Several blogs worth mentioning

Today I bring to your attention two excellent pieces of work. The first is by friend and colleague John Levine, whose books you may have read. He is in fact today writing about the eBooks industry. I have something of a personal interest in the topic, not so much because I’ve written books (I write RFCs), but because my wife wrote an excellent book, in which the publisher encouraged her to create an eBook. It was ripped off and circulating on P2P networks within days of its ePublication. How annoying. Anyway, John goes to some lengths to talk about the economics of the situation. He’s a great and incisive writer, and a pointer to his writings can now be found on my little blog roll to the right of this post on Ofcourseimright.com.

Separately, Bruce Schneier has been writing about Worst Case Thinking, and what it means to him. While I don’t agree with everything Bruce writes in that article (particularly about his nuclear example), I do agree that societies generally do an extremely poor job of risk management. To me that is because those challenging incumbent politicians always aim for the emotional side of the brain, to get people angry that Something Bad happened, and so incumbents avoid risk at all costs. To me that’s not good government. Don’t get me wrong. Some risks are not worth taking, but let’s be smart about it.

Remembered: Jaime Escalante and the Public Schools of California

CNN reported the death of legendary teacher Jaime Escalante on Tuesday. Escalante was a mathematics teacher in East Los Angeles. He was made famous only in part by his wondrous ways with students, but also by the sheer disbelief that the state and district had that any teacher could helped students in that district score well in math. He was then immortalized in the movie Stand and Deliver, starring Edward James Olmos.

We need more teachers like him, and we need more people to believe that there can be teachers like him. The so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act, is leaving all children behind, and desperately needs to be reformed. Perhaps one thing we could do is pay for more teachers’ educations in exchange for several years of service. Perhaps another thing we can do is fund schools properly. It’s a particularly serious problem in California, with no easy answer. Here is a well written article that explains how the local tax base cannot even take matters into their own hands unless they expend a WHOLE LOT. Not that it would help East LA, mind you. Perhaps this obituary should be for the California public school system.

Olympic moment: the Women’s Biathlon

Last night we watched the Magdalena Neuner of Germany win the Women’s Biathlon at the Vancouver games. I have only three questions about this event:

With all of those guns, if someone is in front of you, can you shoot them to get ahead? After all, this is a competition?
With all of those guns, where were all of the Americans? Not a single one apparently was in the final. In fact, it seems that this is a Russo-European race. Four continents went completely unrepresented.
With all of those guns, where the heck was James Bond? I kept expecting to seem him cut across the track, while all the competitors from Eastern Europe started aiming at him. THAT would have been entertainment.

(I have no idea why we watched this particular event. We’d just finished watching Slum Dog Millionaire for the first time. That was good.)

Airlines’ motto: Squeeze now, apologize later

Who’s getting squeezed? Of course we all are. with additional costs for everything, including seat assignments, baggage, and (Heaven help you) change fees, airlines are making money again, on our backs. One might think there would be an easier way to do this, like simply increasing fees, but for whatever reasons, it’s not the case. Southwest has always been on the forefront of charging for this or for that. It’s latest adventure into charging people who seem too large seems to have gone awry, thanks to the light shown on this policy by Hollywood director Kevin Smith. A spokesman told CNN, “We want to assure everyone that has expressed concern over the situation that we will use this experience in our customer service program when training our employees on the correct way to apply the policy.”

This discussion isn’t about the size of individuals, or even Southwest’s policy on large people. It’s about the fact that they were able to impose a policy, which until this point hasn’t really given them much grief. And why not? Many people agree with the policy in principle: you take up more than one seat and you should pay for it. The problem is, of course, in how the policy was implemented, and this is often the case. Often the result of poor training, contracting of services, or just underpaid staff, passengers are subjected to policy fabrications. A classic case that we have suffered is whether our FAA-certified car seat can go on board a passenger plane. What often happens is that it is allowed in one direction, and then we have to argue for it to be allowed in the return direction. Worse was when we were in Newark Airport and were told by a staff member that we would not be allowed to rebook our flight when a security incident occurred, even though Continental Airlines had stated on its web site that we could.

And so what do the airlines do after such events? They apologize. They ask for our forgiveness. I would gladly give them that forgiveness, were it not for the fact that forgiving often doesn’t go both ways. If I need to make a change to my flight will they forgive me? If my daughter is ill and we need to reschedule our trip, will they forgive me? Of course not.

The underlying problem is that individual consumers have very little buying power. Even large corporations get very little say in how airlines treat them. With market entry costs in the tens of billions of dollars for an airline, consumer protection laws are needed to keep airlines honest. Kevin Smith should be compensated for the poor service he received. So should people who are less visible, who are not Hollywood directors. America really needs the same sort of protections that the European Commission implemented in 2005.

Airlines may argue that such regulation hampers their ability to offer tailored services, or that it is simply too costly. It’s difficult to quantify the impact of such legislation as well, because airlines airline statistics in Europe are not easily available. Still there is a moral need to address the problem. Agree? Disagree?

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Healthcare Debacle

President Obama bet the farm on health care reform, then did nearly nothing to help its passage, and got what he deserved. Of course, we deserve better. We deserved a decent health care bill in the Senate that wasn’t held hostage by Senator Nelson. We deserved something that improved the circumstances of a good chunk of 45 million Americans, just as many are put at risk because of lack of health care, thanks to 10% unemployment. Here’s a little math: 10% of 320 million people that live in the U.S. = 32 million people right there.

Shame on Democrats for not getting a bill through. Great shame on them.

Now we have nothing. If the situation remains as is, if we get nothing by the election, then no party is going to touch this issue with a 10 foot pole for our lifetimes. How good that must be for insurance companies! If we get nothing, our elected officials deserve less. I say THROW THE BUMS OUT, ALL OF THEM, Republicans AND Democrats.

Including President Obama.