The Substantially Similar Weblog

In keeping with my recent theme of linking to publicly available public radio recordings…

So it’s a little late for St. Valentine’s Day, but I’ve been busy. On This American Life, Sarah Vowell’s The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century (about 47 minutes in) is fantastic and a must-hear for Johnny Cash fans. The story dispells a longstanding misconception I’ve had that “Ring of Fire” is actually about syphilis.

Incidentally, did you know that you can jump to the middle of a RealAudio stream simply by appending ?start=47:00 (to jump 47 minutes in) to the URL? Unrelatedly—that Vowell was the voice of superhero Violet Parr in The Incredibles?

Tom Waits is featured on this week’s American Routes public radio music show (archived here — real audio link). There’s a great interchange where you can’t tell if Waits is totally screwing around with the host, or just being himself. Here’s the clip (10 second ogg):

Q: I don’t want to misquote you, but I think I saw you once said something like “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
A: Oh right right right…
Q: Very succinct and poetic line.
…
A: Mmm… Um, I read that on a bathroom wall.
Q: Oh — did you really?
A: Uh huh. Yeah.
Q: But it strikes me it’s also somebody that sang that at that time that maybe — drinking was probably pretty important to you at that point?
A: Oh, well, I haven’t had a drink in like fourteen years.
Q: But… I… when you said that, my guess would be that you probably were, unless you were totally playing a character…
A: Oh, yeah, I was drinking in those days, yeah, sure.
Q: Yeah, yeah.

Apparently, the “lobotomy” quote, often attributed to Tom Waits, is actually written by Atlanta physician Randy Hanzlick. But it’s entirely plausible it got to Tom Waits via a bathroom somewhere. I’d believe it.

Update: a commentor points out that Hanzlick himself actually got the quote from graffiti on a bathroom wall. The plot thickens.

I’ve been building a litany of criticisms of Verizon, to which I fork over something on the order of $200 a month for two cell phones, a land line, broadband, and fees too numerous to mention. I’m in a real crunch time right now, though, so let me just settle for one question: why does Verizon always make me call several different phone numbers when I need to change something? Aren’t they the phone company? Shouldn’t they have fancy phones that let them transfer a call from one Verizon office to another? In fact, I bet they don’t even have to pay long distance charges!

More exactly, why do I have to do all this calling? I’ve been trying for several months (since August, actually) to consolidate my two cell phone accounts into one account, and then consolidate that account with my landline and broadband, and have one bill that is automatically charged to my credit card each month (no discount for that—just “convenience”). Last night, I called Verizon Wireless Customer Support, asking them why it’s taken three months to do this. They told me I had to call Verizon Wireless One Bill. Verizon Wireless One Bill told me that Verizon Wireless Customer Support didn’t know what they were talking about, and I had to call Verizon Residential One Bill, but they were closed. Now, why can’t Verizon Wireless Customer Support just call Verizon Wireless One Bill or Verizon Wireless Residential One Bill for me and take care of it? In fact, I bet they even have interoffice email, so perhaps they could do it that way.

Anyway, just imagine four or five more stories along those lines. I’ve got ‘em.

Novell Public Service Announcement. Cute, but requires Flash. Why not just make it a downloadable movie file?

I’ve been considering trying to offer a GNU/Linux course at a local Adult Education Center. The Boston Center for Adult Education, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and the Brookline Center for Adult Education all offer dozens of computer courses, but only for legacy operating systems and applications. Not a single course focusing on open source software.

I imagine a few obstacles. First, would any of these places even let me set up a Linux lab? I can’t imagine they’d be too willing to have all of their hard drives wiped (or repartitioned) and replaced with new, unfamiliar software. My experience is that Linux is more threatening to system administrators the less familiar they are with it. The class could probably be taught with a “live” CD distribution like Knoppix or Ubuntu Live, but this would mean I couldn’t demonstrate an actual, real live installation, which is often the part where people get stuck.

Second, who would take this course? This is one of those cases where you can’t even lead a horse to water (much less make him drink)! I would want to tailor the course to a target audience, but I have trouble guessing if the audience would be: (1) no one (2) curious home desktop Windows users (3) technical people with no familiarity with Linux, or (4) beginner Linux users who are looking to be able to solve problems on their own better… or maybe some other audience entirely? Of course, the way the course is advertised would to some extent determine the audience, but I’d like to find the most ripe target audience.

Third, how do you teach a computer course, anyway? I’ve never had a demonstration-based computer training that I found very useful. In my experience, I learn everything by doing—and by doing I don’t mean repeating the actions I see an instructor doing. (“Now click on ‘Gnome Control Coenter’…”) It seems to me that learning about software is such an individual experience—how do you effectively scale it up to 5-15 people so that no one is left behind, no one is bored, and everyone comes away feeling much empowered? And how do you model the critical “trial and error” stages that everyone must go through to really grasp something?

It occurs to me that maybe the best way to teach a software course might not involve much actual demonstration at all, instead the trick is to teach people a generalized method for approaching problems so that they have the tools they need to find answers when problems arise.

For example, on linux-disciples, a small community-of-interest mailing list I administer, someone recently asked “how to get online”. It wasn’t clear at all what layer was the problem; I responded:

The trick with this sort of problem—and really 99.9% of linux problems—is drilling down to the problem area. One of the problems I consistently see with newer users is that they feel helpless because they don’t know at which layer the problem is arising.

So there are a few questions:

(1) Does your computer see your network card?
(2) Does your network card see the wireless signal, and associate with the wireless router?
(3) Does your network card get an IP address from the wireless router?
(4) Does the wireless router see the “Ethernet modem” (I assume you mean cable modem)?
(5) Does the cable modem see the Internet?

And then continued to walk through each of these items with some suggestions for how to figure out if that was the problem. I think training people to (1) figure out what questions they need to ask, and (2) how to go through the questions one-by-one and get a definite answer as to whether the system works at that level, would be the best way to teach this kind of course.

Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin reports that two days ago, a group of Yale Law Faculty won a case against the defense department challenging the Solomon Amendment. The Solomon Amendment requires schools to provide access to military recruiters or lose federal aid—including student loans. Military recruiting is inconsistent with the campus access policy of nearly every law school in the country because of the military’s discriminatory policies with respect to sexual orientation.

The court held that the Solomon Amendment is unconstitutional as applied to Yale Law School. This is an important decision, and if upheld on appeal could signal a strengthening of the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, which forbids the government from restricting constitutional rights “through the backdoor” by conditioning a benefit on not engaging in otherwise constitutionally protected activity.

This was a big issue when I was in law school. I suspect the Solomon Amendment is responsible for the spam recruitment email I recently received from the Marines, although I can’t be sure where they got my law school email address (it isn’t one I’ve ever used publicly).

According to news.com.com(.com.com.com…), Google is now an ICANN accredited domain name registrar. Google states that it isn’t going to be selling domain names any time soon, though:

However, it has no plans to sell Web addressees for now.

“Google became a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet’s domain name system,” a company representative said Tuesday. “We believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results.”

Isn’t this an odd claim? Isn’t the functioning of the Internet’s domain name system transparent? What more is Google going to be able to learn “from the inside” that isn’t already publicly available? And if there is such information, shouldn’t we all have access to it?

Alternatively, CNET speculates that this will give Google a seat at the ICANN table, giving it a larger role in Internet governance. This sounds more plausible than any technical reason for becoming a registrar, but is, in itself, somewhat disturbing. It means you can buy a seat at the table for $10,000. I’d like to think there would be a more democratic way of balancing stakeholders in Internet governance than “whoever can afford a seat.”

This also lends credence to one of the foundational claims of an interesting recent paper on Internet trademark law, Deregulating Relevancy in Internet Trademark Law by Eric Goldman, mentioned on the Trademark Blog. Goldman convincingly argues for the elimination of distinctions in trademark law between various forms of search: domain name, keyword, paid placement, adware, suggesting that the issues for the searcher, the publisher, and the intermediary are really the same in all cases. For two quick examples, consider that several of the top searches in Google are for terms like “www.yahoo.com” and “www.google.com” (turning search keywords into a domain name query); and Verisign’s ill-fated attempt to implement site-finder (turning domain name queries into search keywords).

Sometimes the City of Boston surprises me with their effective use of technology. It’s generally pretty hard to find an example of the government doing a good job implementing a large technology/citizen service project, but I recently discovered the Boston Water and Sewer Commission has put all usage information online.

So you can actually see your monthly water usage, with the numbers for each month appearing with Javascript mouseover:

Incidentally, that spike in late July—that’s not us. We moved in a couple days after that. I understand the prior owner of the house reads my blog (hi Peter!) so he is to blame for taking too many showers that month.

In fact, you can even see daily usage, right up to yesterday (I suppose they can’t do today yet because you’re not done using your water):

The only problem with the site is that it has a stupid Flash/Shockwave entry screen. There’s absolutely no reason to do this—plain old HTML would have worked fine, and been more accessible to blind Internet users. That said, it’s at least well done Flash and doesn’t have unnecessary animation or blinkies.

The City of Boston Assessing Department has a similarly valuable tool, which also has the additional benefit of allowing you to spy on your neighbors. (Hey, my friends’ nearby house doubled in assessed value from 2003 to 2004—probably the result of a gut rehab). Being able to see the assessed value of any property, the history of assessments, and some of the basic information about the property without getting up from one’s desk makes it a lot easier to figure out if one is being treated fairly by the tax man.

The Suffolk County Registry of Deeds has a much clunkier interface, but has managed to get several year’s worth of filings indexed online, and is making progress at scanning the contents of those filings—another valuable way to snoop on your neighbors (“Oh, I see, they took out a second mortgage to build that addition!”) — on second thought, maybe this whole blog entry belongs in the ‘privacy’ category.

One of the most impressive projects is “The Boston Atlas” (aka mapjunction; Java client required). The Boston Atlas is an interactive map of Boston that includes various historical (back to the 1700’s!) and current aerial images, with the option to superpose several different data sets, including streets, open space, census data, wards, precincts, building footprints, etc., and select the color for plotting the various data sets. It’s really pretty cool.

Here’s my house, with a little blue arrow added to point to the house, yellow lines to indicate streets and red lines around open space. Click to get a more legible version:

(please don’t use this information to plot a terrorist attack against my house or the parking lot at the end of the street).

Steve has pointed out several times how poorly the mainstream media do in establishing verifiable facts, instead kotowing to the requirement of providing a “balanced view” and presenting “both positions” on an issue. For example, just today the Boston Globe· runs a story entitled Bush argues his Social Security plan aids blacks·:

Under a system based on wages, the average monthly Social Security retirement benefit received by African-Americans is $775, compared with $912 for whites. In addition, many blacks never receive the benefits because a disproportionate number die before they are eligible. On average, black males die six years sooner than white males.

But some groups representing African-Americans say that Bush’s logic is faulty and that creating private accounts would hurt blacks rather than help them. They maintain that Bush is playing a race card to boost his plan.

After summarizing the position on both sides of the debate, the story notes:

Whichever side is right, the controversy has put a spotlight on what some say has been missing in the national discussion over Social Security: Is the system filled with inequities that discriminate against certain demographic groups?

Whichever side is right? There probably is a correct answer to this question, and I submit the media should be responsible for reporting that answer, even if the result is that it appears to be “taking sides” in the debate. Steve pointed me to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities· entitled African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Social Security: the Shortcomings of the Heritage Foundation Reports·. The report notes straightforward actuarial errors made in the report the Bush administration relies on for its claim that the social security system disadvantages racial minorities. One example:

The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Chief Actuary found that Heritage both overstated the payroll taxes that workers pay for Social Security and understated the Social Security retirement benefits that workers receive, with these errors being particularly large for African Americans. The Office of the Chief Actuary found that in estimating the number of years an individual would work and make payroll tax contributions, Heritage failed to take into account the fact that some workers die before retirement and consequently contribute payroll tax for a smaller number of years than those who work into their 60s. Since a larger portion of African-American workers than of white workers die before 65, failing to take this factor into account led Heritage to make particularly large errors in its rate-of-return calculations for African Americans. For example, the actuaries found that the number of years a 20-year-old African-American man is expected to make payroll tax payments into the Social Security system is six years fewer than the Heritage methodology would predict. This flaw in its methodology led Heritage to overstate significantly the Social Security taxes that African Americans pay.

Another good example of this phenomenon is WBUR public radio host Tom Ashbrook’s show, On Point, where Ashbrook bends over backwards to make sure he’s always giving “both sides” a fair shot in the discussion, even to the point where he has take a clearly ridiculous view (for example, “maybe the people who want to ban discussion of evolution from classroom textbooks are factually right!”). National Public Radio has been demonized by the right wing for several years now, so perhaps this is an attempt to preempt further charges of bias.

The Boston Phoenix· ran a a great interview with veteran political writer and Dorchester native Jack Beatty· that focused on this same issue several weeks ago. When asked about the media’s role in the “Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth” smear ads during last year’s presidential campaign, Beatty responds:

In the past, there were terrible lies told about candidates. But I think the difference is that journalism has become a vector for these lies, and a way of dignifying them and treating them through this terrible trap of objectivity. “You say, Mr. Hitler, that the Jews are in fact parasites and need to be destroyed. You over here, Rabbi, disagree. Let’s talk.” This objectivity is strangling. You think of journalism as a mirror and a lamp. It’s strictly a mirror today.

Steve pointed out another great example of this a couple of months ago when the New York Times· ran a positive story on the Mozilla Firefox web-browser·, but declined to establish verifiable facts:

Firefox has won praise from some Internet experts for being more innovative than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and less susceptible to malicious programs that routinely attack the Microsoft browser.

Firefox, they say, is a compact, free-standing browser designed to display Web pages rapidly while blocking pop-up ads and other unsolicited windows. Downloads of the new browser were running at the rate of a million a day last week.

While the security claim might arguably be a matter of opinion (although clearly any argument that up to this point Internet Explorer is no more subject to security vulnerabilities than Mozilla Firefox is laughable), the issue of whether Firefox “displays Web pages rapidly” is quite easy to test. In fact, I’m sure there are people already on the New York Times payroll who would be able to verify (or refute) the claim. And yet, the New York Times—like most other mainstream media publications—lets “you be the judge.”

Hey, one side says it loads faster, the other side says it doesn’t, and who are we to force our opinion on you?

‘He feels he can do more good working within the system.’

I figured this space could use a little levity for a change. Interestingly, this New Yorker cartoon was actually the result of a captioning contest where readers sent in suggestions based on the image. Above is the winning entry.