That got me thinking of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books (Journey to the End of the Night by Céline), also speaking of Africa:

“The natives, they don’t do anything without being beaten with clubs. They retain that dignity, whereas the whites, perfected by public education, they work on their own. The club ends up just making the one who wields it tired, while the hope of becoming rich and powerful force fed to the whites costs nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Or, in the original:

“Les indigènes eux, ne fonctionnent guère en somme qu’à coups de trique, ils gardent cette dignité, tandis que les blancs, perfectionnés par l’instruction publique, ils marchent tout seuls. La trique finit par fatiguer celui qui la manie, tandis que l’espoir de devenir puissants et riches dont les blancs sont gavés, ça ne coûte rien, absolument rien.”

Louis-Ferrand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit<, p. 175, Denoel et Steel, Paris, 1932.

Just a sampling of the photos and video on the Yes on Prop 2 website.

• Organic, pesticide-free castor bean.We have sourced our wild castor bean from a Texas location that uses no pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
• Organically-grown, genuine Greek hemlock. The same stuff recommended by Socrates! Never grown with anything but all-natural pesticides.
• Pure Missouri lead. Our products will contain only the finest all-nautral lead from the Missouri Lead Belt. This product is ultra-purified to get rid of any contaminants.
• Genuine, pure arsenic from the High Sierra. The Sierra contain some of the highest concentrations of arsenic. Our products are filtered to remove organic materials to leave us with only the purest, highest-grade, all-natural arsenic, straight from the idyllic hills of California’s High Sierra.
• Hormone-free, free-range rattlesnake venom. We harvest our venom from nothing but rattlers grown in the fresh air of the Sonoran Desert.

So remember, these products are pesticide-free and are completely natural! They must be good for you, right? Yum yum. Be healthy! Live natural!

1. Is it safer to hop in a plane or to hop in a car on average?
2. Is it safer to take a given trip in a car or a plane

Our typical decision is not to decide between taking a trip up to the mailbox (which is two miles away for me) or to hop in a plane. Rather, when faced with a trip of say 1000 miles do I drive or fly? According to academic statisticians Michael Sivak and Michael Flannagan, writing for American Scientist on the relative safety of flying and driving, things tip dramatically in favor of commercial air travel (general aviation is much riskier) when similar trips are compared. In this case, they assume that drivers are going long distance on rural highways in non-commercial cars and trucks which, as it turns out, is the safest driving situation. But the make the reasonable assumption that these will be long trips.

As it turns out, based on their assumptions (which I find reasonable despite comments from critics), driving is only safer over very short distances. Basically 18 kilometers of driving represents the same risk as one takeoff and landing in a commercial airliner, which is the relevant comparison, because 95% of airliner fatalities happen during those times. For a distance of 1157 kilometers (average length of a non-stop flight, again, a reasonable way to figure this), they estimate that it’s about 65 times as risky to drive as to fly. What does that mean on a per hour basis? Since the average cruising speed of an Airbus 320 is 863kph, if we divide that by 65, we get 13.7kph or about 8.5mph. Let’s round that up to 10mph to account for the time it takes the aircraft to get up to cruising speed. So based on those numbers, for driving to be safer on a per hour basis, we would need to assume that average driving speeds are less than 10mph, which might be true for commuters in the Bay Area, but not generally.
So though I keep hearing lately that it’s safer per hour to drive and safer per mile to fly, that may not be true. I also keep hearing that it’s safer to take a short trip in a car than a long trip in a plane, but never imagined that the risk breakeven distance would be 18 km. And it is perhaps worth pointing out that it is much safer to take a short trip than a long trip in general, and safer still to take no trip at all unless you live in a particularly dangerous place. Then it’s safest to take a one-way trip no doubt. It’s probably also worth point out that the environmental cost of a short trip in a car is much lower than the cost of a long or short trip in a jet.
So what does this have to do with Internet Explorer and Firefox? Was I digressing again? Not possible. I reject the whole concept of digression.
You have no doubt heard that Firefox is safer than Internet Explorer because Microsoft produces such crappy products that are so full of security vulnerabilities. The proof for this the constant announcements of this or that virus that is exploiting a hole in Internet Explorer to do malicious things to your computer. Makes sense, except for a not-so recent computer security study that I came across which shows, among other things, that Firefox 1.5 had twice as many publicly-documented security flaws as Internet Explorer 6 SP2. Now, the Firefox people might say they are more open about their flaws or that the patch them quicker, which could be. Anyway, it doesn’t make any difference, because as the researchers found out, Internet Explorer actually is more dangerous to use, but not because it is poorly built, but because it is so popular that it is targetted much more often.

So in this case, the conclusion is unchanged, but the reasons are more complex than Micro$oft $ucks as the saying goes (personally, I cringe when I have to use IE6 or earlier, but IE7 is almost as good as FF2). What I find interesting, and what I’ve been thinking and reading about a lot lately is how this all relates to the decision-making process. What assumptions do we make? Are our decisions based on verifiable data and are the data based on reasonable assumptions? Not typically, and that impacts our day to day lives on issues from Iraq to global warming. If I ever win the lottery, I’ll devote my time to writing about decision making. After all, winning the lottery is just a matter of getting your Lucky Number System down and working it right? I’m more likely to win the lottery than to get struck by lightning, right?

Amazon has, however, added a relatively new feature that tells what people did after viewing a given item, and this is where I think that Amazon is lying or at least not telling the whole story. Well down the page there is a rubric that asks "What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?" Now, I would say that in the vast majority of the cases, the customer leaves the site without buying anything. So the answer to the question should be "He gets up from his Starbucks table where he is using the free Wi-Fi, and buys another latte". But that is not what one finds on the Amazon site. Some examples:

• Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob. According to Amazon, 83% of customers bought this item after viewing it. Well, it sounds like it might be a good read, so why not?
• Ryobi 10″ Bench Top Table Saw – Factory Reconditioned. According to Amazon, not only did a full 80% of those viewing the item buy it, but 20% happened to also buy Trim Carpentry and Built-Ins buy Clayton DeKorne. Now, when users actually view the DeKorne book listing, supposedly 81% of those end up buying it.

Now let’s get real for a minute. Is this even remotely possible? One out of every five users who look at a page about a table saw end up buying a particular book? I don’t think so. Let’s do a little simple math. I’ll make an assumption: some users look at four things and buy nothing, which is what I just did in "researching" this post.

Now really, do you believe that for everyone like me who looks at 5 (or even 20) items without buying anything, which is my typical Amazon behavior, there are 20 (or even 80) other surfers who show up, look at one item, and then buy it? Or perhaps, to achieve the same ratio, there are 4 surfers (or 16) who show up, look at five items and buy every single one? Not a chance.

Perhaps Amazon is suggesting that the ratio is the ratio of customers who buy something, so it takes me out of it. Again, this seems just as ridiculous, since it still requires that, as one scenario, that users actually buy 4 out of 5 items that they viewed. Again that seems like an equally improbably scenario.

Why does Amazon do this? Presumably because they believe that if they can convince me that others thought the item in question was worth buying, that it will break down one more barrier to purchase. In other words, Amazon is attempting to exert peer pressure, to make you think "The vast majority of people who viewed this item ultimately bought it, so you are making a mistake by leaving this page without buying." All I can say is that it makes me want to go somewhere else to buy.

Yup, as the proposed ordinance says:

“In order to provide for the emergency management of the city, and further in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants,” the proposal says, “it is recommended that every head of household residing in the city limits maintain a firearm, together with ammunition”

Apart from the typical American mentality towards the glory and wisdom of toting a gun, what I find really interesting is the “head of household” designation. Who is that? The man and, in absence of a real head of household, the single mom? (Full Article).

Tax Breaks to Churches

Apparently clergy, because they are poorly paid, need tax breaks, but underpaid day-care workers do not get the same consideration. Meanwhile, religious groups start housing developments and obtain exemption from real-estate taxes. Faculty at religious schools get tax-exempt housing, but faculty at other schools do not.
Poor clergy article
Housing development article

Voting Rights Case in Mississippi – This Time for Discrimination against Whites

An interesting case from Mississippi – the tactics used by Ike Brown, local head of the Democratic party, undisputed part boss (and twice-convicted felon), have prompted the Justice Department to bring a case under the Voting Rights Act, the first time it’s been used in Mississippi on behalf of whites. Full article

None of that likely comes as a surprise to anyone who is reading here. What’s fun about Graham’s article is that he gives some tips on how to use the internet to identify articles that have been fed to the media by PR firms and, perhaps more importantly, to guess at who the client is. As he says:

Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it’s straightforward to figure out who the client is. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more “experts” to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. [5] When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men’s Wearhouse.

Enough of my blabbering – go check out Graham’s far better article called The Submarine

Still here? While I’m giving out reading assignments, Phil Agre another guy that I find often worth reading. His Red Rock Eater News Service had the original (as far as I know) debunking of the “Al Gore claims to have invented the internet” crap, demonstrating that this whole thing was a right-wing smear campaign to discredti Gore, which it did, of course (as I write this, that article is offline with promises to get it running in August, but Seth Finkelstein has a page of links on the Al Gore thing that is more up to date)

Most people, however, believe in the fundamental concept of private property, just not as it pertains to copyright protections on books, music, movies, software and so on. As near as I can tell, the main reasons for this are the ease with which one can make copies and the unlikelihood of getting caught. As someone who would probably be out of a job if not for copyright protection, though, I object to these practices for a few simple reasons, perhaps best looked at through the excuses that I hear from file sharers.

Really, is there something wrong with making you a copy?

A lot of people still profess that they didn’t realize that this is illegal, which seems like a stretcher to me as Huck Finn would say. Surprisingly, some of these people actually claim ownership of intellectual property themselves, but they simply don’t see the relationship between downloading an illegal copy of a song and someone infringing on their patent on a bacterium. I have doctor friends with incomes well into the six-figures who don’t see a problem with stealing the work of an indy artist who is struggling to get by on $20,000. Someone earning $200,000 per year can literally buy a CD with their earnings off nine minutes of work. I just don’t see how that is ever morally defensible. In any case, even if you have a reason to believe that it isn’t wrong (see the next item), it remains illegal.

I don’t believe in copyright

Fine, I don’t believe in paying you for doing your job either. In other words, if you don’t believe in copyright, you’re welcome to release all your work into the public domain, but that does not give you the right to release all of *MY* work into the public domain.

The record companies charge too much for their CDs

So boycott them. In a free market, it is your right to refuse to buy anything that you find to be overpriced and it is my right to put whatever price I want on that item. For example, I had a domain name that people kept wanting to buy and kept offering me $200 or so. So I put a for sale sign on the domain saying not to contact me unless you were willing to pay $5,000. As I said in the for sale notice, “Think that’s too expensive? Then find yourself another name, because that’s what it’s worth to me.” That pretty much stopped the trickle of feeble offers until eventually someone came along and offered me over $1000. Since I wasn’t doing anything with the domain anyway, I sold it to him. I personally don’t buy much music because I think that, in fact, most CDs do not provide value to me commensurate with the cost. That belief gives me the right to not buy the CD, but it does not give me the right to steal it. Think about this analogy: the price of gas is too high and most of the profits go to oil companies, not the station attendants and the oil field workers, so I’m just going to steal gas from now on. You can apply that to pretty much any product.

The studios take it all and the artists don’t get their fair share

So you’re going to punish the studio by punishing the artist? It may be true that record companies are ripping off musicians, but if you boycott the major labels, the fundamental distribution model will eventually change. In the meantime though, that artist has entered into a contract believing that contract will maximize his income from his work. Whether that assumption is correct or not, that artist has the right to expect that fans will actually pay for the privilege of owning copies of his recordings. As small as his cut is, that is why he signed with the record label in the first place. Just because the system is broken is no reason to cheat the artist out of the small remaining portion that he gets.

I’m not actually taking anything from anybody

Yes you are. Let’s say I slave away in front of my computer to create a cool little software application that you decide you like, but not well enough to pay my asking price. So you decide to grab a copy without paying. You have stolen my labor just as surely as if you hired me to build a house and then decided not to pay me.

But then it occurred to me that since Americans seem to think in terms of cost per month, maybe we could use this to encourage responsible government. When we have fully electronic voting, we can integrate some simple caclulators. Before voting, everyone inputs their income and how many deductions they have, and then it takes them to a ballot and they get to vote:

• Prescription drug benefit. Your cost: only $14.99 per month.
• War in Iraq. Your cost: only 49.73 per month
• Safe drinking water. Your cost: only $0.76 per month
• Corn subsidies. Your cost: only $2.23 per month. But wait! Rebate at the checkout on your food and fuel: $0.23 per month!

Congress and lately the courts have struck down a presidential line-item veto and perhaps rightly so. Perhaps with improved voting technology, however, we could create a line-item veto for the citizenry. The key would be to have all of the items tallied at the bottom. You want to help out those poor Iraqis and all those family farmers Archer Daniels Midlands, then go ahead and vote yes on all measures. Your cost: only $1543.29 per month!