Category Archives: Aside

For the growing ranks of the uninsured, many of them middle-class, every day is a day lived in fear of what will happen if they get sick and treatment will bankrupt them. Meanwhile, universal health care in America has been so villanized as to continue to be untenable to many Americans, who fear inefficient bureaucracy and additional government intrusion into their lives. Luckily, opinions are changing as the tragedy of the American health care system continues to grow. Of course what many people don’t want to think about is the sorts of hard choices that come along with socialized medicine — or the words “socialized medicine” themselves.

_NY Times_ [and me]: Two years ago, when Congress passed a [stupid, pointless] law to extend daylight saving time by a month [despite contradictory studies about whether such moves actually have a measurable positive effect on energy consumption], the move seemed a harmless step that would let the nation burn a little less fossil fuel and enjoy a bit more sunshine. [But, of course, they didn’t think of the *millions* of computer systems that would need to be updated to reflect the change.] […] For the roughly 7,000 public companies in the United States, Mr. Hammond estimates the total cost of making computer fixes to deal with the daylight saving time shift at more than $350 million. “It’s causing a lot of corporate technology people sleepless nights,” he said.

Reuters has launched Reuters Africa with news pages for each of the 54 countries in the region. The coolest part is their inclusion of links to interesting and relevent blog coverage provided by Global Voices. This sort of fusion (or, to use a web 2.0 word, “mashup”) is great because it gives visitors the opportunity to read news headlines and then get first-person perspectives on the happenings from in-country citizen journalists. Providing GV links in the sidebar is a good first step, hopefully the future will bring better integration of the blog content with Reuter’s existing reporting.

Apparently the wacky junior professor at MIT who was denied tenure has ended his misguided hunger strike. If he was really serious, though, he’d light himself on fire. I mean, because not getting tenure due to some perceived but completely unproven racism on the part of several independent investigative commmittees at MIT is totally a good reason to resort to the kind of extreme measures that people have generally used to protest err, dictatorial rule, political imprisonment, or violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Ethan discusses how corrupt and/or incredibly incomptent financial policy in Zimbabwe has resulted in hyperinflation that is bringing about a total collapse of the country’s economy. Government pensioners receive $13,000 a month, which is enough to buy a single sandwich, university students are protesting up to 2000% hikes in fees, doctors in public hospitals are on strike. “Most disturbing,” he writes, “to me, at least, is a sense from some Zimbabwean bloggers that revolution would be better than watching the economy slowly collapse.”

Neglecting to finish and publish my write-up (don’t say review) of Jason Robert Brown’s _13_, which I saw in previews at the Taper while in California over Christmas and moderately enjoyed, I’ll instead point to _Variety_’s opening-night review of this cute — _High School Musical_ but actually, ya know, good — show about young teenagers beginning to face the world. “Four or five years from now, alas, with their hormones raging and the uncomprehending adult world seemingly arrayed against them, Evan and his friends will despair and rebel and contemplate dying for love. In short, they’ll end up in _Spring Awakening_. But for now they’re _13_, and life is magical.”

I’ve made my thoughts clear on the burdens placed on convicted sex offenders and pointed out the absurdity of a 12 year old girl being branded for life as a “sex offender”. Not to mention the concept that one can be both a perpetrator of a crime *and* it’s victim at the same time. And yet Florida’s courts have just used similar absurd logic to label a 16 and 17 year old couple as “sex offenders” because they took photos of *themselves* having sex and sent them to *themselves* via email. So they’re both perpetrators. And victims. And…sex offenders? Grow up, people. And I’m not talking about the kids taking the pictures.

US contractors have been working to develop a system that gives Iraq security forces the same capabilities of US law enforcement — to track criminals in a central database with photos and fingerprints, and identify them in the field. Two years later and they have yet to deploy any equipment, so an ad hoc group of interested Americans developed and deployed a working system using off-the-shelf hardware and software in less than 30 days.

“Using municipal Wi-Fi for residential coverage [is] the equivalent of expecting street lamps to light everyone’s homes,” says the founder of a mesh network startup in the _NYTimes_. I’m glad someone is finally saying it, and someone is finally listening. I still believe that, at least in America, the best current solution is fiber to the building. Once it gets there, dense wireless such as 802.11-based mesh networks are an effective and inexpensive way to distribute in multi-unit dwellings. But muni wifi with current technology is a major waste of taxpayer money.

My boss’s boss’s counterpart over at Stanford writes in _Wired_ about how courts are doing a very bad job of limiting the scope of computer searches. My laptop was purchased by Harvard, but I’ve got my entire life on it, and according to some recent rulings government agents have the right to search it without cause at any time. And instead of the standard limits placed on warrants which specify the scope of the search and the evidence being collected, with laptops often the entire hard drive can be trolled for anything potentially incriminating, even if it is well outside the scope of the original investigation.

Cory Doctorow: “Today, Disney’s Tomorrowlands are poised on the horns of a dilemma: a random blend of live stages, Jules Verne steampunk, Fantastic Plastic 60s swirls, advertising-supported exhibits from three CESes ago, defunct race-bikes, and a diorama of the 1964 Progress City where the voice-over once welcomed ‘Our most welcome neighbor: Our GE nuclear power-plant!’ If earlier Tomorrowlands showed our enthusiasm for the future, and then our sense that it had arrived, now Tomorowland shows our deep ambivalence, salted with nostalgia, confusion and cynicism.”