The Power of :20

My perception of time seems to flip when a clock reaches :20. If I have to do something during an hour, I think I have plenty of time as late as :19. But, as soon as I see :20, a wave of urgency washes over me. It’s more than the change of a minute, it’s literally a new time frame. Interesting.

Dear Committee Members

Chair, Committee on Creative Writing

Department of English

Standard State University

Dear Committee Members:

Please consider Professor Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members as required reading for all students beginning your creative writing program. It’s true that the book doesn’t break new ground – satirizing English departments is like shooting fish in a barrel with a bazooka. Many have tried and few have failed. Nor is it the sharpest, most biting such satire, John L’Heureux’s Handmaid of Desire easily wins that prize. And it probably isn’t funnier than Richard Russo’s Straight Man or Jane Smiley’s Moo (which satirizes an entire university).

But Dear Committee Members  is still a brilliant achievement which delights readers even as it offers lessons for writers. I wouldn’t have thought the simple stratagem of the letter of recommendation could sustain an entire book, but Schumacher manages without discernible effort. Talent can make any format work.

Moreover, and I won’t say more to avoid spoiling the reader’s pleasure, the author accomplishes a change in emotional atmosphere across the pages with the smooth subtlety of morning sun dissolving maritime fog. Anyone who wants to learn to write should carefully study what she has accomplished here.

Best wishes and don’t let your students’ mutant human-bedbug creatures bite.

Garrison Walters

Author of the Aldus Stewart thrillers:  Killing Justice and A Riddle (as well as another novel which shall not be named – we all have to learn)

It’s Google That Knows If You’ve Been Bad or Good

“He sees you when you're sleeping, He knows when you're awake, He knows if you've been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake!…”

Well, maybe. But that was then and this is now. 

Santa is old tech. Today, it’s Google that really knows.

“The Google,” as former President and all-time great wordsmith George W Bush, the “bard of the Potomac,” called it, has access to more information about you than Santa ever dreamed of.

That little database at the North Pole was puny compared to Google’s globe-spanning network of server farms.

Thanks to Google, you no longer need to listen to the radio to check the traffic on your commute. Google’s Now app knows, and it will tell you before you can ask.

Education’s Magic Algorithm Scam

Hey Gov! Want to dramatically improve the educational success of low-income students? You know, solve the problem that’s been baffling the US for three decades?

It’s simple! Just test the students and connect the tests to their specific teachers. Teachers whose students do very badly will be fired and those who only do OK will be forced to improve. Simple, straightforward, and you can see it here on this spreadsheet. I’ve created an algorithm that shows how it works! It’s like magic!

Magic is much easier than a lot of  hard work, so New York’s Governor Cuomo and nearly all of America’s governors have signed on for the Magic Algorithm ride.  

The idea of the Magic Algorithm has been spread by a new class of education pseudo-experts, people with little or no teaching experience, especially not with low-income students. But they know for sure exactly how to solve education’s problems, because you don’t find truth in classrooms and communities, you find it in Excel.  (Bill Gates could really help education by asking Microsoft to have Excel open with a disclaimer:  “Beware! Numbers alone aren’t knowledge!”)

Actually, the idea of locking test scores to teacher ability isn’t simple. And simplistic is far too weak a descriptor.

“Moronic” would be the best way to categorize the idea of improving education by robotically chaining teacher quality to student tests.

Government Corruption and the Rise of Europe’s Right

Pundits of all kinds are busy examining the rise of right wing parties in Europe:  the National Front in France, Law and Justice in Poland, UKIP in the UK, Fidesz in Hungary, and others. The parallels to the 1930s are certainly worrisome. Indeed, when you look at the rhetoric that these parties have pumped out in the last few years, you’d conclude that Donald Trump’s campaign in the US is the echo, not the bang.

The political experts’ consensus is that ordinary people are voting for the right because they’re angry that EU-focused elites have proven unable to effectively manage either the economy or immigration.

The economy and immigration are undoubtedly key drivers of protest, but analysts are making a serious mistake in ignoring another huge problem:  ordinary people throughout the EU are outraged by what they see as pervasive corruption.

The corruption that is feeding Europe’s anger has two dimensions:  outright bribery of politicians and government’s consistent failure to prevent the wealthy from evading taxes.

Greece is, of course, Exhibit A.  A few years back, the French gave Greek officials a CD with the names of people holding undeclared Swiss accounts. The Greek officials did nothing. When the story finally came out, the involved officials’ explanations were of the kind that would embarrass Inspector Clouseau:  I lost the CD! It wasn’t my responsibility and I forgot to give it to someone else! It was digital information and I didn’t know how to use it!

People who wonder why Germany was so harsh on refinancing Greek debt should look first to this story, which was widely distributed and commented on in throughout Europe. When ordinary German workers are aware that bribe-taking is standard practice in Athens’ ministries and that the wealthy in Greece evade nearly all of their taxes, why would they want to lend money on easy terms? Again?

German workers don’t object to their Greek peers; rather, they are repelled by corrupt Greek politicians and the country’s kleptocratic business and professional elite.

There has been similar evidence of high level corruption and tax evasion in Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

Of course, corruption is by no means a southern European disease.

The bribes that Greek officials took were from German firms. And the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has shown that tax evasion is widely practiced in the land of moral superiority.

Across the Rhine in France, the scandals affecting the leadership of the mainstream conservative party are so deep and complex it’s hard to sort them out. Consider that former President Sarkozy’s long time right hand man was just convicted of stealing from the government payroll, and that the courts have shown that government officials improperly interfered in a decision that caused a huge amount of money to go to a political ally. And more. Lots more, actually -- including plenty of Swiss account tax evasion by wealthy and powerful individuals on the left as well as the right.

Across the Channel in the UK, it seems that any time a newspaper wants a good story, it just has to dangle thinly veiled bribes in front of a few MPs. The pols go for the cash like hounds after the hare. And Prime Minister Cameron, while talking a good game, hasn’t yet cracked down on the various crown dependencies that hold a large proportion of the world’s tax-evaded wealth.

It’s Time to Change History

The new movie, Steve Jobs, contains scenes describing events that didn’t happen, such as a meeting Jobs had with John Sculley, the man who fired him from Apple. This imagined encounter occurs years after the firing, and allows Jobs, who has now made it big with his new company, to achieve what every audience insists on:  closure.  

The film’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, defends this and other purely imagined scenes by saying the movie is “a painting instead of a photograph.”

Unapologetic tinkering with history is something of a recent trend in film. For example, Selma director Ava Duvernay and Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow recast the past in order to create more emotionally satisfying cinema.  

The folks in Hollywood know what they’re doing. The fact that Jobs never got to personally thumb his nose at Sculley is frustrating, a circle left unclosed. Audiences hate that.

By inventing a meeting, Sorkin certainly makes a better story. And he asserts it’s actually a good thing if a film about the past isn’t accurate.

This is the difference between...journalism and art," Sorkin said. Journalists "have an obligation to be objective. I have an obligation to be subjective. There are stories there that should be written about.

In passing, I’ll observe that one event Mr. Sorkin will want to creatively reimagine is how Jobs would have reacted to his film.

On Not Hearing the Homily

All my life I’ve struggled with human speech. If a person talks continuously for more than a few minutes, I’m off riding my own mental drone, buzzing and skimming erratically through a forest of random thoughts like an inebriated dragonfly. My impromptu flights seems to want to take me anywhere and everywhere – just not back in the direction of that human sound, which is annoying to me because I can’t quite stay fixed on it.

I’m obviously better with interactive speech. Otherwise I’d be writing this from a monastery or an asylum. Still, when people start to repeat themselves, or drift off into pointless trivia, my mental drone is there to free me.  

Hillary’s Secret Emails

By Garrison Walters

Computer ignorance abounds in our society. It all began with the poster child of digital illiteracy, Ollie North, who wasn’t curious enough to ask whether “delete” really meant “gone forever.” The problem continues with the subscribers to the Ashley Madison website, who paid to have their accounts deleted and evidently truly believed that this had been done. Of course, the Ashley Madison affair (heh, heh) also shows the core failings of men. It turns out that 99 and a fraction per cent of the women registered on the site were fake. This means that the real women in the database, eleven by my count, have been either really, really busy or, far more likely, are graduate students writing dissertations in the fast-rising social science category of "Cognitive Dissonance and the Intermittent Male Appendage." 

I wrote a book about the problem of digital illiteracy, Total F*ing Magic, whose purpose is to help folks understand stuff like where email goes. But no one reads it. It seems that people just want to believe all is well and make the same mistakes over and over again. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the erstwhile Colonel’s handle is found on the Ashley Madison website. Hillary Clinton is another digital naif, so, to make a point – and possibly to sell some books -- I’m publishing some emails from her “deleted” archive.  

========

Dear Chelsea:

My first day at the State Department! I’ve been told that all my communications using official systems or even written while in the office are public documents, so I’m using this private server and personal phone for my connections with family and friends. What could go wrong?

Mom, Wise in Washington

========

Bill:

I’ve read carefully your request for a million dollar donation to the “Save the Miss America Pageant” foundation.

Kevin Carey: Evangelical Polemicist

by Garrison Walters

Introduction:  A Story, Not an Analysis

It was a chilly spring day when I turned on my iPad and started to read The End of College.

Actually, I'm not sure why that's relevant since I was on a Boeing 777 surfing the North Atlantic jet stream. But Carey likes to open sections in his ostensibly serious analysis of higher education with mood-setting weather and place observations, so I can too.

Another reason to begin a review in this fashion is to draw attention to the nature of Carey’s book.

The End of College includes lots of statistics and comments about data, and even has pages of footnotes. Given all this scholarly skin, you might conclude that it is a serious, objective analysis. If so, you would be wrong.

In fact, The End of College isn’t in any way objective, nor is it true analysis. Instead, this book is a story. Indeed, it’s a story told exclusively from one point of view. Typically, writing that presents a single perspective is called a polemic.

Carey approaches higher education the same way as anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy does medical science:  find information you like and ignore everything else. Kevin and Jenny can both present things prettily, and when they do, the impact can be huge.

But are the results positive? Let’s discuss.  

Will Autonomous Killer Bots Need Driver’s Licenses?

by Garrison Walters

A major debate in the tech world at the moment is whether we should allow the creation of autonomous killer robots for the military. “Autonomous” means the bots make their own decision about when to shoot. Many buzzkill scientists have come out against the idea.

This whole discussion seems pointless to me. I mean, you know where the NRA is going to come down on this. Because bots are programmed, they are obviously part of the Second Amendment’s “well regulated militia.” And what the NRA wants…

The Introvert’s Guide to Social Media

by Garrison Walters

“He who lived well, hid well.”  -- Rene Descartes

If you’re a serious, hard-core introvert like me, the very word “social” gives you a chill, a quick sense of something ominous just ahead.

Add the word “media” to “social” and you have a vision of hordes of celebrities invading your private space, the light from their shiny teeth illuminating the darkest corners of your life.

We’ll, I’m here to tell you that image is wrong, In fact, social media is much worse than that. It’s the death of privacy. It’s offering yourself up for sacrifice on the altar of extroversion.

Why I’ve Taken the BBC Off My Reading List

by Garrison Walters

Somewhere back in the spring, along about March I think, I was doing my regular cycle of web pages when I saw something ominous:  the BBC was inviting me to “preview their new look.”

I didn’t click because I knew what it would be:  lots more white space and way more use of videos.

Sure enough, a few days later that’s what I saw.

Moto 360 Review

by Garrison Walters

I got a Fitbit for Christmas and found it really useful. Unfortunately, the band was hard to operate and challenging to keep attached. I bought a “guard” but eventually lost the band with the very small electronic part embedded in it.

The Fitbit was my first fitness assistant device, and it gave me the bug. I really liked the information it offered and wasn’t bothered at all by having it on my arm.

So, when I saw the Moto 360 on sale at Best Buy for half the price of the iWatch, I decided to go for it.

The Duke

The other day, driving down the freeway, I saw a billboard featuring John Wayne, quoted as saying something tough. It got me to thinking. The Duke was somewhat controversial during his lifetime, but whatever your opinion of his politics or lifestyle, you'd have to agree the man knew how to take a fake punch.     

Stories I Never Started Reading

Stories I Never Started Reading

• Should I tell my fiancée that I’m bisexual and had sex with her dad?
• Clandestinely control your smartphone by stroking your hair.
• Iron Throne toilet lets you rule the bathroom.
• Bruce Jenner’s ex-wives weigh In.
• Comcast vows to put customers first.
• Cutting a bugs' penis shorter found to reduce reproduction chances.
•  Quail breeding discoveries shed light on human sexuality.
• Le pole-dancing, discipline olympique?
• A Lively Comment Discussion About Dementia and Sex
• Twitter envisions drones controlled by your tweets
• Researchers establish the world's first mathematical theory of humor 
• VR porn lends a hand. Masturbation will never be the same

Republican Primaries: The Ottoman Solution

So many running for President, so hard to keep track. Every current and former Republican governor, a gaggle of Senators. Then there’s the pediatric neurosurgeon (retired) and the failed technology executive. Also The Donald, and continuing in that vein, I expect at least one professional wrestler.

Why so many Republican princes contending for the throne?

A simple answer:  there’s no downside and a big upside to running.

California Dreaming in Texas

Even during the worst budget years California’s citizens and leaders have always recognized the value of higher education. People across the state, including in both political parties, know that excellence in the flagship University of California system has been a key factor in the state’s comparatively prosperous and high tech economy.

The state has now restored fiscal stability and, though many problems remain, is looking toward a vibrant future.

Given better times, we should expect UC to amp up efforts to recruit outstanding researchers, especially in the sciences.