Mission Accomplished

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With the devastation yesterday in Oklahoma following an enormous tornado, with a winds in excess of 200MPh, leaving some 24 dead and miles destroyed buildings, the US News and Media is rightly focussed on that.

mission[1]Almost 10-years to the day when then President George Bush declared “Mission accomplished” after landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to declare a end to major combat operations in Iraq.

Arguably Iraq has seen one of it’s worst weeks of car bombings and sectarian deaths. Yesterday alone saw

  • 9 car bombs go off in Baghdad striking at bus stops, marketplaces and in the streets in busy morning hours
  • At least 24 people were killed and 120+ injured
  • 2x car bombs in the city of Basra, one near a restaurant and the other at a bus stop
  • At least 10 people and wounded 27

Meaning more than 200 people have been killed in bombing incidents in the last week alone, following on from some 700 violent deaths in April 2013. This weeks total includes

  • Ramadi, the bodies of 8x civilians who were kidnapped by gunmen Saturday. All eight had been shot to death.
  • The bodies of 6x police officers who had also been abducted Saturday were found dead on a highway in western Ramadi.

While Iraq was far from perfect prior to the invasion, you’d have hoped that some 10-years after mission accomplished, and the billions and billions of dollars it has cost, we’d have accomplished something.

Nickel and dimed to death

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nickel-and-dime-SME-analytics[1]On a recent visit to London I was disappointed and confused by the hotel checkout invoice. For a bar bill for 2-drinks was listed as 5-separate things, including a £2 convenience charge for service after midnight, a service charge, the drinks, and, err, the tip I’d left. At least to my memory none of this was shown on the original bar tab, just the drinks and the tip.

This so reminds me of flying. I’ve remarked before that flying with United Airlines, where I don’t have any frequent flyer status, is like being nickel and dimed to death. You are confirmed on a flight, but nothing else, seats, drinks, boarding, checked luggage, etc. etc. can all be bought. When you are done, you are left feeling “dirty”.

We’ve all bought event tickets online, if the price is between $10-$20, you can actually end up paying more in fees and taxes that the ticket price. Which is ridiculous if you think about it. It’s happening more and more.

Yet, shouldn’t the original price include pretty much everything? After all, for years bills and receipts have covered the cost of doing business in every other way. They don’t list Social Security and Medicare; their property and income taxes; establishment running costs, or, their profit.

I work in the computer industry, the fact we’ve enabled this level of minute tracking, made it easy to add on charges left right and center, doesn’t mean that businesses should break everything out. Yes, I understand in the case of the airline industry, a lot of the charges are optional, and it’s allowed a lot more frugal traveler’s to take trips. But this race to the bottom on prices, show the cheapest price you can legally claim, then add fees, surcharges, taxes etc. can’t end happily.

This blog post has another perspective, oh great, Obamacare for breakfast?

Labor day (don’t celebrate)

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It’s fitting, or perhaps not, that as May 1st is supposed to be International Labor day, we are experiencing modern record lows in employment in the USA, protests over austerity in many European cities, I watched news from Madrid and Greece where the protests were attended by a mix of people and ages, and Italy where there were youth protests and direct action[2nd half, episode 4, HBO Services 4, Love&Rockets].

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the collapse of the clothing factory is now officially “one of the worst industrial accidents in world history”, already has some 390 dead, with more bodies being dug out every day.

So, reading Thomas Friedmans latest Op.Ed in the NY Times last night while on my bike trainer. I couldn’t really gather my thoughts on the disconnect between Friedman and what was going on elsewhere. Felix Salmon on Reuters.com has done a complete dismantling of Friedmans 401k world, perhaps too literally, in his “The systemic plight of labor”.

The truth of course is a mixture of both. Friedmans metaphoric 401k OpEd is still problematical, where as Salmons response takes it too literal. Both are worth a read though, since they illustrate some of the polarization that is growing by the day.

21 and Over

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I felt a huge relief when I heard Jason Solomons review of “21 and Over” on Robert Elms show this morning.

Solomons said “it made me glad I wasn’t 21, glad I wasn’t American and glad it’s all over very quickly. It’s quite vile in places and stupid.” adding, “What’s a frat, what do you do there?” – “I don’t understand the Greek alphabet”.

It’s how I’ve felt about almost the entire genre since Animal House, including “The Hangover” franchise. Animal House was a classic for many reasons.  Are college guys really like this? I don’t think so. Even as an extreme these films serve no real purpose, and just encourage arrogant, slob like behavior which further serves to “normalize” this type of behavior.

Guantánamo Adds Medical Staff Amid Hunger Strike – NYTimes.com

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This has been prime news in Europe today and yesterday, that 2/3 of the detainees are now on Hunger Strike, and more than 40 are being force fed. I’m sure this also more than news in many other countries. [BBC; Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)]

Whatever you think about the people being held, “terrorists that should rot in hell”, “that should be locked up forever” or “deserve their day in court”, the damage this is doing to the US reputation overseas is immeasurable, and it will be held against us.  Time to end this. The President promised 4-years ago to shutdown Guantanamo,  now is the time for action. While “waterboarding” may not qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment: under the US Constitution, Force Feeding is most definitely clearly a violation of international law.

Interestingly, while this is news outside the US, apart from blog entries, I hadn’t seen or heard it covered on US “News” 24hr or otherwise, TV or Radio, unless you did?

Guantánamo Adds Medical Staff Amid Hunger Strike – NYTimes.com.

What’s in a name

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My name is Mark, I have three children named Eloise, Lauren and Oliver. They may or may not know this, but we chose Eloise because it was(at the time) pretty unusual, beautiful and feminine. Yes, there was that Barry Ryan track in the 1960′s but that wasn’t why. Then there was Lauren, another beautiful name, recalling classical beauty and sophistication, and yes, there was Lauren Bacall. And Oliver, classic name, we both had a joint friend with a lot of style and a great attitude, so Oliver it was.

Given your name

  • Would another name would have changed things?
  • Would you have been more/less successful?
  • Would people have treated you differently?
  • Do you get targeted differently by  google, facebook and social media ads?
  • Does your name actually say more about your parents?

Well it turns out that one of my favorite podcasts have dealt with this, and you’d be surprised with the result.

Levitt and Roland Fryer argue that a first name doesn’t seem to affect a person’s economic life at all.Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.

Even Levitt can’t really account for the future, how will you child be judged based on the “baggage” todays names carry? – Listen to the full show here.

Facebook socialgraph

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facebook socialgraph bar

Yesterday the menu bar on my browser facebook page changed. I realized I’d been given access to their new SocialGraph feature but didn’t immediately realize the power of it. I tried it out a few times, did some obvious searches and went back to work.

Then late yesterday evening I came back to it, tried a few more things out and then suddenly, it was 3:05 a.m. The power of this is truly awesome. With power comes responsibility, in this case the responsibility lies with facebook users. Remember, when you are not paying for something, YOU are the product.

So, socialgraph is really helpful when you want to find a picture of you and a friend at an event, that either you, your friend, or someone else took. If you don’t get the query right, facebook will even give you helpful suggestions on how to search. The more information you put in the description, update, tags etc. the more specific the result will be. It’s really powerful.

Great. Well hold on. Remember YOU are the product. Turning to the dark side, it became really interesting to search for things, for example:

  • photos from 2006 of friends at college < Facebook was mostly still just emerging from “the facebook” back then. It was only colleges that could get access before that. Trust me, some of my friends need to seriously go back and delete their pictures, and especially pictures they are tagged in.
  • friends who are single women < Yes, facebook has gone from a psuedo dating hookup platform to a full blown competitor for match.com. Queries can be much more extensive, you can search for people who like something, that are single, live in a specific place and are between age and age.
  • People at work who like triathlon < I’ve been toying with the idea of running a small event to get feedback from a few people. So I decided to try people who work at xxx in yyy and like triathlon. Sure enough a massive list of specific people, with often there actual job titles, locations, etc. and of course, since they are on facebook, you can send them messages etc. Yes, messages to non-friends now charge if you want them to show up in their inbox, put I cut-n-paste 60 names into Outlook, pressed alt-k and yammo, resolved through the corporate name and address book.
  • People who like dance music and live in austin < now you don’t even have to like a page to give away your data. It’s available to mine for free. Again, the only gate here is that if they want to message you, they either have to pay or it ends up in your “other” inbox.

In general this has to be seen as a huge step forward in what you can do with facebook. It’s also hugely revealing in ways I’d never thought about that open us all up to commercial exploitation. Using this harmless question, I was really surprised at the results. My friends who are between 50 and 55 and like Jack and Adam’s Bicycles.

Definitely time to double check what information you’ve given facebook, especially in your profile, where you check-in and especially what businesses and hobbies you like. If you are a friend and noticed yesterday that I added an employer for the first time since I joined facebook, now you know why.

Doing who is searches is also included, but just retrieves information from bing. Amongst other things who is mark cathcart retrieved the following “Mark Cathcart read classics at Cambridge. He published as a City analyst with his innovative style earning him a top rank in international surveys for a number of …” < True, but not me. More on this problem up next.

Link

The fading power of politics

This is a really good article on the politics of power, and how quickly the power of politics fades. The fact that former VP Cheney was the most senior US rep. is telling both from a perspective of Thatcher as it is for Cheney.

It is perhaps important for these politicians to remember, unlike the businesses and doctrines they politic for, when the politician goes, neither the business, nor the doctrine will step forward to defend them. The only people there will be those whose own legacy depends on the continuation of a line of deceit.