This video takeapart of Hillary Clinton is pretty convincing to me. Lessig, who I admire and respect, hits it right on the head: everything that Clinton uses as a purported advantage over Obama is trumped by McCain: experience, "toughness," getting things done, etc.
Essentially, Clinton's strengths pale next to McCain, whereas Obama reframes the argument vs. McCain. Clinton has experience, McCain has more, Obama lacks experience but has vision. Clinton is tough, McCain is a former POW, Obama is about dialogue, not "toughness." In what Lessig refers to as "moral courage," it's easy to see McCain as stronger than Clinton, and I would argue that Obama can use this to his advantage, too. Although McCain has long espoused the "straight talk express," his 25 years in Congress leave a long track record for him to have some flip-flopping and unflattering votes exposed. It doesn't seem completely fair, but it's politics -- you live and die by your record. In this case, Obama's short record might be an advantage over someone like McCain who has flip-flopped on stuff like keeping vs. firing Rumsfeld, campaign finance reform vs. running a real campaign, etc.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Small Controversy: Mean Mom Sells Son's Car
A Des Moines woman, Jane Hambleton, has sold her 19-year-old son's car because she found a bottle of liquor in it. This story has gotten more airtime than I would've expected on local radio, as people call in to praise or, more commonly, excoriate the decision.
I don't know anything more about the story than what's in the link above and what little I've heard on the radio and from my wife, so I would need a few questions answered before I would definitively pass judgment, but at this point I'm in agreement with Ms. Hambleton. If I had bought a car for my child and put conditions on his/her use of it, I would sell it if s/he broke the conditions.
The questions I don't have answers for: who actually bought the car -- mom or kid? If it was mom, why are you buying a car for a 19-year-old? Was the liquor bottle/can open? Iowa has an open container law (p. 17) that makes it a crime to possess an open container of an alcoholic beverage in the passenger compartment of any car or truck.
I don't know anything more about the story than what's in the link above and what little I've heard on the radio and from my wife, so I would need a few questions answered before I would definitively pass judgment, but at this point I'm in agreement with Ms. Hambleton. If I had bought a car for my child and put conditions on his/her use of it, I would sell it if s/he broke the conditions.
The questions I don't have answers for: who actually bought the car -- mom or kid? If it was mom, why are you buying a car for a 19-year-old? Was the liquor bottle/can open? Iowa has an open container law (p. 17) that makes it a crime to possess an open container of an alcoholic beverage in the passenger compartment of any car or truck.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
No Impact Man
This NYC resident is trying to make his life have zero environmental impact to the planet (i.e., every negative impact is offset by an "equal" positive impact), while trying to remain married to his "Prada-wearing, Four Seasons-loving wife" and responsibly raise their young daughter. Plus, it's a book. And a movie.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Two Starkly Opposite Customer Service Experiences in the Same Day
Yesterday, January 3, 2008, was remarkable in our household for having two distinct experiences with customer service relating to electronic devices in our home. One was very good; the other, inexcusable. Both came down to the same principles: do what you promise to do and treat people right. In one case, I didn’t know I had a problem, but the company informed me, and did what they said they would do to make it right. In the second case, I knew I had a problem and the companies involved did not do what they said they would do to make it right.
Experience 1: Medical Device Replacement
In mid-December, 2007 I received a letter from the maker of my continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, ResMed, that the device was being recalled due to the potential for failure of the power supply connection. I called the telephone number in their letter to schedule a replacement, and was told I would receive a call in four to six weeks to schedule a replacement. Just three weeks later, I received a call to schedule the replacement, and I arranged to meet the service person at my house during my lunch hour yesterday to swap out the device.
I drove up to my house at the appointed time, and the service person drove up right behind me. We walked into my house together, he explained the process for aligning the settings on my replacement CPAP with those on my old unit, he asked me if I had any questions, and then he left. The whole process took twenty minutes, and I was back in my office in a timely fashion to take care of, among other things, Experience 2.
Experience 2: Repair of Satellite Television Equipment
On December 24, 2007, our satellite television service abruptly stopped. I called my service provider, DirecTV, to arrange to have a technician come out and repair it. At that time, I was told that the soonest anyone could come out was January 3, 2008. Resigned to living without any television through Christmas and New Year’s, I scheduled for the appointment window offered, 8:00am to Noon on January 3. I was surprised that we would be charged for the repair service, as we do not own the equipment; DirecTV owns it. We lease the equipment, and it was irritating to me that we would be charged to repair equipment that we do not own and did not damage. The problem was not caused by any action we took or did not take.
After stopping at home over lunch to meet a different service person (see Experience 1 above), I was surprised to learn that the DirecTV service person had not come to our house during the scheduled time. On my way back to my office, I called DirecTV, and was told that I should contact their contract service provider, Premier Communications. I called Premier, who called the assigned service person, who advised that he was running late on a job and would be at our house at 1:30pm. My wife (a stay-at-home mom) called at 1:30 to say that there was no sign of anyone to fix our service. Another round of calls to both DirecTV and Premier elicited the information that the service person was still working on another job and would be at our house at 2:45pm.
I’m sure you can guess what happened at 2:45pm. Yes, no service person from DirecTV/Premier. A third round of calls moved the estimated time of arrival to between 6:00pm and 7:00pm. At 6:45pm, with no sign of anyone coming and (of course) no call to let us know if anyone would show up, I called DirecTV and Premier yet again. This time I received a promise that the service person would be at our home in an hour (around 7:45pm). Another wait, no calls, no service person, and after another round of calls at 7:45pm, I was advised that although my wife had stayed home all day waiting for the repair person and I had stayed home all evening while my wife went out with our 8-year-old daughter, we would apparently not be getting our television service fixed until January 9.
At 8:50pm, just as I was putting our 4-year-old daughter to bed, the service person finally actually showed up. He complained that he spent five hours on the phone during the day answering questions about where he was (apparently he missed three other appointments as well), but he actually did fix the problem (apparently our switch had malfunctioned due to a power surge, and required resetting) within about half an hour and by 9:30pm our service was restored.
As you can imagine, Experience 2 was a disaster for a lot of reasons. First, DirecTV made us repeated promises, which they broke. My wife calls those “lies.” Second, throughout the process of missing repeated appointment times, we never received even one telephone call from either DirecTV or Premier. No communication explaining that they would be late, no notification of any kind. It was entirely up to us to figure out what was going on. Third, neither Premier nor DirecTV gave us any kind of reason as to why they made commitments they couldn’t keep, nor why they never contacted us to tell us they wouldn’t be able to keep their commitments. The one thing DirecTV did for us was provide us with a $100 service credit, because apparently they have an on-time service guarantee and obviously they were not compliant with that guarantee in our case.
Ultimately, I am quite surprised by my feelings about these 2 experiences. In both cases, in the end I got what I wanted: correctly functioning electronic equipment. However, in Experience 1, I am pleased with the service I got and would recommend the companies involved to anyone I know. In Experience 2, my satellite television service was repaired, and I received a $100 service credit, and yet I would emphatically NOT recommend the services of either DirecTV or Premier Communications to anyone. I think it comes down to a few simple principles: (1) If you make promises, keep them. (2) If you can’t keep your promises, proactively communicate that information and have clear reasons why you cannot keep your promises and a plan for what you will do to make up for it. (3) Paying someone for their trouble helps, but doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
It’s just that simple.
Experience 1: Medical Device Replacement
In mid-December, 2007 I received a letter from the maker of my continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, ResMed, that the device was being recalled due to the potential for failure of the power supply connection. I called the telephone number in their letter to schedule a replacement, and was told I would receive a call in four to six weeks to schedule a replacement. Just three weeks later, I received a call to schedule the replacement, and I arranged to meet the service person at my house during my lunch hour yesterday to swap out the device.
I drove up to my house at the appointed time, and the service person drove up right behind me. We walked into my house together, he explained the process for aligning the settings on my replacement CPAP with those on my old unit, he asked me if I had any questions, and then he left. The whole process took twenty minutes, and I was back in my office in a timely fashion to take care of, among other things, Experience 2.
Experience 2: Repair of Satellite Television Equipment
On December 24, 2007, our satellite television service abruptly stopped. I called my service provider, DirecTV, to arrange to have a technician come out and repair it. At that time, I was told that the soonest anyone could come out was January 3, 2008. Resigned to living without any television through Christmas and New Year’s, I scheduled for the appointment window offered, 8:00am to Noon on January 3. I was surprised that we would be charged for the repair service, as we do not own the equipment; DirecTV owns it. We lease the equipment, and it was irritating to me that we would be charged to repair equipment that we do not own and did not damage. The problem was not caused by any action we took or did not take.
After stopping at home over lunch to meet a different service person (see Experience 1 above), I was surprised to learn that the DirecTV service person had not come to our house during the scheduled time. On my way back to my office, I called DirecTV, and was told that I should contact their contract service provider, Premier Communications. I called Premier, who called the assigned service person, who advised that he was running late on a job and would be at our house at 1:30pm. My wife (a stay-at-home mom) called at 1:30 to say that there was no sign of anyone to fix our service. Another round of calls to both DirecTV and Premier elicited the information that the service person was still working on another job and would be at our house at 2:45pm.
I’m sure you can guess what happened at 2:45pm. Yes, no service person from DirecTV/Premier. A third round of calls moved the estimated time of arrival to between 6:00pm and 7:00pm. At 6:45pm, with no sign of anyone coming and (of course) no call to let us know if anyone would show up, I called DirecTV and Premier yet again. This time I received a promise that the service person would be at our home in an hour (around 7:45pm). Another wait, no calls, no service person, and after another round of calls at 7:45pm, I was advised that although my wife had stayed home all day waiting for the repair person and I had stayed home all evening while my wife went out with our 8-year-old daughter, we would apparently not be getting our television service fixed until January 9.
At 8:50pm, just as I was putting our 4-year-old daughter to bed, the service person finally actually showed up. He complained that he spent five hours on the phone during the day answering questions about where he was (apparently he missed three other appointments as well), but he actually did fix the problem (apparently our switch had malfunctioned due to a power surge, and required resetting) within about half an hour and by 9:30pm our service was restored.
As you can imagine, Experience 2 was a disaster for a lot of reasons. First, DirecTV made us repeated promises, which they broke. My wife calls those “lies.” Second, throughout the process of missing repeated appointment times, we never received even one telephone call from either DirecTV or Premier. No communication explaining that they would be late, no notification of any kind. It was entirely up to us to figure out what was going on. Third, neither Premier nor DirecTV gave us any kind of reason as to why they made commitments they couldn’t keep, nor why they never contacted us to tell us they wouldn’t be able to keep their commitments. The one thing DirecTV did for us was provide us with a $100 service credit, because apparently they have an on-time service guarantee and obviously they were not compliant with that guarantee in our case.
Ultimately, I am quite surprised by my feelings about these 2 experiences. In both cases, in the end I got what I wanted: correctly functioning electronic equipment. However, in Experience 1, I am pleased with the service I got and would recommend the companies involved to anyone I know. In Experience 2, my satellite television service was repaired, and I received a $100 service credit, and yet I would emphatically NOT recommend the services of either DirecTV or Premier Communications to anyone. I think it comes down to a few simple principles: (1) If you make promises, keep them. (2) If you can’t keep your promises, proactively communicate that information and have clear reasons why you cannot keep your promises and a plan for what you will do to make up for it. (3) Paying someone for their trouble helps, but doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
It’s just that simple.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Another Reason Why I Am Overweight
Tara Parker-Pope, the NYTimes health columnist, writes up a study by University of Washington researchers (from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, subscription required) on the relative cost per calorie (kcal) of 370 grocery items in the Seattle area. Not surprisingly, high-energy density foods (i.e., junk food) cost, on average, $1.76 per thousand calories, vs. $18.16 per thousand calories of low-energy density foods (e.g., fruits and vegetables). I'm not sure what adding the organic surcharge would bring the number to, but it explains why our family's food costs have risen so much in the past couple of years (as we try to consume more healthy foods and less junk food).
One issue that should be considered is that throwing out numbers based on cost per thousand calories doesn't reflect the way Americans actually eat. Few Americans (save those on Weight Watchers-type regimes) base their food intake on strict daily calorie amounts. I would like to say I eat 2,000 calories per day, but like most people, my daily calorie intake is variable (and, sadly, somewhat higher than 2,000 calories per day over the winter holidays). Parker-Pope , quoting Adam Drenowski (one of the study's authors) does make note of the fact that because high-energy density foods are so cheap, it may be one cause of the odd fact that the lowest-income segments of the American population have the highest rates of obesity.
One facet Parker-Pope does not explore (and I assume the authors do not, as well, though because the study is behind a paywall, I don't know) is the reason for the much higher cost of high-energy density foods. One reason for the price discrepancy, as I'm sure Michael Pollan would quickly point out, is that farm subsidies overwhelmingly go to foodstuffs that are included in junk food, but not in low-energy density foods. So we have tons of subsidies for corn to make high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, but not much for strawberries and tomatoes, and even tariffs to keep the prices of some items like bananas higher than they otherwise would be. Essentially, we reward food producers for making high-energy density precursors, which ultimately drive our health-care costs sky-high. Conversely, the foods we could produce that would potentially drive down health-care costs, we provide no reward for producing.
How did we get here?
One issue that should be considered is that throwing out numbers based on cost per thousand calories doesn't reflect the way Americans actually eat. Few Americans (save those on Weight Watchers-type regimes) base their food intake on strict daily calorie amounts. I would like to say I eat 2,000 calories per day, but like most people, my daily calorie intake is variable (and, sadly, somewhat higher than 2,000 calories per day over the winter holidays). Parker-Pope , quoting Adam Drenowski (one of the study's authors) does make note of the fact that because high-energy density foods are so cheap, it may be one cause of the odd fact that the lowest-income segments of the American population have the highest rates of obesity.
One facet Parker-Pope does not explore (and I assume the authors do not, as well, though because the study is behind a paywall, I don't know) is the reason for the much higher cost of high-energy density foods. One reason for the price discrepancy, as I'm sure Michael Pollan would quickly point out, is that farm subsidies overwhelmingly go to foodstuffs that are included in junk food, but not in low-energy density foods. So we have tons of subsidies for corn to make high-fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, but not much for strawberries and tomatoes, and even tariffs to keep the prices of some items like bananas higher than they otherwise would be. Essentially, we reward food producers for making high-energy density precursors, which ultimately drive our health-care costs sky-high. Conversely, the foods we could produce that would potentially drive down health-care costs, we provide no reward for producing.
How did we get here?
What You Know, What You Don't Know, Then Your Opinion
“ ‘Look, I have got a rule,’ ” he said General Powell told him. “ ‘As an intelligence officer, your responsibility is to tell me what you know. Tell me what you don’t know. Then you’re allowed to tell me what you think. But you always keep those three separated.’ ”-Mike McConnell, US Director of National Intelligence,
on Colin Powell’s rule for relaying intelligence information
(Source: Jason Kottke)
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