't the reason so many knowledgeable people were behind the cuts was that they would also be paired with cuts in gov't spending?

AtlanticBlog: Get a grip

Atlantic Blog has an interesting list of quotes from liberals in the past week; there absolutely have been too many people bemoaning the state of the US after the election (myself among them!). In fact, the last quote by Thomas Friedman sounds VERY much like my post of last week! For shame, me, for shame! Suffice it to say I agree with William Sjostrom; people whose candidate of choice was not elected have been equating the state of the world to the apocalypse. But Mr. Friedman’s point, and Mr. Sjostrom’s response, is where the devil will be exposed in the details. Bush has been elected on the strength of his positions on Iraq and terrorism. Will he be magnanimous enough to avoid alienating the left with policies which dramatically go against their core beliefs? Roe is probably going to be the best indicator thereof. Convincing the left that Bush and the people who elected him are not in favor of "a whole different kind of America" would be an accomplishment of historic proportions.

[UPDATED] Grammar corrections

Fuck the South

I thought I'd censor the title, but as you know I have no trouble cursing in the body. Seriously though, funny page, but come on. This is not helping anyone. How about you go and talk to someone in a red state and understand them a little bit more? I bet you could learn something. Telling them to fuck off does not really help anyone.

Cryptonomicon via Instapundit.com

I actually quite like Neal Stephenson and I think he's remarkably insightful in a number of things. But I have found a couple of his thoughts to be a bit off. The first was the book In the beginning there was the command line which I will summarize as because experts use something, everyone should really use that same thing as it relates to drills and operating systems because they really know what they are doing. I found the flaw to be two fold... first, everyone is not an expert and would derive no benefit from using that expert thing and two, even experts do not always use the most advanced, most powerful tool at their disposal. Experts actually tend to use the correct tool for the job.

The attached quote is an interesting one, but there's a subtlety here that I disagree with. People who are non-religious can still have a strict moral code in which they can behave, it just will not be as universal or as universally understood. Take the abortion discussion for a moment; well reasoned people can disagree with either side. If you are pro-choice, you believe that life does not begin until time x after conception. If you are pro-life, you believe that life begins at some point prior to time x after conception (x may be 0 or may, in fact, be negative if you believe in not using contreception). While you have plenty of moral relativists who might be considered fringe on one side, you have the same types of people on the other side who believe the alternative view point based solely on an external source (their priest or holy book, independent of their own thought). My problem with Mr. Stephenson's point, and Instapundit's point (by the transitive property of conclusions), is that the important component of the evaluation is not the derivation of each person's moral code, it is how many people in a given society subscribe to that same code. A person who believes in a mystical being that is all powerful, if he is the only one who believes it, is a nut job. A group of people who believe in the same is a cult. A really really big group of people who believe in the same have formed a religion. I would not say that moral relativists are without any documentation or guidance... it is just not quite as cut and dry as the Bible.

The New Yorker: A couple of books on drug costs

A very interesting follow up to the point I raised a while ago about the cost of drugs. VERY interesting. Basically it concludes that medications are as high as they are not because people are gouging, it's because of the model we charge for drugs in America. Basically, we charge more up front for our drugs because the pharma's make much less on generics than they do in other countries. This further incents the pharmas to optimize their models for constantly milking the most out of existing drugs by making small modifications to existing drugs and repatenting. My favorite part about the article is that it has a very elegant market based way to improve the situation... change the buyer through educating a subset of people who would authorize the drugs available (they are called PBMs). Potentially each company would have a PBM or access to a PBM and would be able to judge the right way of treating a given illness. People would naturally be suspicious and, in my opinion, that's why the insurance industry should take steps NOW to market exactly how valuable these PBMs are. Otherwise they'll get painted by the exact same brush that doomed the HMOs in the late nineties. People need to understand that you cannot get everything for free forever. A 75 year old with heart trouble SHOULD be denied the heart over the 35 year old if she's not going to pay for it. Generics ARE as good as name brand. Until pharmas have no incentive to spend $0.5 Billion on advertising a new drug which is only 3% more effective than its previous isomer, we will be stuck in this death spiral of medical costs and limited innovation.

Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran: "Millions of Iranians expressed their satisfaction on the outcome of the US Presidential elections and George W. Bush's victory by calling and congratulating each other. Many were seen walking in the streets and shaking each others hands or showing a discret V sign."

This is actually one of my biggest problems with bloggers. I saw this story linked to on three blogs. The blogs touted this as evidence of Bush being the right person elected. Yet I have absolutely no idea who this group is (the SMCCDI), their background, their affiliation, etc outside of what is listed on the web. Simply reporting a story which exists in the ether is not journalism!

Allow me to demonstrate:

The oil companies today vowed to outlaw all environmental policies in order to ease their drilling in formerly wildlife protected areas. When asked if this would negatively affect generations to come, a representative replied, “We have access to all your computers and will delete your hard drives if you do not allow us to do what we want. See!” (Note, only works on a PC)

There you go, a brand new quote from the oil company representative. Is it real? Of course not. Do you know anything about me or my rationale for saying this? Nope. Could you link to it and claim x or y or z? Sure, but that’s not journalism! I’m not saying journalists cannot be bloggers, but journalism is more than just a link and a comment (it goes without saying that I am not a journalist either… does this mean you should not believe what I say? Probably.)