The right freedom to protect

Delaware Supreme Court didn’t actually give a blanket protection for the anonymity of abusive speech, though that’s how the decision has been portrayed on NPR. Biz Report says it found that Smyrna town councilman Patrick Cahill needed to make a stronger case that he and his wife, Julia, had been defamed before forcing Comcast Cable to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger.

A blanket protection for anonymous abusive speech is not what we want. We all have to accept harms to our own interests to protect the good of our common interest, and the harm of personally admitting to abusive speech is a small price to pay for protection from abusive incitement from secret sources. Continue reading The right freedom to protect

Ok Ok, I give up

What remains hidden in the hot debate over “intelligent design” and Darwin’s evolution, miraculously, is the strategic location of the odd gaps in the fossil record.

Where those gaps are located is rather embarrassing to both sides.

I think if you’re thinking clearly about the problem, not defending one side or the other, the answer is obvious. The gaps in the record contain almost all the biological change that the theory of ‘little steps’ is supposed to explain, occurring at the origin of most species. Evolution actually proceeds by big steps (the dirty truth). Continue reading Ok Ok, I give up

What’s the plan man!

I’m not getting much sleep lately, taking on too much, burning with ideas; not a good plan. But then neither is humanity’s plan for us all to make decisions 16 times faster every lifetime forever.

It indicates we’re missing something, like where the heck are we going anyway! Sounds presumptuous perhaps, but I can fix that. The underlying problem is that our perceptions of where we are operate on a sliding scale.

Continue reading What’s the plan man!

Failure in responding to Katrina

So soon after the embarrassing failure of emergency response it’s a little risky to venture an explanation.    The appearance is that government planning for emergency response to “the big one” failed to include providing food and shelter for those stranded by it.

My opinion is that the problem was mainly that FEMA kept following the plan they had on file even when it was apparently not working.   I think both key failures, the bad plan and bad leadership in response, come from the scale of the problem.    The disaster caused by Katrina was different in kind and was treated as only being different in degree.

Continue reading Failure in responding to Katrina

Why we’re all mostly out of the loop

From early childhood we’ve all experienced consternation with being shut out of the conversation, say defining circles of friends, that would have been very important to us to feel part of.

There are even exclusive story loops within families, between mom and the kids separate from between dad and the kids, for example. Sometimes it’s very funny, and sometimes very sad, what remains hidden from the adjacent conversation. Continue reading Why we’re all mostly out of the loop

Three Mass Movements, 60 years

Islamic Terrorists – 60’s Radicals – Neo-conservative fundamentalists

These three great mass movements, as strangely different as they are, each multiplied from almost nothing to represent huge open communities of interest only because they struck some true chord in human experience.

It’s an obvious fact.  Actual fraud by an evil wizard wouldn’t have the success each of these have had, because huge cross sections of people are just not that stupid. Continue reading Three Mass Movements, 60 years

Health Care or Immortality?

It’s very telling that healthcare costs have been soaring at 3-4% above inflation since the 60’s, and no one seems to be talking about the underlying cause.

Its share of GDP has grown from 5.1% in 1960 to 7.0% in 1970, 8.8% in 1980, 12.0% in 1990, 13.3% in 2000 and 15.3% in 2003. It has actually tripled, and is still heading higher (1). That’s perfectly unsustainable.

All the restraints we’ve struggled to put in place have slowed it but failed to change it, and the impact on businesses large and small are visible everywhere. On the public side the Medicaid funding crisis is far larger and sooner than that of Social Security, and more and more individuals are losing their benefits. Major change is about to happen. Continue reading Health Care or Immortality?

Real Complication

One of the strange long held ideas of the conservatives is that if you take money away from the federal government it will help restore old ways and simpler times.

The supposed connection is that “tax tax spend spend liberals” were inventing needless government activity to meddle with business and private lives. The solution? Give away the money and budget pressure will force reducing the needless expenditure. Giving away money is always popular anyway.

I’m an architect and loose money every day providing mandated services I can’t sell, so you’d think I’d be jumping up and down in support. What I think kills the design business these days is redesign. The requirements are so complex that the solutions are less and less flexible and small changes force rethinking complex issues. We can’t sell that. Continue reading Real Complication