War and Peace
Salam Pax's postings have become increasingly cynical - maybe even a litle despairing - in the past month or two. Now his parents' house has been searched by the US Army.
“They came, freaked out my mother, pissed off my father, found nothing and left.
After refusing to get one my father finally conceded to get one of those cards that basically say you are a “collaborator”.”
Not a flip remark. Apparently, it's not safe to be to perceived as being in league with the Americans.
Still think we're winning? Apparently the right-wing ideologues do. I'm having trouble deciding where denial ends and cluelessness begins with these guys. They'd probably tell you that Salam and I are both part of the problem - foot soldiers in the army of fifth columnists who will be responsible if things don't go the way they're supposed to. Then again, as an Open Software writer and user, I'm a criminal as well as a traitor, so it's no wonder that I'm subverting the true path of freedom and liberty*.
It's easier to blame someone else when things go wrong than to admit that the policies you favored were flawed. That would too close to taking responsibility for your opinions and actions. And that can't be allowed in this blame culture (which itself, of course, is blamed on those traitorous liberals).
I was never a big fan of Ronald Reagan, but I always admired him for standing up and saying that the blame was ultimately his when something major (e.g., the blowing up of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983) went wrong on his watch. I can't imagine any leading politician of this time doing the same. I mean, can you imagine Gray Davis taking the blame for the California budget? Bush for the economy? Tony Blair for misleading Parliament? Clinton for Mogadishu? Katherine Harris for the election debacle in Florida?
No, it's somebody else's fault. It's always somebody else's fault. The right has the dubious distinction of playing the blame game better, but that's just one more indication that the left is in disarray.
Remember when politicians actually took some responsibility for their actions and policies? Remember when it was a sign of character to admit when you were wrong and that self-restraint and tact were once considered virtues? Remember when Republicans were actually fiscal conservatives and Democrats actually believed in standing up for the working man?
Has the society we live in really progressed from the one our parents lived in when they were our age?
*(But once more, for the record: I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to see attacks against us and the British slowly wind down. I'd love to see a successful reconstruction of Iraq that resulted in a stable and prosperous democracy. I'd love to see the repressive Islamic fundamentalists in Iran overthrown and replaced by a representative democracy. I'd love to see Osama and Saddam captured and tried for their crimes. I submit, once again, that you need an effective grand strategy to achieve most of these aims and that the present strategy, including the near-unilateral invasion of Iraq (with a force too small to successfully occupy it), is badly thought out, deeply flawed, and carries too high a risk of failure.)
Friday, August 29, 2003
CC - The Leading Edge of Satire
I just read a post on Adam Felber's site making fun of Ascroft's multi-city tour. You'll note that he wrote it 11 days after I made fun of the idea. I've seen a couple of other satirical references to the same subject in the last day or two, but hey - I WAS FIRST!
Granted, Felber's way funnier than me. But it took him 11 days to be funnier. So there.
Hey, do you think that if I titled this "CC - The Fair and Balanced Edge of Satire" I could get Fox to sue me?
I just read a post on Adam Felber's site making fun of Ascroft's multi-city tour. You'll note that he wrote it 11 days after I made fun of the idea. I've seen a couple of other satirical references to the same subject in the last day or two, but hey - I WAS FIRST!
Granted, Felber's way funnier than me. But it took him 11 days to be funnier. So there.
Hey, do you think that if I titled this "CC - The Fair and Balanced Edge of Satire" I could get Fox to sue me?
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Policy
I'll submit that the California recall and last week's blackouts on the other coast have the same root cause - an inability to make effective policy to achieve desirable outcomes.
The desirable outcome in California is a well-governed state able to endure the vicissitudes of volatile economic changes without succumbing to fiscal crisis during downturns. The desirable outcome for our power grid is to provide safe, highly reliable power without interruption at the lowest possible cost. We've managed to achieve the exact opposite of the outcomes we desire. And the ultimate reason is poor policy.
The recall is simply a second-order effect of California's budget crisis. I'm no big fan of Gray Davis, but the recall does nothing to help solve the budget crisis. The California Journal does an excellent job of tracing the budget crisis down to it roots. “Crisis in California” identifies 5 reasons why things have gone wrong. All are examples of poor policy making. Taken together, they've created a disasterous situation. The biggest question is whether they can be effectively reformed. If not, “The doomsday question is whether Governor Gray Davis is being recalled for failing to govern a state that is no longer governable.”
A not-disimilar story - albeit over a longer period of time - unfolds if you take a look at the roots of the blackout. Since at least 1982, experts have warned that the electric grid's ability to meet its goal of uninterruptable service is becoming more and more compromised. There have been multiple warnings since 9-11. Yet little to no action has been taken. The reason, once again, is poor policy. Some excellent background information can be found here and some good free-market oriented policy discussion here.
Notice that on both of these issues, everyone can share the blame. It's a completely non-partisan failure by all concerned.
I'll submit that the California recall and last week's blackouts on the other coast have the same root cause - an inability to make effective policy to achieve desirable outcomes.
The desirable outcome in California is a well-governed state able to endure the vicissitudes of volatile economic changes without succumbing to fiscal crisis during downturns. The desirable outcome for our power grid is to provide safe, highly reliable power without interruption at the lowest possible cost. We've managed to achieve the exact opposite of the outcomes we desire. And the ultimate reason is poor policy.
The recall is simply a second-order effect of California's budget crisis. I'm no big fan of Gray Davis, but the recall does nothing to help solve the budget crisis. The California Journal does an excellent job of tracing the budget crisis down to it roots. “Crisis in California” identifies 5 reasons why things have gone wrong. All are examples of poor policy making. Taken together, they've created a disasterous situation. The biggest question is whether they can be effectively reformed. If not, “The doomsday question is whether Governor Gray Davis is being recalled for failing to govern a state that is no longer governable.”
A not-disimilar story - albeit over a longer period of time - unfolds if you take a look at the roots of the blackout. Since at least 1982, experts have warned that the electric grid's ability to meet its goal of uninterruptable service is becoming more and more compromised. There have been multiple warnings since 9-11. Yet little to no action has been taken. The reason, once again, is poor policy. Some excellent background information can be found here and some good free-market oriented policy discussion here.
Notice that on both of these issues, everyone can share the blame. It's a completely non-partisan failure by all concerned.
Software
I've just about finished porting Chrysalis to MySQL; heck, I might even get it all checked in tonight. It's one of those I'm-glad-it's-over kind of things, because MySQL isn't particularly interesting to work with. Truth be told, it's a toy, not a full-fledged DBMS. It's very useful for lots of simple things, but so what? Of course, this is not a PC thing to say in the open-source world - putting down MySQL is the equivalent of questioning motherhood and apple pie.
But that's not what I really want to write about. I need to work on my own unfinished project instead of critiquing someone else's. God knows, I've got at least 6 more months of work to add features and support for other databases beyond this initial port. Of course, the port isn't really finished, either. I had to make a lot of changes to the structure of the code - even though I'd originally tried to write something that would be easy to port to multiple databases - and that means I need to take another pass through it and refactor it to make it coherent enough to understand and maintain. Among my goals when I write code is to make as clear and simple as possible. I can see how to get there with my current code base, but isn't really that close to meeting those goals. And the truth is that the code really isn't production quality yet because I haven't tested it or stressed it to any great degree. At least my versioning scheme is relatively honest - no one should mistake an 0.4 release for a finished product.
I've just about finished porting Chrysalis to MySQL; heck, I might even get it all checked in tonight. It's one of those I'm-glad-it's-over kind of things, because MySQL isn't particularly interesting to work with. Truth be told, it's a toy, not a full-fledged DBMS. It's very useful for lots of simple things, but so what? Of course, this is not a PC thing to say in the open-source world - putting down MySQL is the equivalent of questioning motherhood and apple pie.
But that's not what I really want to write about. I need to work on my own unfinished project instead of critiquing someone else's. God knows, I've got at least 6 more months of work to add features and support for other databases beyond this initial port. Of course, the port isn't really finished, either. I had to make a lot of changes to the structure of the code - even though I'd originally tried to write something that would be easy to port to multiple databases - and that means I need to take another pass through it and refactor it to make it coherent enough to understand and maintain. Among my goals when I write code is to make as clear and simple as possible. I can see how to get there with my current code base, but isn't really that close to meeting those goals. And the truth is that the code really isn't production quality yet because I haven't tested it or stressed it to any great degree. At least my versioning scheme is relatively honest - no one should mistake an 0.4 release for a finished product.
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