Karzai is only out for himself….uh, yeah.

A couple of days ago, I heard some Congressman – I don’t remember who – complain that Karzai is a crook and only out for himself.  Aside from the obvious projection on the Congressman’s part, of course Karsai is a crook and out for himself, that’s why he sucked up to the Americans. If someone is an ambitious guy who is a crook and only out for himself and they live in a country occupied by the Americans, the road to success is to suck up to them to get into power.

That’s what Syngman Rhee in Korea did, that’s what Diem and Thieu in Vietnam did, and Maliki in Iraq. Rhee assumed dictatorial powers, under our protection, even before the Korean War broke out in 1950 and the war just gave him more power. Diem was a Catholic elitist running an Asian country through nepotism and corruption. Thieu gained power by a military junta we supported and then, after winning a fraudulent election, consolidated his authoritarian and corrupt rule over South Vietnam.

Maliki is still there, still trying to hold on to power, as his country spins down into sectarian violence.

So far, none of our handpicked guys have gone well.

American exceptionalism

To misquote the Tappet Brothers, Whenever I hear Sara Palin say it, I want to scream,  but I do think there is an  American exceptionalism. That belief is reinforced when I see the guest list for Obama’s White House State Dinner for the Chinese premier.

There were two Chinese-American White House aides, Christopher P. Lu and Christina M. Tchen. There were two Cabinet level Secretaries, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. In no particular order, there was The Honorable Elaine Chao with her husband Dr. James Chao, John A. Chen from New York and The Great Jackie Chan from California, Mrs. Sherrie Chen, The Honorable Judy Chu, Representative from California, with Ms. Chiling Tong, and Mrs. Jean Chu. The ice skater Michelle Kwan and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the architect Maya Lin and the fashion designer Vera Wang, were all there.

There were powerful African-Americans like The Honorable Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement and The Honorable Susan Rice, United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and his wife Samara were there with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Lisa Nutter. The Rev. Al Sharpton and Aisha McShaw, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Kent Blake were there.

In the California mayor division, there was Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and his wife, Michelle Rhee – a twofer – along with Ms. Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, and The Honorable Edwin M. Lee, Mayor of San Francisco.

Of course there were the usual suspects like Ms. Christiane Amanpour of ABC News, The Honorable Dr. Zbigniew Brezezinski and Mrs. Emilie A. Brzezinski, and The Honorable Jon Huntsman, U.S. Ambassador to China, with his wife.

No other country on earth, can put this many powerful people of different races in the same room.On second thought, maybe this is not the kind of exceptionalism that Sarah Palin talks about.

The plight of the Siskins

I have no idea where the following quote came from although I am fairly sure that I didn’t write it. As an aside, the siskins reference in the title is about the siskinds at our bird feeder. Over a period of five years, the siskins increased almost exponentially until we had to fill the birdfeeder every day. The following year, there were no siskins. The population had increased until it was unsustainable and then it crashed. It just crashed, they just disappeared. End aside.

In the name of nature, we are asking human beings to do something deeply unnatural, something no other species has ever done or could ever do: constrain its own growth (at least in some ways). Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, brown tree snakes in Guam, water hyacinth in African rivers, gypsy moths in the northeastern U.S., rabbits in Australia, Burmese pythons in Florida—all these successful species have overrun their environments, heedlessly wiping out other creatures. Like Gause’s protozoans, they are racing to find the edges of their petri dish. Not one has voluntarily turned back. Now we are asking Homo sapiens to fence itself in.

What a peculiar thing to ask! Economists like to talk about the “discount rate,” which is their term for preferring a bird in hand today over two in the bush tomorrow. The term sums up part of our human nature as well. Evolving in small, constantly moving bands, we are as hard-wired to focus on the immediate and local over the long-term and faraway as we are to prefer parklike savannas to deep dark forests. Thus, we care more about the broken stoplight up the street today than conditions next year in Croatia, Cambodia, or the Congo. Rightly so, evolutionists point out: Americans are far more likely to be killed at that stoplight today than in the Congo next year. Yet here we are asking governments to focus on potential planetary boundaries that may not be reached for decades. Given the discount rate, nothing could be more understandable than the U.S. Congress’s failure to grapple with, say, climate change. From this perspective, is there any reason to imagine that Homo sapiens, unlike…

Somehow, this New York Times headline is just wrong

The headline – giving the location at Phnom Penh, Cambodia – is One of the worst stampedes in recent years killed at least 378 people at a holiday celebration Monday night. 

I like this

Samuel Beckett: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Countries are like high school students….immature high school students

Maybe once a month – and I am not kidding about this – I wonder why India doesn’t just say Fuck it, lets have a election to settle Kashmir. They have been in a low grade civil war and occupation government for years. It is costly, it hurts India on the international stage, and is hypocritical. Sure, India might lose Kashmir, they probably will lose Kashmir, but so what? They don’t really have it, all they have is a problem.

But countries don’t do that.

Now I read that the French are trying to make sure that the British continue to buy US nuclear weapons systems. Apparently, they are concerned that, if the Brits give up their nukes, there will pressure for the French to follow suit. Obviously this would be better for the world, but the French don’t want to give up their nukes. Sure, they have no real reason for them, but they want them it makes them feel good.

For the last week, or so, I have been stalled out. It is not that I haven’t started all sorts of Blog Posts, it is just that they have faded out. I would have such a great thought or insight and then it would just sit there, like a duck hit on the head with a mallet, or scamper away, hiding under the closest cliche (would you prefer cliché). Going back to China, I have about 200 false starts, so I thought I would just post a couple of starts to get them out of my hair.

….a bill that would require a kill switch on all smartphones sold in California has stalled in the State Legislature amid opposition from the telecommunications industry. New York Times May 3, 2014

I wonder why the telecommunications industry is against something that would make their product safer. Reading that, it sounds sarcastic, but I’m not. It can’t cost very much money, it would obviously cut down on smartphone theft which is now a big part of all theft, and it would make customers happier. It certainly doesn’t make them happier to know that the telecoms are fighting this.

Is it a knee jack reaction to more government control? That doesn’t seem likely, this is an industry that has government control everywhere and, as this bill illustrates, the industry knows how to control the controllers. Or, at least, influence the controller’s. This industry knows how to work with and around the government.

It is not just the telecom industry. I see it in the fight over the minimum wage. Last Christmas Season, WalMart – among others – report declining sales and attributed it to – among other things – people’s declining income. However, that did not stop WalMart – among others – from fighting an increase in the minimum wage.

On a much bigger scale, I wonder why – even – oil companies are fighting the very idea of Global Climate Change, after all alot of oil company CEOs have grandchildren. What are they going to tell them?

Names

A Jonathan Chait quote I was going to do something with but I have no idea what. It is an interesting idea, though, I wonder if Barack Obama hurt or helped the president get elected.

Democrats will run Jack Conway against Rand Paul. This puts the Kentucky Senate seat in play — Rand is the favorite but Conway has a shot. I have a pet theory that a politician’s name is a major factor — I’d guess being named “Jack Conway” is worth several points more than being named “Daniel Mongiardo.”

Hathaway and Lawrence

I thought that this was an interesting article about archetypes. I really had no idea that anybody didn’t like Anne Hathaway until I read it but I certainly can see Jennifer Lawrence as the Cool Girl. It would not surprise me to read that she had a pickup truck.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/the-happy-girl-vs-the-cool-girl-why-people-dont-like-anne-hathaway

Kodak and Microsoft

I read an opinion piece the other day that opined that Microsoft would be gone in ten or fifteen years. My first thought was That is impossible. and then  I started thinking about Kodak. When the picture above was taken, Kodak was a colossus and now they are almost gone.

As an aside, the woman, above, is named Maria. I had met Maria in Najab, Guatemala  – I know her name is Maria and it was in Guatemala, I am less sure about Najab – and I then saw her hawking hupils to tourists in Antigua several days later. I gave her my backup camera and a roll of film as asked her to take some pictures. At first she didn’t want to because her husband would think I was hitting on her. I still think that is charming. Look at how she is holding the camera, she looks like a pro; it made me realize how smart she was and how much more she knew about us than we knew about her. End aside.

I got an email invite from Amtrak (I suspect that they only sent out ten million invites). Amtrak announced a writer’s residency program called AmtrakResidency program which seems to be a free round trip AmTrak ticket with the intent to write. I think that the chances of getting a Residency approach zero – a sample winner wrote for The New Yorker – but, that is still infinitely better than the odds if I don’t apply and the applying should be an useful exercise.

But the application has a space for Twitter Handle; a mandatory – must fill in – space. I have to provide my name and address, my email address, a sample of my writing, and my Twitter Handle. I don’t have to provide a Facebook URL, or my blog address, or an Instagram Handle, but a Twitter Handle is essential. It makes me feel old. I know what Twitter is, I know how to physically do it, but I don’t know what the psychic point is.

When I run into something interesting and blog on it, I like to think I have added value. I don’t understand how Tweeting is different from hitting facebook’s like or comment for – say – an article on Fred Phelps. Any comments, instruction, thoughts, or illumination on this would be very much appreciated.

Everybody I know, over the age of sixteen, has a cell phone. Well, almost everybody (I think I do know one, full-grown, adult that hasn’t felt the need, yet). I got my first cell phone in the late 70s or early 80s – we called them car phones then, the first time I heard the term cell phone was during the O.J. Simpson Trial, by Mark Fuhrman – and I thought I was a real innovator. An innovator as defined in Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards.

But I am just flattering myself, I am probably just an early adopter or early majority. Somebody who picks up on a trend before everybody’s grandmother but way after the innovator’s have moved on. Maybe moved on is the wrong term because most things just move in and stay. Nobody has really moved on from cell phones. I am not the kind of guy who would opt for a BMW 1600 in 1966, going with a FIAT 124 Coupe instead, but I did buy a BMW Bavaria in 1972.

As an aside, even in 1972, most people did not know what a BMW was. I would pull into a gas station and people would ask me if it was Japanese. This was my company car and the company I worked, Shapell Home Builders, the founder had been in Auschwitz and was Jewish enough to shut the company for Yom Kippur but not Hanukkah and, fortunately he had no idea that the B in BMW stood for Bavaria. End aside.

Either way, The Internet was another of those things in which I was not an innovator. I remember complaining to a techy friend that there was nothing on The Internet worth looking up and his answer was The only things on The Internet are things that somebody wants on The Internet. That made sense, General Motors wanted on, CircusCircus wanted on, but nobody really cared if Senator Thomas Watson was on the internet. Except, at the time, me.

I am sort of a sucker for Southern Populism, I don’t know why, but I am (even though it so often deteriorates into southern racism). I liked Huey Long, The Kingfish, even when I knew I shouldn’t, and Bear Bryant. I could listen to Art Williams talk about term life insurance; forever. And, for about a week, I was fascinated by Senator Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, but he didn’t exist on the Internet, the only Thomas Watson was Tom Watson, the golfer and I wasn’t particularly interested in him. I decided that the Internet really wouldn’t be useful until information like Senator Thomas Watson was on it. That would be my test, Senator Thomas Watson. Every once in awhile I would search for Watson and then I forgot about it while I, increasingly, used the Internet.

On President’s Day, however, a friend sent me a quote from George Washington.  Shift that fat ass Harry or you’ll swamp the damned boat!. It just seemed so un founding father like, I wondered if it were really true. I reflexively Googled it. After .61 seconds, I had 241,000 results. The one I like the best is the second one, on page 441 of Patriots by A. J. Langguth where it says Washington had nudged Knox with his boot, while crossing the Delaware in the bitter chill and sleet  and said  Shift that fat ass Harry, but slowly  or you’ll swamp the damned boat!

The book was written in 1988 and the page was a scan. That is astounding! Senator Thomas Watson, himself, gets About 4,100,000 results (0.57 seconds)! Included in the results is the news that Crews removed Tom Watson’s statue Friday from the steps of the Capitol….The work came a month after state officials acknowledged their plans to relocate the bronzed Watson, a one-time populist turned white supremacist who vilified blacks, Catholics and Jews. Humm, I didn’t know that but, anyway, I am so over him.

The first time I flew to Southern California or from Southern California to the Bay Area – I don’t remember which way – the tickets were very expensive, about $40 (in late 1950’s, mid 1960’s dollars). Shortly thereafter, Pacific Southwest, we all called it PSA – not to be confused with Southwest Airlines out of Texas – ramped up and became a major factor in California travel by charging less than $15.00 for a flight between LAX and SFO. As I remember it, their planes were painted pink and had a big smile painted on the front, the stewardesses – and they were all stewardesses then – wore hotpants, and the tickets looked like bus tickets. Other airlines reluctantly lowered their prices. About this time, I flew United Airlines to Southern California to see my dad. He met me up at the airport and was very critical of my choice of airlines saying You should have taken PSA. I said Why? United is the same price. to which Daddy answered Yes, but they wouldn’t be that cheap without PSA and that should be rewarded.

Several days ago, I read the results of an international survey asking what were the most trusted brands. The first was Samsung, the second was Google, and the third was You Tube which is really Google. As an aside, when I ask that question to friends and neighbors, they almost always answer Apple and that was also my answer, so the fact that internationally the most trusted name is not Apple, not even American, is interesting in a not particularly good way. BTW, internationally, Apple ties for fifth. End aside.

Google may not be the most trusted, but, in truth, we all really trust our search engine. At some level, we all know that we are not the customer, we are the product being delivered to the real customer who are the companies advertising to us, and we still trust them. We trust that Google will not abuse that power as we blithely ask Google things we might not even ask our friends, like where to buy pot or a good wig, or, even, a merkin (google it). Even before Google revolutionized search engines by using them to make money, Google revolutionized search engines by making them actually work. They also revolutionized spell check to make them work even better. Google reasoned that the easier it was to search for something, the more searches we would make.

I used to type a word in my blog that the blog software said was wrong, or type a word in an email that Microsoft¹ said is wrong. I would ask for the right word and, because my spelling is so atrocious, it would give me some entirely different word with no relationship to the context of the sentence. I would type in kemshi in the sentence We can bring some nice pickled veggies and kemshi. and Microsoft would tell me it was spelled kamahi or kamahis, for example.   Then I would Google the word, and Google would say, Do you mean kimchi? and I would enter the correctly spelled word in my post or email.

I notice that this is happening with increasingly less frequency. I have no idea if WordPress, my blogging platform, uses Google and I would guess that Microsoft doesn’t but Google paved the way to a better spelling engine – for lack of a better word – and everybody else followed along. Sure, it was because Google wanted to make searching easier so they could make more money, but that is why they went into business, just like PSA.

Their search engine became so good, as I read several years ago, that Google didn’t even need to run ads. That has changed now, but Google still doesn’t run very many ads. Most of their selling is the selling its services, like its search engine code or its spell check algorithm which may be why my WordPress search and spelling are better now. After the Golden Globes, I was very taken with the Bing ad and thought maybe I should think about changing but my inner dad said Yes, but Google forced Microsoft to be better and it wouldn’t be without Google.

India is somewhat of the Wild West in terms of search engines and Google is advertising there. I am glad to say that, in its own way, the Indian Google ad is every bit as good as the Golden Globe Bing ad. Check it out.

1. which says that I am still, embarrassingly, using Microsoft Outlook and – it also probably says that I am – using a PC rather than an Apple. Luckily, the areas where I spend most of my time are the same no matter what the operating system.