One of the "Americans {seeking} respite from the Nation's economic troubles," 1939

The New York Times has an interesting article which inadvertently highlights cultural prejudice.

“Roberts Seeks More Judicial Con­firmations” tells the story of the Chief Justice’s appeal to the other branches of government to solve “the persistent problem of judicial vacancies.” No problem with that.

Roberts’ Year-End Report begins, however, with a wistful vignette of depression-era America. I’m always incredulous when I see a writer reminisce about an era when the U.S. was a de facto police state which denied basic human rights to many Americans. I therefore present:

The Chief Justice’s Year-End Report, par. 1, corrected

In older Supreme Court dissenting opinions, it’s common to read “I respectfully dissent”, or “with respect, I dissent.” But what about today’s justices? Some seem to relish writing dissents which are indistinguishable from Internet flames. Here’s a quick little bit of research:

How often do the current and retired Supreme Court justices use the above phrases in their dissents?

Methods

LexisNexis on 11/11/2010. Two searches for each justice, e.g.:
DISSENTBY(thomas)
DISSENTBY(thomas) and DISSENT(respect! w/s dissent)

This analysis is fairly superficial; something I did while procrastinating on my actual work. It should, though, provide a little food for thought.

This is how you use the Belladonna . . . you hold it upside down . . . then you twist . . . then you pop it in your mouth! . . . It tastes just like sugar.

Update:  Its creator took Kids & Homeopathy off-line in reaction to this blog post.  However, I had been careful to save a copy. Here are a couple of stills, edited to protect the child’s privacy:

“...you hold it upside down...”

“...then you pop it in your mouth!”

How many ethical issues does this raise?  In my opinion, the video steps over the line by…

1. Marketing medicine to children,
2. Using the pills’ similarity to candy to sell them,
3. Blurring the distinction between medicine and candy,
4. Promoting a culture of pill-popping and keeping a medicine cabinet full of “remedies” at all times to children,
5. Teaching children how to circumvent a child-safety device,
6. Teaching children to self-diagnose instead of turning to a parent or guardian,
7. Blurring the meaning of dangerous poisons such as Belladonna,
8. Focussing on the symptoms instead of the underlying problems:  Why does she have headaches frequently enough that she knows what “medication” she prefers for them?  Is there some underlying problem that’s going ignored while she self-diagnoses and self-medicates?
9. Marketing a disproven therapy (homeopathy) to children,
10. Harming this particular child through the inculcation of these values.

Did I miss anything?

Update 2

1. The video’s creator responds.
2. Another problem with the video’s concept occurred to me:  As can be seen in the screenshot above, the girl takes medication on camera even though she’s not experiencing any health problems.  This is both questionable (further teaching that taking meds is a lighthearted & fun activity), and odd (evidence that homeopathic medications maybe really aren’t “real”.)

Terri Gross is chairing a a discussion about health care solutions with two people.  One is Paul Krugman.  I knew the name, but not too much about him, and so here’s what I found:

• Professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton,
• Centenary professor at London School of Economics,
• 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize winner in economics,
• Author of “25 books and 40 scholarly articles” (Wikipedia).

I thought to myself, wow, awesome — I want to hear what he has to say.  And the other person?  “Stuart Butler, [some position at] conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation”.  Ok, so red flags go up for me.  Who is this guy?  Here’s the best I can find:

• Author of a series of “WebMemos” and “Heritage Lectures” on the Heritage Foundation website,
• Adjunct faculty at Georgetown,
• Identified as a very influential person by a D.C.-insider periodical. (per his resume)

For cryin’ out loud — why why why?  How in the world does a discussion between these two people serve listeners?  How is Butler any different from Creationists who write “research” papers that they publish in their own personal “scientific journals”?

Here’s just one of the many problems with this:

As a consumer of news and content, I’m shortchanged.

If there is a well-represented competing current of research and solutions in the field, then I’d like to hear from someone who would disagree with Krugman on some issues.  But please, this person should have similarly solid credentials, and should represent a similarly broad stream of research in the subject area. 

But I come to the opposite conclusions by calmly looking at the facts:

• The Court’s conservative majority reached its decision by creating law in the form of a new standard — a “strong basis in evidence” of the success of a disparate effect lawsuit is now required.Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, whose role is to interpret, not create law.
  
• The Court’s reasoning was based on a reading of the facts that was different from that of the trial court.  Several long and conflicting recitations of the facts caused the decision to reach ~90 pages.  In other words, the case was reviewed “de novo”. Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, who is required to give deference to the trial court’s findings of fact.
  
• The Court reached a 5-4 split decision along the supposed political lines: 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and Justice Kennedy in the middle. Attempting to label Sotomayor’s decision to uphold the district court’s decision as radical or racist is simply disingenuous.

(“DRM-free” has a mushy definition, but it basically refers to digital media files {e.g., mp3s} that don’t have copy-protection or purchase information indelibly encoded into them.  For example, anything that you record yourself, on your own computer, will be DRM-free.  In contrast, most songs purchased in the past from iTunes do have DRM, which ensure that only the purchaser can listen to them.)

But what I can’t figure out is, why do people want DRM-free so badly?

After all, in the case of iTunes’ DRM-encoded files, I find that as an owner, I have more than enough flexibility to excercise the rights that I’ve been licensed; such as viewing files on the various devices and computers I own, and making backups for myself.  Here then, are my best guesses why people want DRM-free:

1. So that they can enjoy their media on Linux.  This is why I’d like DRM-free files, but I can’t imagine this accounts for most others.
2. (In the case of iTunes) So that the media files can be viewed on media players besides iPods.  But this strikes me as unlikely as well; there are other sources of music besides iTunes.
3. (Abstracting #1 and #2 together) To decouple the media from the device required to view it.  That’s a great goal, but is this what’s behind the wave of desire for DRM-free content?
4. Something else that I’ve forgotten.  Whoops!  Waited too long to write this post.

So what is it?  Can somebody drop me a line and let me know why they prefer DRM-free media

The Robb Report, of course, is “The Global Luxury Source”.  They’re a reliable destination for Rolls-Royce reviews.  We can all probably agree that my blog and the Robb Report travel in different circles.

I’ve known about the magazine for years, most likely from seeing it in doctors’ waiting rooms.  And when choosing this name for my blog, one of my reasons was the humor arising from the contrast of the two Robb Reports, for those who are familiar with the senior mark holder.

But I wonder, (1) is what I’m doing ethical? And (2) am I infringing on Robb Report’s mark?

I’ll think about these more after this never-ending final exam period is over.

“I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign”

“You can be whoever you want to be,” says an inviting Phil Tuchman. “You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!”

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want — as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. “Your letters,” says Phil Tuchman, “will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we’ll place them in local newspapers.”

Phil bends over my computer screen and reads. This takes a while. I am expecting roars of laughter or to be kicked out. Then he says drily: “I like that. It appeals to the hearts of people. Can you write more letters?”

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/24/mccain_letters/index.html

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on these. . . . On what grounds could Obama not answer / refuse to answer? Why wouldn’t he answer just to shut this guy down? . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6_k3NtXZs This video has close to 2.5 million hits.

I did some “due diligence”, and am convinced that the video contains many untruths and arguments made in bad faith.  So many, that I didn’t have time to chase down each statement that sounded questionable.  I like to apply the science-investigation ethic  — “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.  The video fails this test. Here’s what I found:

(1) Intro screen by the film-maker: “I invented the Internet”
This is unfortunately a common falsehood.  Al Gore didn’t say this [4], and what he did say is correct.  I have personal knowledge here: I’ve been involved with the Internet as a user and software/network engineer since 1986; when it was still the “Arpanet”. I’m additionally confused as to why this is the title for this video. I don’t understand the connection to Obama; possibly this is simply a (presumed easy) swipe at another famous liberal politician. Indicates a lack of seriousness.

(2) Berg: “Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen”
Berg provides no support for this statement.  (In law school, we’d call that “conclusory”.) It begs the question, as it forms the basis for more statements.  I find this fairly shameless, and it appears to be disingenuous: Berg seems to want to come off as a concerned citizen. Instead, this is evidence that he is an ideologue — that he has an axe to grind.

(3) Berg: “FactCheck.org . . . supposedly checks out documents to make sure they’re correct.”
A slanted characterization of factcheck.org with no supporting details or evidence.  He then goes on immediately to another topic.  This is propaganda [5] intended to create doubt.  (And further, what does it mean, “to make sure they’re correct“?  He probably means “authentic“; this is typical of his imprecise language throughout.)

(4) Berg: “[in re Annenberg] There’s a little conflict of interest there, I believe.”
Same as previous.  This is tossed out, and then not followed up.  Is he claiming that Factcheck is wrong?  If so, where?  Did they fabricate?  If so, where?  He doesn’t say.  This is propaganda. [5]

(5) Berg: “John McCain . . . immediately released his birth certificate . . . he immediately released his medical records . . . . He said, ‘Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.’ and he did, right away.”
This seems to be false:  I could find no evidence of this.  What’s more, I found plenty of evidence to the contrary.  It seems to have taken 4 months for his certificate to become public, and it wasn’t through McCain’s organization:

Feb. 21, 2008: Earliest mention I could find of McCain’s citizenship question. [1]

May 2, 2008: Dept. of Homeland Security refuses to hand over copy of McCain’s birth certificate in response to a subpoena, claiming improper service. [2]

June 20, 2008: The Dallas News runs picture of birth certificate, courtesy of a source, “Don Lamb in Panama.” [3]

(6) Berg: “Obama . . . has refused to release any records . . .”
Untrue on its face.  The video itself talks about the records Obama has released.

[1] http://newsbusters.org/forums/latest-news/q-panamanian-born-john-mccain-natural-born-citizen-united-states-19392
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050103224_pf.html
[3] http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/06/mccains-citizen.html
[4] http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
[5] “Propaganda is a form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Here’s a story about a cafe owner going berserk over a customer ordering a “double espresso poured over ice.”  It turns out this is a way for people to save money / rip-off a cafe on the purchase of a latte.  For example, by ordering espresso+ice and then filling up with “free” milk at the condiment bar, one can save a buck or two on the cost of the drink.

I’m so clueless … err, I mean ethical … I had no idea.

There’s a whole slew of interesting ethical questions here.  But then I was shocked to realize that I might be one of them: I like a lot of milk/creamer in my coffee.  Up to and including making it a full-on cafe au lait.  I frequently pour out a half-inch or more of my coffee (even after I ask for “room”) to be able to put more milk in.

I had never thought twice about it.  But sometimes I’d wonder why they never really give me “room” when I ask for “room”!  Hmm.  Am I violating some kind of implicit contract between the establishment and myself? If so, then what should I be ordering?  “Cafe au lait” usually is not what I’m going for.  What’s half-way betwen that and black coffee?  Is a “latte” what I’m describing?

I’ve always intentionally avoided learning all of the froo-froo names of the various coffee drinks.  “A man’s drink has a name which is a list of its ingredients”, you know.  Maybe it’s time I start — for all I know, I’ve been drinking back-alley lattes for years.