dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.my-creativeteam.com/blog/?p=7…

I’m working on a presentation about personal branding …

Whether you are a freelancer, a small business owner, or an employee, you have a brand.

Sometime back I asked 10 colleagues what their impression of my brand is because you need to know where you are before you can make any adjustments. Same as in any kind of brand work. I’d encourage you to do the same.

I learned that people think I’m assertive, intimidating and very “alpha.”

Compare with something I wrote about before about the

article in the Washington Post where a black women laments that black women are protrayed as assertive and agressive.

Are all VCs black women, or are all black women VCs ?

Heh

Althouse:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/07/22-…

22% of Americans “believe any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.” According to a new Middlebury Institute/Zogby International poll…

So all these people have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War.

Althouse’s statement is as stupid as saying “85% of Americans believe in the right to keep and bear arms…so all these people have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of gun control. “

“Rights” != “what law has been enforced”.

In fact, the Constitution does not deny states the right of secession, and the Bill of Rights says that any power not given to the federales is reserved to the states or to the people…so states (and/or individuals) do have the right to secede. There’s no reason to think that the founders thought otherwise.

Althouse is confusing Lincoln’s war of agression against The Confederacy (along with his draft, his supression of the free press, his jailing of political enemies, etc.) with “the law” and “the Constitution”.

!@#$ that static.

Humans have the right “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them” to others. Or, in less words “to secede”.

Now, I think a good case can be made for the invasion of the Confederacy, just like I think a good case was made for the invasion of Iraq.

“You may not own WMD”.

“You may not own slaves”.

- these are both concepts that I have no problem with the stronger, more moral states enforcing on their neighbors.

But the right way to liberate the slaves of the Confederacy would have been to announce that all plantation owners have 24 hours to free their slaves, and then burn down the plantation house of anyone that that still held slaves, and hang the pater familias of each such plantation.

Smash the system, maybe stick around for 5 years for nation building, maybe not, and then pull out.

The United States should not have conquered the Confederacy and incorporated it into itself (and taxed it - with out representation! - for the initial years).

http://whiskeyinateacup.com/?p=326

the single best email i have ever received

From a forty-two year old salesman I used to work with:

“Don’t remember telling you but I got divorced last month. Tell your hot single friends (younger friends of coarse - you’re a little old for me) hope all is well”

Wow.

A guy 28 days out of a marriage.

What a catch!

Also, I’m amused that Erica is “a bit old”. I think she’s something like 26.

A 42 year old guy’s upper age limit for women is lower than my lower age limit.

Weird.

Sometimes I get stressed out.

DF had good advice: “Go home, sit your ass in your favorite chair, and watch The Wire”.

I did one better: I made tacos, and made guacamole from a fresh avocado.

Work stress still exists.

…but now I’m not twitching quite so much.

X: I’ve got this long email from a customer who is an anal collector -

TJIC: I thought he collected comic books?

DF: Very funny. Rim-shot!

TJIC: Ouch / groan / well done!

http://southbend7.blogspot.com/2008/07/i…

First of all “fair” is a word that conveys almost no semantic information and does nothing to enhance my understanding.  Hearing someone describe something as “fair” or “not fair” does not add a single bit of information to my knowledge of the situation.

Preach it brother!

http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/co…

… Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post, is one of Canada’s leading business writers and editors… As a journalist, Mr. Corcoran has been writing on business and economic policy matters for most of the past 35 years, bringing a free-market perspective to Canadian economic and political affairs…

Wacky.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/hig…

A San Francisco jury convicted a New Jersey man yesterday in the assault on Holocaust survivor and Boston University professor Elie Wiesel last year.

Eric Hunt, 23, of Vernon, N.J., was convicted in Superior Court of California of false imprisonment with a hate crime allegation ( a felony ) [ and of ] misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor abuse

Wow.

“False imprisonment with a hate crime allegation”.

That seems pretty hard core.

Did he lock the guy up in a cage and racially taunt him, or something?

Hunt had dragged Wiesel, who was then 78, off an elevator at the Argent Hotel

Not very civil - certainly there should be some punishment for grabbing someone by the arms, or the collar, or whatever, and man-handling him.

…but “false imprisonment with a hate crime” ?

Hunt had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for part of the trial, according to his defense attorney, John Runfola, who said Hunt had thought at the time that the Holocaust was a lie and that he was going to prevent a World War III with Iran and then be elected president.

OK, so the guy is some neo-nazi nut job? Maybe the strong charges were reasonable…

the defense showed through the three-week trial that Hunt had no history of anti-Semitism or bigotry…

Hunt was in a mental health facility in New Jersey at the time of his arrest

Hmm… no history of bigotry at all?

I wonder if the guy was not a neo-nazi, but was - in fact - someone in actual need of help?

The maximum penalty for false imprisonment with a true hate crime allegation is three years in state prison, according to the district attorney.

I’m all in favor of stiff punishments…but three years in jail for grabbing someone by the arm and yelling “fatso!” or “four eyes!” ?

This seems a bit ludicrous to me.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Mention salvia to gardeners and chances are they’ll think of a flower with spikes of purple blooms. Mention it to young people on local campuses and they might think of a related plant, salvia divinorum, which produces short, intense hallucinogenic trips when smoked.

Look for salvia on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of illicit drugs, however, and it won’t be there. Salvia divinorum is legal in most states, including Massachusetts, and available in both smoke and head shops and on the Internet.

That could well change. A bill that would outlaw salvia in the Commonwealth is moving through the Legislature. At the federal level, the DEA considers salvia to be a “drug of concern” and is working with the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether to classify it as a controlled substance.

I’ve never used drugs.

I’ve never even had a beer, or a glass of wine.

…but can someone explain to me what problem is being solved with this bill?

Is there some salvia-fuelled epidemic of carjackings I missed hearing about?

Is there salvia-related violence spilling into the streets?

Idiots.

“Drug abuse has a word-of-mouth, kid-to-kid, abuser-to-abuser quality, and you put that into a factorial when you put it on the Internet,” said DEA spokeswoman Rogene Waite. “There just became increasing queries about salvia.”

This muddled, mumbling statement came from a “spokeswoman” ?!?!?

Seems a bit more Menino than Demosthenes…

That the [ five minute ] experience is intense and overwhelming is clear from the YouTube videos … They show salvia users … zombie-eyed, unable to perform simple tasks or to communicate effectively.

Zombie eyed?

Unable to perform simple tasks?!?

Unable to communicate effectively!?!?!?!

This drug is as debilitating as … being asleep!!

The bill would also outlaw … khat, an herbal stimulant from Africa,

I was just going to point out all the problems I’ve been having with African immigrants who are just too alert late in the afternoon.

http://jered.livejournal.com/62209.html

Federal Air Marshall System costs $180 million per life saved, while hardening cockpit doors only costs $800,000 per.

Last I checked, hardened cockpit doors weren’t unionized, and didn’t vote or lobby congress to protect their thousands of government jobs.

http://feralchimp.com/blog/2008/07/22/as…

Q: explain to me the ideology governing the move to use vinyl to control digital audio files … are you rocking a hybrid setup ? … what’s the deal?

A: The more I think about it, my answers become more accurate, more numerous, and less cohesive.

But, seriously, read it for some interesting insights into UIs and human factor stuff.

John Denver won’t die for Jared’s sins.

Or vice versa.

More on the FBI suppressing research on DNA matching:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-…

…A database search had found a nine-locus match between his DNA profile and semen found in the victim’s body. Based on FBI estimates, the prosecutor said the odds of a coincidental match were as remote as 1 in 108 trillion…

…In a database search for a criminal case, a crime scene sample would have been compared to every profile in the database — about 65,000 comparisons. But Troyer compared all 65,000 profiles in Arizona’s database to each other, resulting in about 2 billion comparisons. Each comparison made it more likely she would find a match.

When this “database effect” was considered, about 100 of the 144 matches Troyer had found were to be expected statistically, Myers found…

OK, I obviously understand how looking at n^2 comparisons is going to get n times as many matches as looking at n comparisons.

…but here’s my question:

If the FBI was right that a false match was a 1 in 108 trillion liklihood, then there should be effectively zero matches even in the 65,000 ^2 comparisons (actually .00003).

…but there are 144 matches.

Which is about 1.0 x 10^9 more than we would expect if we believed the FBI numbers.

Solving backwards, from 65,000 data points, and 65,000 ^ 2 comparisons, and seeing 144 matches, we derive an error rate of 1 in 30 million.

If there are 100k rapes / year and 20k murders / year, and the police DNA test 8 suspects for every crime, then we have 1 million DNA tests per year.

…which means that we can expect a false match once every 30 years.

As long as the courts don’t accept a DNA match as proof positive, but weigh it, and it’s error rate, along with other kinds of evidence, and their error rates (e.g. the notoriously poor accuracy of eye witnesses, etc.), then I don’t see a huge problem here.

Or, rather, I don’t see a huge problem other than the FBI trying to suppress data…

In defense of pretty good:

http://rightcoast.typepad.com/rightcoast…

There’s a Starbucks backlash goin’ on and it’s not fair.

Yes, Starbucks are absurdly ubiquitous, they have overexpanded, and now they’re going to pay the price. The creative destruction of the market is at work. But we should remember some key facts and be grateful.

First, remember what coffee was like before Starbucks. Some of you (though I doubt it, with the readership of this blog) may have cut your teeth on micro-roasted craft coffee shipped straight from Kona or that African critter’s butt to your grinding burr in Seattle. But most of us drank the usual American swill to be found in law firm coffee rooms and frat house kitchens. Akk. Dreadful stuff and I know because I drank enough of it. “I just made it” meant it had been sitting there getting foul for less than an hour. “It’s OK” meant you could drink and not die immediately. I grew up in a house where my Mom drank 20 cups of coffee a day, not one of them not worth forgetting until, you guessed it, Starbucks came along and taught people about coffee the way everybody discovered wine in the 1970s. So yes, Starbucks is not as good as PetePeet’s. Well, excuse me while I play the grand piano. No it isn’t. But the point is, it’s not Maxwell House…

A common meme is this idea that Starbucks is a hotbed of elitism in the bosom of no nonsense, egalitarian America, as opposed to good ol’ Dunkin Donuts. This is a lie. Maybe people who live in La Jolla or Coral Gables get sick of elitism, but for the vast majority of us who live out in the great long tail of American mediocrity, a place that has pretensions to upper middle class culture, however transparently self serving and delusional, is more than welcome. The Starbucks I go to is next to a Burger King, a muffler shop, a Chaldean hooka joint, a dirt cheap barber shop you could clear out instantly by shouting “La Migra!” and some sort of store front holy rolling student ministry. On a typical 102 in the shade summer day, with the 18 wheelers rolling by on their way to El Cajon, I can do with the AC blasting and some gal crooning about whatever is troubling her sensitive soul at that moment. It may not be America. I live in America and I want a place I can get away from it for 45 minutes and pretend I’m in Portland or wherever. Dunkin’ Donuts is just more of the same. You go into Starbucks, buy the New York Times, listen to jazz, drink your latte, and for a little while, you experience a kind of relief. If you are worried that it’s not authentic, then you really do have a problem.

Well said.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q…

“You’re the Man Now, Dog!” [Mark Hemingway]

From UPI:

Connery accused of withholding funds

EDINBURGH, Scotland, July 20 (UPI) %Gâ??%@ Scottish actor Sean Connery stopped giving his son money to force him to make his own way in life, the actor’s former wife says.

Diane Cilento alleged the former star of the James Bond movie series said several years ago he would no longer give his son Jason any money as part of his goal of teaching the young man how to earn a living on his own, The Sunday Times of London reported.

I didn’t know one could be “accused” of such a heinous crime. Would that the Hilton family, the Kennedys, Lionel Richie, Bruce Jenner, Robert Kardashian, every parent on the Upper West Side, et al. were equally guilty.

Wow.

He cut his son off at the tender age of 40.

How callous!

Loyal reader Chris Shabsin passes this along:

http://www.bunny-comic.com/index.php?id=…