Steve Jobs: You get a timeout

The scene at the Jobs house this week:

Steve (played by a 6 year old boy): Hmm.. the reception on my iPhone 4 sucks. So let’s just cover it up with a software update.

Consumers Report (played by Mommy): Steve, your iPhone 4 isn’t receiving properly. And I caught you trying to cover it up. That will be a time out.

S: But MOM! RIM isn’t receiving well, and Motorolla isn’t receiving well.

C: That may be so, Steve, but we are talking about you and not your friends.

S: But Mom!

C: Don’t but mom me. First you caused a problem for a vast number of consumers, and then you tried to cover it up. The least you can do is apologize, and try to make up for it.

S: Ok, here’s this phone condom. That will certainly make up for the waste of hundreds of dollars per consumer.

C: Steve! Go sit in the naughty chair. You may stand up and go play with the other children when you apologize and really mean it.

Interestingly, when polled unscientifically by the Wall St. Journal, parents in Steve’s community are equally divided over whether he behaved well. What kind of parents are those who accept such behavior?

Antibodies that kill 91% of AIDs virus?

Yes, we’ve heard this sort of tune before. It all sounds so promising, and then one by one all the future miracle cures against AIDS seem to evaporate, sometimes even before phase one human trials.

But here’s a new approach that might actually fly. An African American man was found to have a natural resistance to HIV. This in itself was amazing, but now scientists seem to know why. Here’s a great article from Medscape that discusses two new antibodies that might both prevent and cure AIDS in the future.

Even so it’s early days. Let’s all hope “this time for sure”, as Bullwinkle might say!

Happy Birthday Ringo Starr! 70!

Ringo Starr asks for his birthday today, according to this article in the New York Times, that everyone at noon their time put their fingers up and put our fingers up and say, “Peace and love.” Sure! why not? It’s in twenty minutes for me, and we certainly could use more.

The article is really quite funny, and represents a light style that Starr is famous for. Happy birthday Ringo Starr!

American in exile with no due process

Imagine taking a vacation to some exotic place, perhaps even going to school abroad for a few months, and then being told that you can’t go home. The New York Times reports that such is the tragic situation of Yahya Wehelie, a young American who went to Yemen to study, at the insistence of his parents. He found himself on the No Fly List, for reasons we don’t know, and given no reasonable way to get home to Virginia.

Here we see the juxtaposition of many principles:

The government responsibility to protect Americans on the ground and in the air from terrorism;
The individual’s freedom to travel;
Government responsibility to enforce trade other policies, such as that of importation of prohibited goods; and
An individual’s right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Americans have the fewest rights when flying back to the United States. You can expect to be searched, probed, and prodded. You don’t have the right to carry a bottle of water into an airport, and you can expect substantial inconvenience, especially if you are disabled, when traveling. You can expect your laptop to be confiscated.

The situation is changing, however. A recent decision by a federal judge limits rummaging through laptops of American citizens. Another decision is clearly needed: Americans deserve the right to face their accusers, to hear allegations, and to be able to respond to those charges so that they can receive justice. The basic premise of an airport search is to address threats that are not amenable to taking the time to have such a hearing. Several weeks should be more than plenty of time for a case to be heard by a competent judge. Having some random person stick your name on a list is what one should expect of Nineteen Eight-Four and Brazil, and of America.

What would you do if it were your son trying to get home?

Good News? Bad News?

A while back, I went on a tear about Fox News and just how bad they are at actually delivering news, and how people who listen to them need to hold themselves accountable. Since then, I think someone defriended me on FaceBook for the note. I suppose I had one too many friend. Fox is part of a right wing media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, where his goal is to control the message, and thereby have a strong say in our government. And he’s very successful through truly deceitful means. Even the name of the conglomerate is deceitful- News Corp. It’s not. It’s lies with a bit of truth sprinkled in to help people suspend disbelief about the lies. He’s not the first to do it, but seemingly he’s the most effective. Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to the master, however, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate.

Is there a good honest news source? My preferred news sources these days are as follows:

Google News

This is perhaps the most popular news aggregator there is. Google doesn’t actually do any of the reporting but just groups together related stories, and I can compare points of view based on the source of the story. Say, Fox versus The Guardian.

National Public Radio

NPR remains a strong source of news with stories that one can listen to on the radio that are more than just sound bites. They have in depth interviews with key political players as well as scientists. I have always found their business reporting to be somewhat limiting. This leads to a more controversial preference.

The Wall Street Journal

The Journal is the paper of record for business news, even though they are part of News Corp. It is rare that you read a retraction on a story that matters (I can’t remember one, actually). But they are a relatively recent addition to the conglomerate, and so the impact has been limited to what stories they choose to report, headlines, and their editorial staff. Hosting a shady character like Karl Rove immediately disqualifies what was already a colored view, even prior to the takeover.

Note that nowhere in my list are any of the major television networks. That’s largely due to several factors:

I live outside the United States and so my access to network programming is somewhat limited;
Their stories tend to be short and lack depth, except for news magazines, which I don’t have access to.

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