Good Day for a Funeral

The news was pretty much all in before I got to sleep last night. The only good news was that Tim Pawlenty retained the Governors seat in MN. It may mean that those of us that work for a living can keep a tiny percentage of our paychecks.

I really did go to a funeral today, an uncle that lived a mile up the road from me in my youth. Eighty eight years old and went pretty fast when he went, lived in his home with his wife right up to the last few weeks. The end doesn't get all that much better, lots of family and freinds at a church where he faithfully attendeded. A good life, a fairly quick end, and hope for a better life in heaven. There are worse things than the right kind of a funeral.

Was the Republican loss "the right kind of a funeral". Sorry to say, I really don't see how a thinking person would draw that conclusion, but from the MSM and lefty reactions, it is clear that many mostly feeling people "feel different". The Democrats and MSM didn't run on anything but anger and wishful thinking, so the election didn't really decide anything other than "going 100% negative with no agenda can work".

The Democrats are basically the party of human nature, which is often the same as the party of doing what feels good, or wishful thinking. For a century, they were the party of slavery until Lincoln and the Republicans ended the scourge, but at the very high price of 600K lives. The Democrats sought new lower ground and became the party of Jim Crow for the next 100 years.

They followed that act with some overlap as the party of surrender to communism. Counting the USSR, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, communism took something in the 50-100million lives at least. Could it have been stopped earlier? It is always hard to tell, but Reagan and the Republicans got it done yet again. Now we face global Islamic terrorism, and the Democrats have found their calling as the party of surrender to a new menace. Yesterday the odds of victory without the loss of millions of lives went down severely. Surgery for cancer is costly even early, it is usually far more expensive or terminal when we wait and "hope for the best".

Something like 80% of Americans were in favor of the war in Iraq when we went in. Osama and company felt that we were weak in Vietnam, Lebannon, and Somalia, and that we would be weak in Iraq. Some of us thought that we would be different after 9-11. More like the WWII generation. Yesterday we proved that Osama is right, we are going to cut and run, and we will pay the price now, the question is just how high it will be.

Some will say "we were lied to". That kind of thinking is beyond wishful and falls to the most human of natures that says "I won't accept responsibility for my own thoughts, decisions, and actions since it makes me feel better to blame someone else". The idea that Bush KNEW that we wouldn't be able to find WMD is simply beyond the pale. Every piece of evidence and rational conjecture that we have says that he acted on the best information he had, as did the CIA, the congress, and indeed the 80% of Americans that felt that we simply couldn't take the risk. The odds that any of our houses will be destroyed by fire are exceedingly low, yet we almost all carry fire insurance. The odds that Saddam harbored WMD were exceedingly high, and seeing him use them or allow others to use them was very beleiveable. WMD wasn't found in the quantity that we expected. Saying that we are CERTAIN that meant he didn't have WMD is like saying that it is certain that there are no fatal car crashes since we have never witnessed one. However, even if he didn't, the VAST majority of Americans, and virtually ALL of our leadership agreed that it was a risk that we could not accept. It is an abdication of responsibility now to suggest that we are not willing to pay the price for carrying through on what in a democracy is a shared responsibility, yet that is what has happened.

Being a Republican means that one is forced to look at reality, but also that we believe in higher good than human nature and therefore hope. It is human to fall short, and Republicans are just has human as anyone, we just try not to worship at the alter of man and praise vice as virtue. Americans voted on emotion. That is very understandable, but also often very expensive. Let us pray to God that undeserved mercy may be ours and the cost in lives is held lower than would be expected by a hand greater than our own.

Election Night

My wife and I are over at the home of a young couple babysitting for their 1 year old boy while they are out on a long awaitned birthday date. Usually I would be glued to the tube and likely will be later, but since this couple isn't a believer in TV, I'm restricted to "only te net", and it is a lot easier to only check a bit less frequently there.

One of the observations of this year is that the MSM seems very happy with "all negative" as long as it is a Democrat strategy. What was the message for the the Democrats this year? At the most innocuous that can be presented, it was "change", but we all know it wasn't really that. "Bush is bad, evil, incompetent, doesn't listen, lies ... etc". "The Republican Congress is corrupt, out of touch, Bush lapdogs, special interest lapdogs, etc".

What positive things did Democrats suggest? None. Then there is the "suppress the vote" move. There is no doubt that Democrats and the MSM had the Foley scandal in their back pocket for a long time, and brought it out when they did simply to suppress the Christian Conservative vote. It is an old trick, they did it in 2000 with the Bush DWI. They even "double dipped" with the Haggard gay sex scandal for good measure under the "nobody has any morals" kind of heading.

At least at this point, the exit polls are showing "corruption" as the top issue. Gee, I wonder if the roles were reversed and Republicans had managed to tag Democrats with that issue, would it be seen as valid by the MSM? Anyone remember how bogus "values" was seen as 2 short years ago?

If this election continues to go like it looks now, at least we will know that 100% negative with a focus on suppression of the base of the other side can work. I'm sure that the MSM will complain bitterly if Republicans ever do anything similar. Think of how much different this is than the "Contract With America". Of course the MSM didn't like that one either, even though it was a very specific agenda. I guess the bottom line is just that the MSM is never going to like Republicans, so one should stop expecting them to somehow give some consideration to being even handed.

What A Democrat Hopes For

The following is from What Will It Take to End the War and it does a pretty good job of hitting the key point of the left that the Democrats have become.

If the Democrats take power with the elections tomorrow, congressional hearings will have a lot of such questions to consider. But what about the moral question? For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?

As always, the answer is defeat for America and defeat for all that would stand up for any form of values in which individuals have responsibility. A favorite phrase that they love to use is "Truth to Power", easily translated into the perpetual anthem of anarchy, "death to authority".

In my youth, the hopeful power to destroy the evil of the overly powerful American capitalist system object of hatred for the left was the Marxist religion of the gulags in the USSR, the "Great Leap Forward" of mass death in China, and the killing fields of Pol Pot. All could "somehow" be blamed on America in the special view of the left. In 1968, they took control of the Democrat party, and now they believe they sit ready to control one of the branches of power yet again.

State controlled mass murderers seemed odd allies in the 60's and 70's, but they were positively benign compared to Muslim Jihadists, Kim Jong-Il, and nuke toting Mullahs in Iran we face today. At least the soulless communist killers mostly had addresses. The addition of global terror forces without addresses that can act in concert with the remaining evil axist powers that do makes the new world much more dangerous.

Well, if the polls are right, at least the victorious Democrats and MSM will have struck a blow in making sure that "hubristic American power" is reduced over the next couple years, with a vacum to be filled by Kim, Iran, and Al Quaeda. I'm sure we can trust those folks to be be rational, reserved and benevolent with their increased freedom of action. Let us all cheer for the defeat of America, the goal of every (oxynoron break) "honest lefty".

Political Football

Don't expect to see the phote above in the MSM very much. They tried to avoid the Kerry gaffe as much as they could, but it still broke out on them, somewhat again because their hand was forced by the bloggers and more conservative media.

My first reaction was that this is a great example of what kind of a guy Kerry really is. I strongly suspect that he just misspoke, but his arrogance and nastiness came through instantly. Call Rush Limbaugh fat, call Bush stupid, and call Tony Snow an empty suit. Gee, if being in Iraq is stupid, then why did Kerry vote for it? Well before he voted for funding the war he had voted for before he voted against funding the same war. One thing that Kerry is very sure of, he is a super smart guy.

My second thought is that while politics has aspects of a game, it would be great if there was some thought of trying to be even handed in the MSM. It is certainly fine when the "other side", Democrat or Republican jump on somebody that screws up, but one would hope that the MSM might be something of a "voice of reason".

Remember Trent Lott? He made a comment at at B-day party for Strom Thurmond about how things might have been better had Strom been elected as a "Dixiecrat" way back in 1948. What did he mean by that? Well, basically nothing but idle comments at an old mans birthday party. The Democrats (fine with me) and the PRESS, piled on completely. Lott was labled a "racist", aplologized immediately, frequently, and abjectly, but to no avail, and he lost is position as majority leader.

What do we see with Kerry? The press running to his defense, making it seem that the REPUBLICANS are somehow "evil" for "taking advantage", and agreeing with him that somehow it is "improper" for Republicans to take his comment for what he said. What he MEANT to, was of course for a sitting US Senator to call the current US President STUPID in wartime for sending US troops into a situation that the same US Senator voted in favor of. Now THAT is pretty much definition of "intelligent" ... but one which the MSM has no problem with.

If there WERE an unbiased press, one might expect that in BOTH of these cases the parties that looked the worst would be the parties that went after the politician that made a gaff and then promptly and honestly apologized. Kerry would have a bit of a problem with that "prompt and honest", but if he hadn't spent so much history living with the lapdog MSM and thinking that having a "D" next to your name means never having to say you are sorry, may have learned the lesson that when you screw up, you need to apologize.

Will the advent of the press having more than one side with blogs, radio, and Fox eventually drive us to sanity? Maybe, but I suspect that the MSM will continue to tack very hard to the left for a long time to come before a truely moderate middle rises up and provides a voice of reason without the need to look at both sides of the market of ideas to get to the point of reason.

Really Gay

A nice liberal columnist as finally defined what it means to be "really gay". Apparently it involves sending lurid IM messages to underage boys. Not ALL that surprising, since as was pointed out, for at least gay Democrat members of the House of Representatives it also involved having sex with underage boys AND keeping your job for over twenty years.

Leonard Pitts lays it all out for us here. You see Republicans and the "religious right" hate gays because they don't want gay marriage. I guess that is sort of like hating business if you want higher taxes, or hating security for Americans if you want lower military spending. We all know that Democrats and the MSM are totally on board with those ideas, so their views on thinking of gays and gay marriage are totally warranted.

He also points out that Republicans only like blacks that "don't remind anyone they are black". I guess that is sort of like Abdul Jabbar failing to remind people he is tall when he walks into a room. Tallness and being black aren't something apparent, they are much deeper issues. I can only assume that he means that Republicans only like blacks that don't "act black". If pedophilia is part of being gay, I'm wondering what he would require to be certifiably black? Drug use? A criminal record? The mind wanders, but for some reason black people like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powel just don't meet his definition. It must fail to include intelligence, dedication, character and career success. Pity, those are the kinds of attributes that evil Republicans find to be completely applicable to both gays and blacks.

Foregone Conclusion

In listening to MPR and looking at CNN on the Web, the message is out that "the only way the Republicans can keep control of the House or Senate is if the election is fixed". MPR is positively gleeful that from their polling, virtually every Republican out there including Pawlenty and our local Congressman are going to lose. They can already feel the anticipatory joy of beginning Bush impeachment proceedings.

They may certainly be right, they have used thousands of hours of airtime presenting that the economy is supposed to be bad in the face of record growth GDP, jobs and new market highs. They have presented Iraq as "another Vietnam", even though the casualty figures are an order of magnitude different, and the similarities in most every other way than the media seeing it as "hopeless" are completely DISsimilar. Any sort of Republican ethics issue has been presented as "an example of the corruption of the party", where many similar and worse Democrat issues ($90K of cash in a freezer, Harry Reid with land deals and using campaign funds for "the help") have been barely touched on. The media has fully done their job to fix this election, any allusions of being "even handed" have been fully left behind. It may well be enough.

The following gives another view. It has already been used on the left as "proof that Rove must have a deal with Dibold". I can't help but wonder if some of the certainty hasn't gone too far, and they may be keeping their own base at home because "this election is won for the Democrats". We shall see, even if they win the people that usually end up taking the biggest loss from their policies are the very people that they claim to be helping.

Rove Sees Victory

Karl Rove had lunch with the editors and reporters of the Washington Times yesterday. He apparently exuded confidence:

White House political strategist Karl Rove yesterday confidently predicted that the Republican Party would hold the House and the Senate in next month's elections, dismissing fallout from the sex scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley.

"I'm confident we're going to keep the Senate; I'm confident we're going to keep the House."

Rove said it s "almost impossible" for Democrats to take the Senate; he cited Jim Talent's race in Missouri as one that is moving in the right direction.

Rove's optimism stems in part from the Democrats' dismal record on national security:

"I think they have given us here, especially in the last couple of weeks, a potent set of votes to talk about. You had 90 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-surveillance program, nearly three-quarters of Senate Democrats and 80 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-interrogation act. Something is fundamentally flawed."

Rove also sees Republicans having the financial resources they need for the last three weeks of the campaign; he was confident enough to laugh at some mainstream media reports that exaggerate the Dems' chances:

In the hourlong interview, Mr. Rove was upbeat, telling stories from the campaign trail and joking about skewed political coverage that disproportionately shows Democrats poised to take control of Congress.

Mr. Rove said Republican candidates still hold a huge cash edge over Democrats, which will give them clout in the final three weeks of the campaign.

"This morning, I loved it: The [Associated Press] ran a story saying these Democrat congressional candidates outraised their Republican incumbents in the third quarter. Well, what they didn't say was that part of the reason that they did is that we raised the money earlier so that we'd be able to deploy it," he said.

Rove points out that for most of the undecided voters who will determine the outcome of the election, the campaign has only been going on for around two weeks. He notes that over the next 21 days, Republicans will spend $100 million in targeted House and Senate races.

Rove could be wrong, of course. But I think it is noteworthy that he is not laying the groundwork to deflect blame for defeat by, for example, moaning about the unforeseen consequences of the Foley instant message flap. Instead, he is once again staking his reputation on victory. I find that comforting.

A Pirate Looks at 50

While as I commented, Jimmy Buffett isn't very consistent, but I did enjoy the book. It is great that a guy that writes and sings songs, performs, and writes books can create a life as cool as his. Is he really happy? Well it sounds like after a lot of drugs and analysis, and finding a way to finally get along with his second wife, he just may be, at least at a superficial level.

He certainly comes in pretty well on the "he who dies with the most toys wins" scale. Having both a Cessna Citation and a Grumman Albatross is pretty big in the toy department, but it sounds like there are other planes in his private airforce as well. On top of that, houses in Key West, Long Island, Aspen, and it sounds like a Caribbean Island for two. Lack of money and things are not on his list of problems.

It seems that he has discovered a couple of hobbies that he cares about deeply: flying and fishing. He has the resources to be able to pursue those way farther than most people, but he is interested in personally doing well at both of them, and uses the money to help that with guides, co-pilots, training, equipment, etc, but he does get fulfillment out of the accomplishments. He enjoys music, performing, and in many cases the interactions with his fans.

Sort of like the song "Wasting Away in Margaritaville", he pretty much sells escape. The whole Caribbean, Gone Fishing, gone flying, on vacation mentality. He must be a good deal more of a businessman than he lets on, but that is probably part of the deal. To some degree, he IS the product. He is the poster child for the "Jimmy Buffett lifestyle".

The book is well written and fun. While it seems unlikely that the planet could support very many folks living his lifestyle, it is pretty amazing that there is one ... and he doesn't even feel rich!

Top Secret Leak

The following from Michael Barone

The Labor Department Friday announced that the number of jobs increased between April 2005 and March 2006 not by 5.8 million but by 6.6 million. As an editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes, "That's a lot more than a rounding error, more than the entire number of workers in the state of New Hampshire. What's going on here?" The most plausible explanation, advanced by the Journal and by the Hudson Institute's Diana Furchgott-Roth in the New York Sun, is that lots more jobs are being created by small businesses and individuals going into business for themselves than government statisticians can keep track of. Newspaper reports on the number of jobs usually focus on the Labor Department's business establishment survey. But over the past few years, the Labor Department's household survey has consistently shown more job growth than the business establishment survey. The likely explanation: The business establishment survey misses jobs created by new businesses. Our government statistical agencies do an excellent job. But statistics designed to measure the economy of yesterday have a hard time reflecting the economy of tomorrow.

The federal budget deficit has been cut in half in three years, three years faster than George W. Bush called for. Why? Tax receipts were up 5.5 percent in FY 2004, 14.5 percent in FY 2005, and 11.7 percent in FY 2006. That's up 34.9 percent in three years. And that's after the 2003 tax cuts. When you cut taxes, you get more economic activity, and when you get more economic activity, the government with a tax system that is still decidedly progressive gets more revenue.

The bottom line: The private-sector economy is much more robust and creative than mainstream media would have you believe.

Wow, good economic news, now THERE is something that the MSM is REALLY able to keep totally secret. The more I let The Long Tail sink in, the more I realize that we are seeing yet another fundamental economic / business / technical change in my lifetime. From a 10K view:

WWII to Mid to late 60's - The post war boom. If you could manufacture with reasonable capability you could make money. The era of the big mass market, the big corporation, and big labor.

The sick '70s - Nothing kills like success. Japan began to undercut us, fuel prices went up, government regulation and taxes had the golden goose of economic growth on the mat. The unions priced and powered themselves out of relevance. It looked like curtains for the US, and Carter told us the best days were behind us.

The go-go 80's and 90's - Reagan cut the regulations and taxes and freed the engine of US business and the US economy sprinted by Japan and Europe with ease. It was a new economy though. Competitive, non-union, low cost, high stock return, and high innovation. "Just showing up" no longer cut it.

The new millennium bubble and beyond - The "new new economy". Efficiency, connectivity, organic growth, the long tail, usage improving the product and the age of very tight TECHNOLOGICAL customer relationships.

There is a great article on this at O'Reilly Web 2.0. The combination of political bias and attachment to the old world of the late 60's means that much of what counts as "intelligentsia" in the MSM and government is now a few generations behind current.

Turning 50

A week ago today I turned 50. It has been a very busy time at work, but I've also done a bit of celebration with family and friends, including my oldest son coming home from college for the weekend to help wish me a happy birthday. Our house is also completely torn up since we are remodeling the family room in the basement, moving my younger son downstairs to a larger bedroom, and re-doing my beloved office with Techline desk, cabinets, and a bunch of really nice bookcase cabinets. A major change that I'm really looking forward to now, but not to be completed until mid-November. I suppose I can be a bit patient at 50.

Some thoughts on turning 50 seem to be in order. The biggest thought is how important it is to maintain an attitude of thankfulness vs one of anger / outrage / sadness / etc for the blessing of living to 50 in generally good health, great wife, great kids, SUPER cats (they demand top billing), great friends, a job that is way better than many, excellent church home, neighborhood ... and literally on and on. The list of things to be thankful for is literally endless, but thankfulness is not a natural human state.

Case in point, my eldest son got me the book "A Pirate Looks at 50" by Jimmy Buffett. It is a fun book, I'm enjoying reading it, and I'm glad that the writer of "Wasting Away in Margaritaville" is a multi-millionaire with a Grumman Albatross seaplane and a Cessna Citation jet, apparently among other planes, along with houses in Aspen, Key West, Long Island and a couple other spots. It sounds like an absolutely amazing life, but I'm struck by a couple of things. First of all, he is obviously liberal, and I suspect that hardly a single liberal out there thinks that Jimmy ought to change his lifestyle. Certainly not Jimmy.

There is a point in the book where he talks about talking to his wife and daughters up in their Citation while he is flying his Albatross below at 150 MPH. Right about that time he breaks into talking about how good he feels about the work he does to protect the environment and how important the environment is. Here is he is with two monster planes sucking as much as fuel as a small town of SUVs would in a year, and it bothers him not at all to point out the poor job the US does on the environment. A few pages later, while talking about checking into the same compound in Costa Rica that Bush I used when he stays there, he comments on how "Americans need to be more humble". I can tell from the writing he sees no irony in this at all, because he "feels good about it in his heart".

Again, it is fine with me that he does all that he does. That is his business. It is also funny to read that he DOESN'T consider himself rich, because he feels he can't afford a Gulfstream IV jet. He has to get by with a Citation. It shows that it truly is all very relative when it comes to money. He has a descent amount of "righteous indignation" about US foreign, environmental, and economic policy (among other things I'm sure). He just has that while celebrating his 50th B-day while flying around Central and South America with two large planes and an entourage of friends and servants. It is indeed a wonder to live in a free country.

Personally, I feel very lucky to have achieved the much more modest level of wealth that I've been blessed with, even though if falls WELL short of the point where either a Albatross or Citation are in my future. I suspect that it may be that money earned by having a hit song gives less of an insight into the "cost of making money" than a 28 year career at a major corporation. He seems to love entertaining, and when you are good at entertaining, you are very highly paid.

Even better, society seems to feel that entertainers are "worth it". Somehow a guy writing a song about drinking too much and ending up with millions is way more acceptable than somebody working their way up some corporate ladder for a lifetime and getting a similar amount of money for taking a CEO job where they are responsible for 100s of K of employees, 10s of billions of dollars of revenue and billions of dollars of profit, and likely 10s or 100s of billions of dollars of market capitalization. It is "unfair" that a guy can make the big bucks for that kind of job, but a good drinking song for the same kind of cabbage goes down a lot easier. That is just the kind of world many folks live in, consistency is truly not an issue.

Given the track that I chose, the "cost of making money" has been plenty, and I have zero desire or envy for the CEO that makes the millions. If I could write a book that made me some millions in the cosmic dollar lottery, that would be great, since I suspect that I'd enjoy writing the book. It isn't that I don't enjoy many aspects of my corporate job, I've just realized over a long career that they tend to not pay you the most for the parts of the job that are the most fun. Programming is so much fun that a lot of folks do it for free in Open Source Software today. Even if they don't, it is now being done in India, China, and beyond. Allocating dollars to tasks, tracking tasks, fighting about what business trade-offs to do make and asking people to do work and bothering them when they are late, off course, or it is just hard to understand what they are doing ... those things tend to be less fun, but often better paid.

As I write on, I realize there is a bit of wistful jealousy in my soul. It would certainly be "nice" to be extremely highly paid for exactly what one wanted to do. There is a core difference there between the conservative and the liberal soul. Yes, it would be nice. It would be nice to be able to eat like a pig, not exercise, and be in great shape. Some folks have the genetics to come a lot closer to that than I do, I guess that is "unfair". The liberal looks at such "unfairness" where they can and tries to figure out how to "fix it" ... or really, how to get someone else like the government to fix it. Conservatives have all the same emotions I think, but at some point we pulled up our socks and said that even falling well short of "nirvana" on our own was way better than a life of bitching and ingratitude.

It is always very human to bitch, and from the vantage point of 50, I can guess that age will always throw some curves that will make it even easier. I'll do my best to remain thankful.

Whose Ox?

The old saw about "whose ox is being gored" is certainly operative with the treatment of the Foley story. Anybody remember Gary Studds? No? Odd isn't it?


This is only Wikipedia, but anyone with a bent that isn't 100% MSM sheep can find a lot more.

Gerry Eastman Studds (born May 12, 1937) is a retired American politician, born in Mineola, New York. He served as a Democratic Congressman for Massachusetts from 1973 until 1997. He was the first openly homosexual member of the US Congress and, more generally, the first openly gay national politician in the US. In 1983, he admitted to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male page in 1973 and was censured by the House of Representatives.

NOTE, he had SEX with an under age page in '73, and he STAYED as a DEMOCRAT in congress until '97. Slightly mild difference in treatment there isn't there? There wasn't any talk radio, Fox News, or Internet then. The MSM was pretty busy getting rid of Nixon, so what is a little gay sex with an intern as long as the Congressman has a D next to his name? So like "where was their leadership"?

It looks pretty likely that this particular incident is an "October Surprise" to keep the Republican base at home and let the Democrats take over congress. My bottom line though is that if we lose because we have different principals that Democrats, then great. If Politics is just "win at any cost", then it truly isn't worth paying attention to. Bill Clinton perjured himself before a grand jury. Impeaching him cost the Republicans votes. The right thing is worth doing even when it costs something, and really ESPECIALLY when it costs something. Those are Christian, Conservative and RIGHT principals. They are not to be found on the left, in the modern Democrat party, or in the MSM.

Some combination of the MSM or the Democrats got a hold of a good nasty card and they played at exactly the right time. Most likely it isn't recoverable. If Hastert knew there was a problem and he did nothing, then he ought to go down too. To do anything less would be to behave like the Democrats and the MSM, and then not only politics but life becomes meaningless.

The Long Tail

Completed the subject book by Chris Anderson on my recent fishing trip. The graphic shows the statistical "long tail" from which the book gets it's title. The old 80/20 rule and a number of other statistical models net a graph where a large number of products, people, profits, or something else are crowded in the head of the graph and then a "long tail" of diminishing numbers heads off to "infinity" on the right of the graph. However, if one can negotiate it, there can be similar, or even more demand in the long tail than in the traditional "hits". The future according to this book is "selling less (units) of more things".

Anderson argues that the long tail in markets is an aberration of the last hundred years of technology. The rise of national newsprint, movies, radio and TV all led to "scarcity marketing". The number of hours, stations, and pages of mass market advertising capability was "scarce" (at least limited), and so was the carrying capacity of even the biggest stores. We became a "hit driven culture", where we all wanted to watch the same shows, see the same movies and follow the same suburban "ideal lifestyle". Everything became about "star power" in people, products, or ideas. He feels that culture peaked somewhere in the 50's - 60's, but then started a slow decline.

The internet has created a tectonic shift, and the "mass culture" is radically changing very rapidly now, and headed toward a "niche culture" where the majority of products and even ideas are out in "the long tail". Amazon, iTunes, Google, eBay, Netflix, Blogs, Wikipedia, and a host of others are all raised as current examples of "connecting with the tail". Amazon and iTunes have nearly infinite "shelf space" and little or no cost of inventory. He points out how Google and other search technologies provide the "filtering capacity" so the infinite choice of the tail can be effectively navigated. Interesting contrast to "The Paradox of Choice" here, partially because the Paradox failed to recognize that the new world of the net also provides more powerful tools that allow the choice to be managed. People that never left their home town had no use for maps and celestial navigation skills. Once a set of people begin to travel, those tools become critical. So it is with the new world of "infinite choice", attempting to deal with it without the tools doesn't work.


He ends the book with some key rules for business in the long tail, the two key ones being:

1). Make everything available
2). Help me find it

For those that have used Google and Amazon, most of the other items are "obvious", but that book is worth a read as a pretty good summary of a major change that seems to be going on the world, even though it doesn't really predict where that change will end up, the information on how to deal with it will no doubt make it one of the key business books.

Paradox of Choice

Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, Barry Schwartz

I finished up the subject book a week ago, but am up at Williams Narrows Resort on Lake Winnibigoshish in Nothern Minnesota for a few days fishing and have been lazy on the Blog. The first couple days the weather was great and so was the fishing. Decent numbers of fish from the 14" inch size up to 20" on the rockpiles along the N side of the main lake along with some success on crankbaits in Cutfoot Sioux. Yesterday the weather changed and so did the fishing, it has been slow since, but we have still been able to pick up a few, so not the complete drought. It has been nice to have a top for the boat since last night as there has been a good deal of rain.

I really enjoyed the Paradox book, even though I tend to think that the author misses the fact that humans and technology tend very much to adapt to problems. Yes, "too much choice" CAN be a problem, but it doesn't HAVE to be. He points out how all the available choices that we face today can cause anxiety, and regret as we realize that "wow, I could have had a V8!" after having mere tomato juice, but it doesn't have to be that way, and the alternative (not enough choice) is not really that good.

His point is that as the number of available choices rises, the ability of any consumer to select the "best alternative" becomes more and more difficult. Worse, with the increasing rate of change and the available mass information, a consumer is going to see and be able to compare themselves with many others, and are likely to be aware when they make a poor choice. This leads to a greater "decision cost" as they try to decide, and for many consumers it means that they are less satisfied with what they purchase, as they either have specific evidence (or are at least suspicious) that they didn't select the best alternative.

He goes deeper to correctly lament the effect of "loss of values". He uses the example of marriage as a case where people that for religious, cultural, or personal reasons are able to simply decide that "they are married for life" have a happier marriage. It turns out that "always being in the market" creates dissatisfaction and tends to lead to a series of divorces, none of which produces a marriage as happy as the person who "limited their choices". He goes on to talk a bit about how "on average", the Amish are happier than the rest of us, and their lives are simpler and they have less choice. He somehow seems to miss the concept that they also believe in more than a material world and pure consumerism being the basis for a happy life.

It seems he manages to point out some items that are likely obvious to all but the most jaded pure materialist consumer, but misses the idea that deeper meaning doesn't depend on growing a beard, wearing black and living an agrarian lifestyle. For a man of ideas, he seems to miss the fact that ideas are way more powerful for humans than "things", and it is quite possible to realize that while living at even the forefront of the technological world. He also seems to somehow miss the fact that much of the "noise" of the modern world of choice can be filtered with variants of the very same technology that has created it. "Google" being a primary example, but there are countless others. In the area of electronic gadgetry for example, I like CNET for advice. I've decided that I will voluntarily limit my choices to some of their top picks, rather than do all the research myself. Therefore, no matter how many choices there are in the real world, my set of choices is small.

There is a lot of "left world view" in Paradox. I'm often struck by how the far left eventually decides that the "masses" can't be left with the full choice of the market economy, and "something must be done". It is also interesting how frequently they are drawn to the fringes of traditional isolated religious groups like the Amish to attempt to make their point. The left is often driven by envy to such a degree that they become fixated on even the idea that "someone may have chosen better", or "be happier", or even be "enabled" to POTENTIALLY make "better choices" or "live a better life". They tend to have an extreme problem though in their definition of "better". They seek to view economic choices in terms of "objective measures" like income or assets. They then seek to quantify "happiness" in the same way with some sort of "survey says" mentality.

To those who already see life as more than just a materialist chase, it becomes very evident that the "Paradox" thinking has completely missed most everything. A combination of sadness and the danger of the left is very visible as one realizes that once they have completed their "objective analysis", they see "no other alternative" than to forcibly limit choice for ALL in order to "increase happiness" by the measures that THEY choose.

Switchpod

PB Article

The son of a long time friend from work and fishing started up a Podcasting company on his own at age 15 and sold it this summer for $200K in stock and a $40K a year part-time salary to continue working on it. Small part of the opportunity in the new economy that gets not a whole lot of media attention. Note that while his monetary gain is much greater than other teens, he didn't "take anything away" from other teens working at local burger joints or stocking shelves. The value he created is new value, value that didn't exist prior to the innovation of creation of the company. While the left tends to look at all business as a "zero sum game" where when one succeeds, others are forced to fail, MOST of the modern information economy is not this way. New value is created and the entire market rises with the addition of the new value. The left will of course lament that the value creator usually benefits the most, but being on the left means that it is very hard to be happy about anyone doing well, because you have allowed envy to become your dominant thought vs appreciation for the success of others.

Hearts, Minds and Calcium

In the process of my physical for age 50 I was treated to a Cardiac CT scan. The procedure is relatively easy as medical tests go. You lay on a slab that moves you in and out of the big CT donut with some leads attached to your chest. The technology allows a calcium score to be calculated that is considered a new indicator for the potential of a cardiac event. Calcium in the arteries is "atherosclerosis" or "hardening of the arteries". It ISN'T "blockage", but they believe that it is a precursor to blockage. I managed to fail it very well with a score for my age that would put only 6 people out of 100 being worse off.

The test was a week ago Thursday, with the results the following day, so I got a full week to enjoy "limbo" relative to how bad this really is. Friday AM I took a stress test, which fortunately I passed with flying colors. A good hour was spent in the PM talking to a couple of I'm sure very high priced Mayo cardiologists. The bottom line is "it is another risk factor, but it is too early to give a solid % of exactly how bad it is". What it means for sure is "Lipitor, low cholesterol diet, lose weight, more medication to reduce blood pressure and be sure to keep up all the exercise".

Interestingly, we don't really have the technology to predict "sudden death heart attacks", although the Cardiac CT is often oversold as just that. At least at Mayo, the next test after the Cardiac CT is the stress test, and they have no inclination to do a Angiogram where they put a probe into the heart unless there is chest pain and/or a negative indicator on a stress test. Putting a probe into the heart is not without risk, and unless someone is 50% blocked or greater, they aren't going to stent it anyway. They will proceed with the same drug therapies that I'm now on in hopes of some level of reversal, or at least slowing the deposits so that the rest of the population catches up with the patient.

Everyone over "40 or so" carries around an increasing risk that "something will go wrong" and a piece of plaque (that nearly everyone that age has some of) will break off and lodge in the wrong place. When it does, things go bad in a hurry and life is in danger. They have a lot of theories about the mechanism; inflammation is a leading guess, and they check the blood for something called "C-reactive protein", yet another risk factor which was fortunately normal in my case.

So, I embark on an attempt to radically change my weight profile ... even though a relatively svelte Moose at 6'4" 280lbs, it is time to work toward the lower bounds of "lost Moosehood" in the lower 200lb register. Some nut claims that even for 6'4" and "massively boned" (size 14 ring) something like an anorexic 240 is "obese". "Living" seems a better idea than "living large", so a smaller feedbag is already in evidence.

Certainly I would have preferred a great score and no need to make any changes, but being given the opportunity to make changes and hopefully avoid a heart attack seems like a blessing that should be looked at positively. The "easy week" of weight loss is behind me with 6lbs down. It ALWAYS seems easy for the first week ... but when 10% of your bodyweight is 28lbs, it ought to be ;-(

I'm thinking that the logical thing is to "blame the skinny" and lay some sort of a "skinny tax" on them. I've seen some of those high metabolism types eat like there was no tomorrow and not put on weight. Such things are simply "not fair", and any decent Government would find some way to put those folks in their places as fast as possible! It must be Bush's fault that it hasn't been done already!

Will On Wal-Mart

George Will does a few great columns every year, this one is one of his best and WAY worth a read all the way through. Showing my ignorance of how long things live on the Internet, I'm going to both copy it in here and link it. Take your pick, the link is likely prettier, but once it is in here it gets copied to my e-mail, so it goes up in my 2.7GB free Google archive, which means I sure hope it lasts "forever".

I often comment on the nature of what I see as a "looking glass world"; we all have a remarkable tendency to exhibit the same traits or thoughts that we abhor in others in some form that is shifted from the original we think we hate. Like a mirror shows a reversed image. Many times those "shifts" are not as precise as a mirror, but they can be close; a person that constantly harps on greed is easy prey for its mirror, envy. Unfortunately, none of us is exempt from this human trait, and maybe the best we can hope for is awareness, but like awareness of many other things; say aging and death for example, mere knowledge does little to avoid our peril.

But potentially awareness can at least reduce our certainty. The religious can often fall prey to fundamentalism where whey believe that they have discovered the full truth of God and lose their humility. For liberals, typically lacking any God but man, there seems to be no choice but fundamentalism. The must believe in the rightness of their truth, since they have manufactured it, and have no higher power to appeal or bow to. Thus, condescension is pretty much a way of life for the left, and Will captures a piece of it very well here.

Liberalism As Condescension

September 14, 2006
Liberalism as Condescension
By George Will

EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. -- This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city and more than 90 percent of the store's customers are African-American.

One of whom, a woman pushing a shopping cart with a stoical 3-year-old along for the ride, has a chip on her shoulder about the size of this 141,000 square- foot Wal-Mart. She applied for a job when the store opened in January and was turned down because, she said, the person doing the hiring "had an attitude.'' So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.

Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money. Besides, she should not brood. She had lots of company in not being hired: More than 25,000 people applied for the 325 openings.

Which vexes liberals like John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?) In 2004 he tested what has become one of the Democrats' 2006 themes: Wal-Mart is, he said, "disgraceful'' and symbolic of "what's wrong with America.'' By now, Democrats have succeeded, to their embarrassment (if they are susceptible to that), in making the basic numbers familiar:

The median household income of Wal-Mart shoppers is under $40,000. Wal-Mart, the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy, has almost as many employees (1.3 million) as the U.S. military has uniformed personnel. A McKinsey company study concluded that Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the nation's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s, which probably made Wal-Mart about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation. By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates. Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion).

People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart -- it has one-fifth of the nation's grocery business -- save at least 17 percent. But because unions are strong in many grocery stores trying to compete with Wal-Mart, unions are yanking on the Democratic Party's leash, demanding laws to force Wal-Mart to pay wages and benefits higher than those that already are high enough to attract 77 times more applicants than there were jobs at this store.

The big-hearted progressives on Chicago's City Council, evidently unconcerned that the city gets zero sales tax revenues from a half a billion dollars that Chicago residents spend in the 42 suburban Wal-Marts, have passed a bill that, by dictating wages and benefits, would keep Wal-Marts from locating in the city. Richard Daley, a bread-and-butter Democrat, used his first veto in 17 years as mayor to swat it away.

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots, and announce -- yes, announce -- that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by ... liberals.

Before they went on their bender of indignation about Wal-Mart (customers per week: 127 million), liberals had drummed McDonald's (customers per week: 175 million) out of civilized society because it is making us fat, or something. So, what next? Which preferences of ordinary Americans will liberals, in their role as national scolds, next disapprove? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?

No. The current issue of The American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for "lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses'' and of having brought "great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world.''

What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company's products each week: 2.5 billion).

When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?'' No, the book they turned into a best-seller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?'' Notice a pattern here?
georgewill@washpost.com