The Substantially Similar Weblog

Another thought about the supposed targetting of Las Vegas: by casting the enemy as “hating our way of life,” the administration leaves no room for compromise. If the terrorists seek to reduce U.S. influence in the middle east, then there are various concessions that might be made; if they want to destroy our way of living no matter what, then there’s no room for compromise. Although we don’t negotiate with terrorists, we do know how to avoid calling regimes terrorist when we want to negotiate—e.g., North Korea.

Similarly, a “war on terror” is unwinnable: terror is a mode of action, not an entity. The war on Troy is won when Troy falls; when does the war on terror end? When no one thinks of using terror as a tactic anymore?

Many others have written about the potentially perpetual nature of this war, and even administration officials have suggested that this could last decades. This could conceivably rival the cold war as an engine to drive the military-industrial complex. I wonder how clearly people could see the cold war unfolding in its incipiency.

Apparently, all Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles were cancelled on Christmas Eve because “officials” were concerned that there was a plan to hijack a flight and crash the plane in Las Vegas. According to the Washington Post:

The al Qaeda network has long considered Las Vegas to be one of its top targets for a strike because it sees the city as a citadel of Western licentiousness, U.S. officials said. Government officials said they have known for some time that al Qaeda is interested in striking at Las Vegas.

I’m no al Qaeda expert, but this doesn’t make any sense to me. Neither prior targets nor al Qaeda propaganda suggest that the organization targets Western licentiousness. The World Trade Center is not a hotbed of pornography; the American Embassy in Kenya· is not a lobby for legalized gambling. It seems to me that everything al Qaeda and related groups say and do suggests a mission of defeating U.S. hegemony abroad and hurting American economic interests domestically.

I wonder whether the press really believes that the terrorists want to destroy us because “they hate our way of life,” or if they’re just happy to faithfully report whatever “U.S. officials” say.

It’s also interesting to note that a plane did crash in Las Vegas yesterday·, but only got tenth page coverage. It remains the case that accidents are far more dangerous that terrorism, and yet terrorist casualties get far more attention, and billions of dollars go to the war on terrorism. Wouldn’t the money be better spent in a war on accidents?

So, our guy· lost the election. Evil triumphed and good lost.

There are all sorts of possible ways to put a positive spin on the results, including:

• The election was so close (well within any possible statistical “margin of error” for the winner) that Newsom hardly has a mandate. With quite near half the voting electorate opposing Newsom, he’s got a fair amount of opposition out there that countervailing forces on the Board of Supervisors can draw from.
• This is by the far the best a Green Party· candidate has done in a major election. The Democrats are feeling the heat—intensely. They had to call in the big guns here—Al Gore a week before the election·, and Bill Clinton himself on election eve·. The Democrats see the writing on the wall, and it’s not good.
• Matt remains president of the Board of Supervisors—not an insignificant position, and clearly his clout should be boosted by the strong support he got in this election.

There’s lots of speculation as to what particular factors lead to Gonzalez’s loss. With such a small margin of defeat, it could really be anything. Certainly, the Democrats’ heavy-handed tactics at the 11th hour could have made a difference. The San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement may have also influenced a handful of voters. (On the other hand, the fact that Howard Dean did not endorse Newsom· moderately increases my respect for Dean).

I’d like to offer a somewhat heretical alternative explanation: Campaign Finance Reform. Despite rules limiting individual contributions to mayoral candidates to $250 each, Newsom outspent Gonzalez 8 to 1. I met many activists who contributed the statutory limit to the Gonzalez campaign, and may well have contributed more if there had been no contribution cap. Gonzalez was strapped for funds for television ads, which might have reached an audience that otherwise hadn’t heard from the candidate.

In the absence of any contribution cap, would Newsom have gotten more money? Probably. Would it have helped him all that much? I don’t think so. Or at least the relative effect on the additional money to both campaigns would have favored Gonzalez. It’s Econ 101—the marginal utility of cash decreases the more you have.

Once you’re outspending the other candidate by an order of magnitude, a few extra hundreds of thousands of dollars may not do a lot for you, but for someone like Gonzalez who struggled to reach a critical threshold and have some opportunity to publicly respond to unfair accusations levied against him, the additional funds could have made all the difference.

This is ultimately the peril of a system which limits contributions but not expenditures. And I can’t conceive of any system that could survive First Amendment scrutiny and still limit expenditures in a meaningful way. This election should give rise to questions for those of us on the left who think that campaign finance reform is the way to fix politics: in some cases, the only way an insurgent can challenge the status quo may actually be limited by contribution caps.

It may be, then, that contributions are not actually an incremental step towards the final goal, but a step in the wrong direction. I can see public funding for elections and mandates for free media time fixing a lot of the problem, but I don’t see how contribution caps make those sorts of reforms even remotely more likely. In fact, they may instead create the impression that the problem is being fixed, and reduce pressure to effect these other reforms that will actually make for a more level playing field.

I’m back at Maxfield’s House of Caffeine, my favorite caffeinated wireless access point, and I’m noticing several other laptops running GNU/Linux. I think any attempt to quantify free software adoption statistically is going to be flawed by the simple fact that market purchases are likely only a tiny fraction of actual uses. (You could make a similar argument vis-a-vis proprietary software since so much is pirated; but I’m willing to make an ad hoc guess that the pirated proprietary software “market” corresponds closely to the legitimate purchase market). At least in areas like San Francisco, I suspect the desktop/laptop usage of GNU/Linux is much higher than statistics suggest (e.g., see Is the Age of Desktop Linux Approaching?·, suggesting that only one percent of desktops run GNU/Linux).

Democracy Now!·, my favorite radio news program, is now providing their show in downloadable Ogg Vorbis format·. This solves two problems: (1) previously they only provided proprietary Real Audio or MP3 format, and (2) you had to do a little hacking to download the show rather than listen to it streaming. It makes imminent sense to allow people to download the full show and in a free format, particularly since the show is noncommercial/nonprofit. They’re even using the Internet Archive· to serve high quality archives of past episodes. Now I can copy the show in Ogg Vorbis format onto my portable Neuros audio player· and listen to it anywhere.

Although I’m back on the East Coast for now, I’m still quite hopeful that Matt Gonzalez· will win the election for Mayor of San Francisco. As an official registered Blogger for Matt·, I’m duty bound to ask any of you reading this blog to donate to the campaign· as there is only one week left and Matt needs to raise money to buy TV time to respond to Newsom attack ads.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian· has a good election page· with more information about the upcoming election, and newsdesk.org· is running a good interview with Matt· that will be broadcast on the radio this Sunday.

Doonesbury has been having a field day with the Schwarzenegger election. This one was particularly funny.

If you’re reading this, and you live in San Francisco, I’m betting you’re more likely than not a Matt Gonzalez· supporter. While I’m usually not too excited about electoral politics, this is a unique case. This matters.

The December 9 mayoral election will be won or lost on registration and turn-out. A lot of people are repeating this message, but let me add my voice to the choir.

Register· before the end of Monday, November 24. You can even do it online·. Then vote either absentee or on election day, December 9.

I attended a Matt Gonzalez for Mayor· party tonight, one of 100 such parties happening in 30 days·. Although Matt wasn’t there, I was struck by the energy and enthusiasm of the volunteers and attendees. Several independent artists and publishers spoke, and some who had little income and had never given money to any candidate said they were giving the maximum amount permitted under law this time. The Indymedia· founder spoke about Matt’s commitment to the public interest in media and communications issues, including the upcoming renewal of the cable franchise for San Francisco.

I was impressed with Gonzalez when I saw him riding on the Critical Mass ride here a couple of weeks ago. I also recently noticed he has a profile in Friendster· (account required), with lots of friends. I was wondering if the Friendster profile was for real, so I googled for “Matt Gonzalez” Friendster and to my surprise got my own weblog back as the top hit.

In any case, it appears the Friendster profile is for real, at least according to Bloggers for Matt·.

So Matt gets my vote. It’s been a long time since a major American city had a truly progressive mayor. This may be our best shot yet. Sign me for Bloggers for Matt.

Update: see also the counter-propaganda brigade· for some clever Newsom counter-ads.

Last week, I wrote about a poorly written slightly satirical article criticizing open source. Today, I received a response from a Princeton administrator, linking to an official Princeton position statement on open source·.

While the position paper does distance itself from Howard Strauss’ article, it unfortunately presents a false trichotomy of “open source” vs. “vendor” vs. “local development.” In fact, there are at least two entirely separate decisions to be made in software procurement:

• Open source vs. Proprietary (and, in fact, various shades in between)
• Vendor supported vs. community supported vs. “in house” or local development

Any entity is free to mix and match between these options. For example, it’s quite common to have vendor supported open source software (e.g., Red Hat Linux·), or to have some in house expertise and development on open source software. Or even to rely on some vendor support, some community support, and some in house support.

Of course, if you choose the proprietary solution, you’re likely locked into the “vendor support” model indefinitely, and have no choice about your vendor.

It’s also disappointing that the Princeton Position Paper didn’t touch on the historic role of the University in advancing the pursuit of knowledge, and how open source code comports with these principles, which have been observed in the scientific community since the beginning of time. (i.e., share freely your discoveries so that others may improve on them).