I use and link to Wikipedia from time to time. Dave notes some ongoing controversy regarding the creation and maintenance of Wikipedia data, including Microsoft’s offer to pay an Australian blogger to edit pages for them.
Monthly Archives: January 2007
Sad, But True: Antitrust & AT&T
Steven Colbert on the reconstituted AT&T. We still don’t have any prospects of fiber to the home in Madison, much less around the state.
Interesting Discussion on China
When will the Chinese middle class push for greater political freedom to match growing economic freedom?
The $64,000 question. The extent of the ideological bankruptcy of the Chinese Communist Party is not widely understood in the U.S. It claims single party rule because it is the trustee of the 1949 Communist revolution governing democratically for China’s workers and peasants. Its problem is that communism is in reverse worldwide, and under the doctrine of the “Three Represents” invented by Jiang Zemin, the party now accepts that class war is over and that it must represent all Chinese society. In which case: Why no accountability? Change came in the Soviet Union with the fifth generation of leaders; the fifth generation of leaders succeeds Hu Jintao in 2012. I don’t expect any change until after then, but my guess is that sometime in the mid-to-late 2010s, the growing Chinese middle class will want to hold the Chinese official and political class to account for how they spend their taxes and for their political choices.
The Wall Street Journal posted an email interview with Friedman which included a few words on China.
Requiem for Magic Bullets
The golden age of antibiotics began in 1944 with the widespread use of penicillin in Europe, which saved many thousands of lives during World War II. But the first sign that this new era of easily treatable bacterial infections would not last appeared just a couple of years later, with the emergence of penicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium responsible for a wide variety of ailments, from skin infections to fatal pneumonia.
By 1950, 40 percent of the staph strains in hospitals had already become immune to the drug. Now a form of staph known as methicillin-resistant Staph aureus, or MRSA, which is resistant to nearly every known antibiotic, is responsible for the majority of tens of thousands of deaths a year from infections picked up in U.S. hospitals alone.
Bacteria develop immunity to antibiotics by rapidly evolving genetic defenses against the drugs or by acquiring pieces of DNA and RNA from organisms that are already resistant — even from other bacterial species. Bacterial pathogens that have learned how to survive in hospitals have an evolutionary advantage, because there are plenty of other resistant organisms in the environment from which they can borrow resistance factors.
The Etiquette of Bribery
GIVE people power and discretion, and whether they are grand viziers or border guards, some will use their position to enrich themselves. The problem can be big enough to hold back a country’s development. One study has shown that bribes account for 8% of the total cost of running a business in Uganda. Another found that corruption boosted the price of hospital supplies in Buenos Aires by 15%. Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, is devoting special efforts during his presidency there to a drive against corruption.
For most people in the world, though, the worry is not that corruption may slow down their country’s GDP growth. It is that their daily lives are pervaded by endless hassles, big and small. And for all the evidence that some cultures suffer endemic corruption while others are relatively clean, attitudes towards corruption, and even the language describing bribery, is remarkably similar around the world.
Rich Westerners may not think of their societies as plagued by corruption. But the definition of bribery clearly differs from person to person. A New Yorker might pity the third-world businessman who must pay bribes just to keep his shop open. But the same New Yorker would not think twice about slipping the maître d’ $50 to sneak into a nice restaurant without a reservation. Poor people the world over are most infuriated by the casual corruption of the elites rather than by the underpaid, “tip”-seeking soldier or functionary.
Indeed, in the world’s richest economy, what many see as simple bribery is an integral part of lawmaking. In Washington, DC, it is accepted that a lobbyist’s generous campaign contribution to a crucial congressman may help to steer some spending to the lobbyist’s client.
And… earmarks?
“Use the Web, Luke” – Presidential Candidates Embrace the Web
In choosing the Internet to announce she intends to run for the presidency in 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed to the burgeoning political power of the medium and offered a preview of how she hopes to harness it to her purposes.
In declaring “I’m in” the White House race in a video clip on her new campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, the New York Democrat did considerably more than simply appear before the cameras; she invited supporters to join an almost Oprah Winfrey-like session of give and take.
“Let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine…. ” she told viewers.”With a little help from modern technology, I’ll be holding live online video chats … starting Monday.”
By doing this, Clinton signaled her intention of using the Internet to shore up one of her chief political weak points, what independent analyst Charlie Cook called the caricature of her as “this shrill, raving, partisan, liberal lunatic.”
Hilary’s video is here. Take a look through the window – I wonder when it was shot? Sam Brownback announced on the web as well.
Charles Franklin looks at the polls.
The Utility of Asking Questions
Ed Wallace finds some answers:
It seems to me that we might actually be standing at a crossroads of history, and 50 years from now historians will either be writing about the genius of our current plans or bemoaning our utter foolishness. But one thing is for sure. Hoping that things calm down in Iraq, wondering if they are going to get that oil law on the books and praying that the government holds and favors Western oil firms does not sound like a realistic energy policy for the United States.
Everything could go right for us; and the Chinese and Russians could still get back their Iraqi oil contracts, which were abrogated after we invaded that country.
Or we can develop a new energy policy for America. Raise the fuel efficiency standards for automobiles (mid to long-term positive results). Slow down the traffic on our Interstates (immediate impact on the amount of oil we use). Quit using so much oil for fertilizers and plastics and so trim all the waste those industries produce. Tune up our vehicles to maximize fuel economy. And determine whether General Motors’ series hybrid electric is credible, and figure the odds of Detroit’s inventing the lithium-ion batteries that would make the Chevrolet Volt feasible. The subsequent fall in the price of oil would deprive many who detest us of the funding their anti-American plans would require.
If GM’s 150-mpg Chevrolet Volt were coming to market this spring, would that breakthrough stop the 21,500 troops headed for Iraq? Probably not. But it would stop 500,000 American troops from heading to the Middle East a decade from now.
Apple iPhone UI Notes
I could go down through the other “innovations” in iPhone and slowly knock them off. Yes, it’s the first cell phone with a visual display of voicemail messages, so you can randomly move among voicemails, etc., etc. However, such lists have been displayed, in an identical fashion, on enterprise-level voicemail systems and, of course, such lists have been a standard feature in email for decades.
The origins of these bits and pieces, however, is not what’s important about the iPhone. What’s important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs; that’s the genius of Apple.
It’s also speaks to the limited vision of the cell phone industry. Exactly why have we never had random-access voicemail on cell phones? We’re talking about hand-held devices with more computer power than the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. We’re talking about devices with screens of more than sufficient resolution. Could nobody think of displaying the messages?
A good friend often reminds me that ideas are easy, it’s execution that matters.
iPhone is a game changer.
Buckley on Iraq
You are a Republican legislator, retiring after this, your fifth term. Last night, into midnight hours, you composed a questionnaire for yourself. You vowed to submit to it before your committee speech. You’d flower up the language a bit — but not the thought. You wake up this morning and turn to last night’s self-quiz.
Wisconsin’s GDP = South Africa’s
Interesting. A map that equates a US State with a similar Country’s GDP.