Category Archives: News

More Civilized Conversations, Less Screaming Over Each Other

A few days ago, I happened to catch a segment from All In With Chris Hayes. He had on one of the people I follow on Twitter, Tim Carney. Part of the reason that this is noteworthy is because Carney is of a different ideological perspective from Hayes. Carney writes for the Washington Examiner, which, in 2008, supported McCain for President and in 2012, supported Mitt Romney. And Chris Hayes, a host on MSNBC, probably voted for Obama in the last two elections.

Anyhow, the segment comes after Hayes previews the show and introduces the topic: the ‘missing white voter.’ This particular usage of the phrase comes from a series of articles (I’m not the only one who likes to write series!) in Real Clear Politics by Sean Trende where he makes the argument that Republicans needn’t get onboard with immigration reform in order to win future elections — they just need to appeal to those white voters who didn’t vote in the last election.

After the introduction from Hayes, Carney begins making his points. One of things I thought was worth noting was how Carney talked about Rubio. From what I’ve seen/read, many conservatives think that Rubio will have a good shot at being elected President in 2016. So, when Carney seemed to make points against Rubio, I was a bit surprised. On the whole, I really enjoyed the brief back-and-forth between Hayes and Carney — they’re both smart commentators. Most importantly though, I liked that it didn’t appear that the two of them were getting caught up in the ideological talking points. It seemed like they were really talking about the substance of what Hayes introduced in the segment. I wish that cable news was more like that segment and less like a game of one-upmanship to see who can scream the loudest to convince the viewers that, ‘they must be right because they were more angry.’

Note: If the interview (or this discussion) intrigued you, I highly recommend checking out the article from Tom Edsall on the New York Times’ Opinionator. He has a really good summary of the idea that Republicans should just focus on white voters.

Cell Phones and Driving: Do You Value Your Life?

A couple of days ago, I happened to be in the car when NPR’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show was playing. It just so happened that it was “Tech Tuesday,” and they were talking about new findings on distracted driving. Some of the findings would probably shock most people. For instance, would you have guessed that there is no (statistically) significant difference between talking on a cell phone with bluetooth and without bluetooth? I wouldn’t have. And, in fact, part of me thinks that the study maybe wasn’t designed optimally for testing the hypothesis, but I didn’t read the journal article.

One of the more interesting parts of the conversation was when one of the callers brought up the point about having cell phones automatically “lock” themselves when the car is in motion. One of the guests pointed out that this is already out there. She mentioned that there were apps that would “lock” the phone if the car is in motion. Then, Kojo brought up the point about passengers in the car — would they still be able to use their phones in the car? At this point, the guest then explained that getting around the “locked” phone is not too difficult.

After listening to this exchange, I realized that car safety (ala cell phones) is a choice. That is, it’s a choice by the driver. It’s probably not possible to completely legislate away a person’s ability to use their cell phone while driving (meaning: it likely wouldn’t hold up in court), so then it becomes a choice for driver. Does the driver want to increase their chances of causing an accident? Because that’s what happens when a driver decides to use their cell phone while driving. They’re increasing their chances of causing (or being in) an accident. To take this down a psychological tangent, it’s possible that they don’t value their life (as much as the next person) and so they’re willing to take this kind of risk.

As I got out of the car and began walking to my destination, my thoughts floated back to the 2009 book, Nudge (I think I’ve mentioned it on here before). I was trying to think of a way that we, as a society, could help nudge people to make better choices when behind the wheel. Is there some way we could nudge drivers away from using their cell phone?

Does the Culture of Hockey Encourage Over-Aggression?

Last night, I happened to catch a short video clip from CBC that was rather appalling. I’m unable to embed the video, so you can watch it at the link above. The gist of the video (and article) is to tell the watcher/reader what happened in a Minor hockey game in Ontario, Canada.

One player was skating down the ice and stopped in front of the opposing team’s goalie. Upon doing this, he “sprayed” the opposing goalie. If you’re not familiar with skating (on ice), when you come to a stop, sometimes, the ‘snow’ that has accumulated on the ice will be kicked up. After the player did this, one of the opposing player’s took exception and proceeded to start roughing up the original player. The original player did not fight back and, as you’ll see from the video, took a pretty harsh beating.

The story explains that the parents took the video to the league and the police are investigating the matter as to whether there should be charges pressed.

Now, I’d like to talk a little bit about the culture of hockey and maybe broaden that to sports in general. As I was born and raised in Canada, I’m familiar with the hockey culture. Though, I never played in any organized hockey, so I won’t ever be able to fully understand the experience. Nonetheless, I still think that, as a former athlete, my opinion should carry some weight.

This player’s actions are unacceptable. The original player simply sprayed the goalie and as punishment, he was given a broken nose and a concussion. Does anyone not think that the opposing player went a little too far when he was pummeling the original player? This scenario reminds me of an episode of The West Wing. In fact, it was the 3rd episode in the series: “A Proportional Response.”

In that episode, Syrian operatives blow up a plane that’s carrying Americans (and the President’s personal physician). The President’s military advisors come up with a plan that they call, “a proportional response.” The President doesn’t like it because he doesn’t think it’s going far enough. He wants to do more damage to the country that’s responsible for those American deaths and demands to see a plan that will take out the airport in Syria’s capital city, Damascus. There’s more to the story (isn’t there always with an Aaron Sorkin script?), but at one point, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says to the President’s Chief of Staff, ” he will have doled out five thousand dollars worth of punishment for a fifty buck crime.”

Among other things, this is what it appears to me that happened in this minor league hockey game where one player committed a five dollar crime and ended up with a five thousand dollar punishment. Of course, I’m not saying that the player shouldn’t have stuck up for his goalie, but maybe he went a little overboard? And it’s certainly not the first time a player has gone overboard in sticking up for his teammate. It’s been almost 10 years since the infamous Bertuzzi-Moore incident.

I have to think that the “punisher” had he knew what was happening, wouldn’t have wanted to give the original player a broken nose and a concussion. I have to think that, because this happened, somewhere as part of the culture, this is okay. Not necessarily that it’s okay to inflict such physical damage to a player, but the culture of over-aggression is normal and maybe even lauded. Again, as I said, I never played organized hockey, so I can’t be certain of hockey culture in the dressing room or on the ice. As a spectator, I know that this isn’t something I want to see. I understand the logic and reasoning behind having enforcers on a hockey team, but I wonder what the NHL would look like without enforcers.

Is Sunshine Really the Best Disinfectant: Edward Snowden, PRISM, and the NSA

In keeping with the theme from yesterday’s post about Edward Snowden and the leaks about PRISM and the NSA, I thought I’d share something that I was reminded of when I was watching some of the coverage of it earlier this week. Before doing that though, if you haven’t, and regardless of your position on whether he should or shouldn’t have done this, I would urge you to read the article and watch the clip about him in The Guardian.

A couple of days ago I happened to catch a segment of Morning Joe where one of the journalists who broke the story about the NSA, Glenn Greenwald, was on. The clip is about 20 minutes and there’s an interesting exchange between one of the hosts and Greenwald. The part I’d like to highlight today happens towards the end of the segment. I think it was Willie Geist who asked the question and included the phrase, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” in reference to getting the information about these programs out in the open. This reminded me of a paper I wrote for a Public Administration class and I thought it might be useful if I detailed some of the research I used for that paper.

The idea that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” with regard to public administration stems from the idea of government reform. In a 2006 paper in Public Administration Review, Paul C. Light defined four tides of government reform:

All government reform is not created equal. Some reforms seek greater efficiency through the application of scientific principles to organization and management, whereas others seek increased economy through attacks on fraud, waste, and abuse. Some seek improved performance through a focus on outcomes and employee engagement, whereas others seek increased fairness through transparency in government and access to information. Although these four approaches are not inherently contradictory — and can even be found side by side in omnibus statutes such as the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — they emerge from very different readings of government motivations.

These approaches also offer an ideology for every political taste: scientific management for those who prefer tight chains of command and strong presidential leadership; the war on waste for those who favor coordinated retrenchment and what one inspector general once described as “ the visible odium of deterrence ” ( Light 1993 ); a watchful eye for those who believe that sunshine is the best disinfectant for misbehavior; and liberation management for those who hope to free agencies and their employees from the oppressive rules and oversight embedded in the three other philosophies. [Emphasis Added]

My point in sharing this article wasn’t to say that the idea that sunshine is the best disinfectant is good or bad, but merely to put it in context with some other ways of reforming government. You can decide for yourself which you prefer. In fact, there’s a handy table for differentiating the four:

The Four Tides of Reform

And one more interesting table that shows you how government reform in the US has changed since 1945:

Patterns in Reform Philosophy

The Question No One’s Asking in the Debate about Privacy and Terrorism

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or don’t read/watch/consume the news), you’ve probably heard about Edward Snowden and his decision to leak classified documents about a US government agency, the NSA, to the public. I thought I’d raise an issue that I haven’t seen raised or written, yet. In fact, I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen it raised. There have been plenty of Op-Eds (Brooks, Friedman, Shafer, Cohen, etc.) and columns (Simon, etc.) from many of the common people who write Op-Eds and columns about national security, but no one seems to be taking a step back and re-examining the question.

Most of what I’ve seen has the illusion of taking the step back and saying something to the effect of, ‘remember 9/11? That’s why we need programs like these to spy on those would seek to do us harm. It’s because of terrorism that we need these types of programs.’ Did you catch it? Did you see the underlying question that this line of reasoning assumes away?

Before I spell out exactly the point I’m trying to make, I think another analogy may help. Have you ever been sick? Of course you have, what a silly question. Upon being sick, ill, or injured, you’ve probably had to visit a doctor. When at the doctor, you were probably asked about your symptoms. After a few minutes, the doctor likely gave you a prescription or recommendation for something that would help you take care of your symptoms. As the symptoms were the thing that was bothering you, taking care of them probably seemed like a good idea to you, too.

Unfortunately, treating the symptoms won’t solve the problem of you being sick. It’ll just make the symptoms go away, but leave the underlying issue! Maybe you got sick because you were too stressed out about a big project and so that compromised your immune system, thereby making you more susceptible to being sick. And because your immune system was compromised, not washing your hands after playing with your kids at the local park meant that those germs that remained on the swing from one of the other kids was able to take up residence in your body. So, giving you medicine to make your symptoms go away might be helpful, but it weakens your immune system slightly (as it’s not able to develop antibodies on its own to take care of what’s affecting your system) and you still have that big project to finish.

What’s the tie-in? Terrorism is a symptom. It’s not the cause. The kind of terrorism that’s trying to be prevented isn’t the kind of terrorism that happens on a whim. It’s thought out, it’s well planned, it’s premeditated. Actions like that come with a reason. There’s an underlying cause to that terrorism. What is it that the US has done to provoke “terrorism?” That’s not a facetious or rhetorical question, but I think that’s the missing question from this debate. That’s the question that needs to be debated in Op-Eds and in columns.

Cutting Salary to Show Solidarity: This Isn’t Empathy

A couple of days ago, there was news indicating that President Obama was going to return 5% of his salary, which amounts to about $17,000, as a sign of solidarity with those federal workers who’ve been furloughed. In case you’re not familiar with this situation, I’ll explain a little first.

In 2011, there was the debt-ceiling debacle. One of the things that came of that was the sequester. The sequester was supposed to be such drastic cuts to the federal budget meant as an incentive to make some sort of deal before the deadline. It wasn’t ever meant to happen, (at least that’s what politicians said publicly), and the date set for the deadline to make a deal (and begin the implementation of the sequester if there weren’t a deal) was January 2, 2013. As part of the New Year’s Eve tax deal, Congress pushed the start of the sequester to March 1, 2013, which is when it began.

As the sequester has a great deal of spending cuts, this has greatly affected some of the workers in the federal government. For instance, some workers have had to take furloughs — temporary unpaid leave. Companies (or the government) don’t usually use this unless there’s a need because of the budget situation. As an aside: on Chris Hayes’ new show (All In with Chris Hayes), he went into detail with one particular worker who has had to take furloughs and had a brief panel discussion about it. That brings us back to President Obama.

A couple of days ago, President Obama stated that he was going to return a portion of his salary to show solidarity with those workers who are having to take these temporary unpaid leaves. The President may have started it, but he’s certainly not finishing it. Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano are all showing similar signs of solidarity. So is freshman Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth. But this is not limited to Democrats. Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Mike Lee have both indicated that they will return some of their salary. I think all of this is well and good, but the one thing that irked me was how Lindsey Graham wrote about his decision on Twitter. (I should note, I don’t know if any of the other politicians have said made similar claims, as I just saw someone retweet Lindsey Graham’s commentary.)

After I saw this tweet, I went on a bit of a rant on Twitter that I’ll include below:

 

Let’s first start with the issue of empathy. People often confuse empathy and sympathy. I’ve written about empathy before:

Empathy is at the heart of the beginning of the solution to many of the world’s problems. When we empathize, we are able to recognize the emotions that another is feeling. At the root of compassion is empathy. [Note: sympathy is quite different from empathy. Sympathy is simply a concern for another’s well-being, where empathy usually refers to one sharing the same emotional state.]

I should note that the “note” in that quote actually comes from the post. So, now that we know what empathy means, let’s return to Senator Graham’s comment. He said he was cutting 20% of his pay to empathize with those furloughed. In order for Senator Graham’s actions to demonstrate empathy, it’d actually have to affect his life in the way that those furloughed are affected. For an example of this, scroll up in this post and watch the video I linked to with Chris Hayes talking to someone who is being furloughed. Senator Graham’s current salary for FY2013 is $174,000. If we take 20% away, that leaves him with about $140,000. Something else that’s important to this conversation is Graham’s net worth, which is now pegged at $1.5 million. I understand that politicians have to keep up two offices (one in DC and one in their district/state), but does anyone think that Senator Graham’s going to have as hard a go as thing with a $140K salary as the military serviceman who had to get a second job delivering pizzas?

This is not empathy.

~

As an addendum to this conversation, I wanted to include data about the current Congress’s net worth, but there doesn’t seem to be a list out there. However, I was able to find a list for all members of Congress in 2010. Some things of note: of 100 Senators, only 7 had a net worth of less than $100,000 and 24 had a net worth of more than $10,000,000. Of the 435 member of Congress, 81 had a net worth of less than $100,000 and 42 had a net worth of more than $10,000,000.

Imagine If the USA Went to War… and No One Cared

While the title is a bit provocative, it’s not completely unsubstantiated. Right now in the United States, some veterans have waited over 600 days to hear back about their benefits… SIX HUNDRED DAYS! That’s almost two years. I shudder when people make the improper analogy between governments and businesses, but can you imagine what would happen if a business waiting 2 years to tell its employees about their benefits claims? These soldiers aren’t even the ones that are coming home right now. Logic would tell you that the veterans that are coming home today wouldn’t have to wait as long as those that have come before them… wrong. The wait time is getting longer.

I was born and raised in Canada, so my cultural perspective on joining the military and going to war is a bit different from someone who was born and raised in the United States. Nonetheless, I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the subject and the American culture’s beliefs about war and soldiers permeate… everything. The “Support our Troops” campaign was long-adopted in the USA before it was in Canada. Not to mention the way that war is glorified in TV, movies, and video games.

Given all of this, I can’t understand how a country like the United States would not properly care for their veterans returning home. It’s unfathomable. People give of their time (and become soldiers) only to return from war zones with injuries — both physical and mental. Isn’t it the obligation of the country to then properly care for those people? Shouldn’t people be chomping at the bit to help these people. These people who risked their lives for — presumably — the country’s freedoms (or to help another country assert its freedoms). Note: I realize that the last couple of sentences may spark conversation about foreign policy and the US as interventionists overseas, so I wanted to acknowledge it in this side note and redirect to the main point of taking proper care of veterans.

Last night, Rachel Maddow had on the CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Paul Rieckhoff. He’s been on the program before, but last night seemed like a special interview. I’d urge you to watch it (couldn’t embed it on WordPress, so here’s the link: Veterans appeal to Obama to step in on VA backlog) and then do something about it! Tweet about it, email your member of Congress, email your Senator, call ’em, tell your friends, tell your family, shout it from the rooftops!

Know The Rules: Bench-Clearing Brawl at the World Baseball Classic

A couple of weeks ago saw the start of the World Baseball Classic (WBC). This is only the 3rd WBC, but it’s already proving to be quite enjoyable to watch and from what the players say, quite enjoyable to play. The World Baseball Classic is akin to the World Cup (of soccer/football) where countries compete to qualify for (and play in) a tournament against other countries — in baseball. This past weekend, there was a game between Canada and Mexico that erupted into a fistfight. Now, as a baseball player of many years, I can tell you that never have I been in a fistfight on a baseball field. So how did it happen?

In the WBC, there are 4 pools with 4 teams in each pool. Each team plays each other once and the top 2 teams advance. Pretty simple, right? Well, with mathematics, there’s a high probability that there will be a tie for 2nd (or 1st!) and there will need to be tiebreakers to differentiate between teams. The first tiebreaker is head-to-head. Meaning, if Team A and Team B have the same record at the end of the pool play, the winner of the game between those two would advance to the next round. If we included a Team C in that scenario (all three Teams have the same record), then it gets dicey. Let’s also say that Team A beat Team B, Team B beat Team C, and Team C beat Team A. Our first tiebreaker doesn’t work. So, we’ve got to go to the next tiebreaker — run differential (it’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but we’ll just call it this to make it easier). Basically, run differential is just what it sounds like — the difference between the number of runs you scored and the number of runs that were scored against you.

Okay, now that we’ve got the basic understanding of the rules, we can talk about what happened this past weekend. In Pool D of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, Italy beat Mexico in the first game. In the second game, Italy mercy’ed (beat by 10 runs!) Canada. In the third game, Mexico beat the USA. At this point, the standings were: Italy 2-0, Mexico 1-1, Canada 0-1, and USA 0-1. In the fourth game, Canada was to play Mexico. Going into the game, Canada had a -10 run differential because they lost by 10 to Italy. So, if Canada won the game, they knew they were going to have win by a lot (in case that the 2nd tiebreaker came into effect).

Cut to the 9th inning of the game between Canada and the USA. At this point, Canada was winning 9-3. They had the game solidly in hand. The first batter of the inning noticed that there was an opportunity to bunt and make it to first base — so, he did. The 3rd basemen didn’t like this and instructed the pitcher to hit the next batter! Let’s take a step back for a second.

In the way that baseball is normally played (without the imposition of tiebreakers), you wouldn’t a team to try to “run up the score.” Meaning, a player wouldn’t take the advantage that the Canadian player did when he bunted — this is considered ‘bush league.’ So, when the Canadian player bunted to reach first base, the 3rd basemen suggested to the pitcher what would normally be suggested — bean him. Now, I’m not condoning this as a response, but generally, this is how things go in baseball. However, because of the tiebreaker 
rules, Canada wasn’t trying to embarrass Mexico, they were trying to even out their run differential! Herein lies the problem — the Mexican player didn’t know the rules. After the Mexican player beaned the Canadian player, the benches cleared. When the benches cleared, a fist fight erupted.

This whole kerfuffle could have been prevented if the Mexican players knew the rules. I’m not writing this to place blame on the Mexican players for not knowing the rules. This post is meant to highlight what happens when you don’t know the rules of the game. More than that, we can broaden this to not knowing the rules of play (in business, politics, education, etc.). If you’re operating under the assumption that the rules are X, Y, Z, and the rules are actually Cup, Dog, Queen, then you’re probably going to miss something. More than that, when someone does something relating to Dog, you may get pretty upset expecting that the rules were X.

In short: Know the Rules.

Want a Pair of Google Glasses: Just Write a Convincing Essay

One of the co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin, was on stage at TED2013 talking about Google Glasses. It’s like a smartphone, but in a pair of glasses. If you haven’t yet seen Google’s latest promotional video, you’re probably going to want to check it out:

Cool, eh?

One would have to imagine that the possibilities for use are endless. Can you imagine putting these on athletes, say baseball players, and watching the gameplay from their perspective. Obviously, we’re a long way off from that (or are we?), but it’s fun to think about the potential uses. Anyway, in this post, I wanted to talk about something I read in an article about Google Glasses:

The company will sell the glasses for $1,500 each to people who write a convincing essay on what they will use the glasses for.

This is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Google is getting its customers to evangelize about its product and then ‘rewarding’ them by letting them pay $1,500 to buy the product. More than that, Google is crowdsourcing its customers for ways to market its product. By aggregating the best essays (and the themes of the essays), Google will see best how to market its product to other customers.

Canadians Really ARE Humble

Yesterday evening, Part 1 of Peter Mansbridge’s interview with Cardinal Marc Ouellet aired on CBC. I didn’t see it until this morning when the interview was posted online. While I think the interview is important (for those non-Cardinal watchers) to be introduced to who could be the next Pope, there’s another part of this interview that I think is important.

Partway through the interview, Mansbridge asks Ouellet the question that any good interviewer would ask: “Do you want to be Pope?” If I recall correctly, Mansbridge wasn’t that direct, but it was clear that was what he was asking. Immediately, Ouellet seems flabbergasted, his face flushes, and he dodges the question. A minute or two later, Mansbridge asks another question that gets to the same point. This time, he asks Ouellet what the important qualities that a  “Canadian” could bring to the job of being Pope. Again, Ouellet answers (in his manner, not his words) almost the same way he did the direct question.

Why am I saying all of this?

Canadians and Canadian culture, by their/its very nature, is humble. Ouellet’s got about a 50/50 chance of becoming one of the most “powerful” people in the world and he’s still over-the-top humble.

I’ve included Part 1 of the interview below. Part 2 airs tonight.