The problem here is that the Republican strategy of holding out for total surrender is working just fine. They had an interesting theory that if you refuse to cooperate with efforts to make the country better, things won’t get better and the out-of-power party will benefit. The theory appears to be true.
Matthew Yglesias hits the nail right on the head.
One of the key pillars of libertarian orthodoxy is that foreign aid is bad. Tyler Cowen sets his readers straight:
I still believe that foreign aid does not raise economic growth rates, on average. But aid can alleviate human misery, such as when a visiting doctor gives vaccines or hands out medicine. (In fact per capita income may fall, as a result, if some “weaklings” are kept alive.)
I also believe that the U.S. military can make a huge difference in the immediate aftermath of catastrophes.
Imagine U.S. troops liberating Buchenwald. Would any commentators say the following? “Don’t give him that blanket, sell it to him!” “Hey buddy, get a job!” “Moral hazard: they’ll just go get captured again.” etc. I don’t think so.
I have a habit, some would call it a bad habit, of fixing bugs whenever I see them, usually without ever filing a case in the bug tracking system or telling anyone that I found the bug at all. Usually this happens when I’m reading through code I’m not ostensibly working on. When I see bugs, I fix them. Someone with fewer battle scars than I have may think that’s a great habit and that there’s no need to apologize. Here’s why I should always file a case, even if I fix the bug right then:
Update: Be sure to check out frequent commenter Stan Taylor’s follow up post on this topic.
You can add oysters to the list of ocean dwellers that humans are wiping out by way of our stomachs and unwillingness to preserve their habitats. The good news is that not only is oyster farming sustainable, it is actually good for the environment.
This is a good time to mention the Monterrey Bay Aquarium guide to eating seafood. I use the iPhone version. Having reviewed the whole thing, here’s the basic upshot. If you stick with fish or shellfish farmed in the United States, you’re probably in the clear. Most wild seafood and nearly all seafood farmed overseas, especially in Asia, is a bad choice. Oh, and if you still eat bluefin tuna (also known as the stuff they make sushi out of), you are part of the problem.
Web developers have hated Internet Explorer 6 for a long time. If you design Web sites or write Web front end code, you know all too well how much work it is to support IE6 on all but the simplest Web sites. What we’ve recently learned is that IE6 is much more insecure than its successors, and now Microsoft admits that IE6 has security holes that they cannot fix.
Getting rid of the last vestiges of IE6 is going to require a three pronged attack. IT departments that still require it are going to have to be educated on the security risks of sticking with it. Or, more likely, the executives who have the power to tell the IT department what to do are going to have to be educated. I imagine that in the near future, we’re going to see a lot of IE6-remediation work. Web applications that support only IE6 are going to have to be upgraded so that IE6 can be abandoned.
Users who haven’t upgraded due to indifference are going to have to be made to suffer. Web sites need to start dropping support for IE6. When sites like Facebook and YouTube no longer support IE6, those users will upgrade Internet Explorer or find another browser.
And finally, Microsoft is going to have to take more steps to induce users to upgrade. Microsoft has waffled on phasing it out completely to placate companies with applications that depend on IE6, but it seems like today is the day that policy has to be revised.
I thought this was an interesting point from John Casasanta, a developer who who creates both Mac and iPhone applications:
For one, developing for the iPhone is a dream compared to developing for the Mac. Yeah, it’s Cocoa development for both iPhone and Mac, but many of the Mac SDKs are old and crufty compared to the shiny, new iPhone one. This means much quicker development time and greater programmer satisfaction. Many, many programmers I know never want to go back to Mac for this reason and usually cringe when they have to.
Oh, and there’s the attention:
Another major factor is the “rock star” one… When you create Mac apps, you have little chance of having your apps in TV ads, Apple retail store promotions, WWDC promotions, on TV networks like CNN and CNBC, etc, etc, etc.
My favorite piece of writing by Martin Luther King is his letter from a Birmingham jail. I explained what I like about it last year on Martin Luther King Day.
If you’re interested in commemorating the day by volunteering (any time in the future), you can find opportunities with this widget, which, I have to admit, I think is pretty cool in its own right.
Yesterday I argued that while it’s true some people might benefit by having more of a tendency to better promote their work, they probably won’t be capable of doing so. My argument isn’t that it’s impossible to be more thoughtful about the decisions you make and choose to go against your nature. The problem is understanding what those choices are.
Let me give you an example. One of my coworkers got advice from a friend that she should always be nice to people at the gym. She responded that she’s always nice to everyone (which, in my experience, is true). Then her friend explained that she should be especially nice and friendly to people who work at the gym for marketing purposes. Guys at the gym who are interested in her will ask the gym employees about her, and it’s important to have a good reputation with them.
That had never occurred to her, and never would have occurred to me, either. But it’s the sort of thing that people who have an instinct for marketing think about. So it goes beyond deciding to market yourself, it’s about having a sense for what marketing yourself entails. My theory is that it’s difficult to develop that sense if you don’t already have it, but I’d be delighted to be wrong.
Here’s a reader challenge: let’s say you wanted a specific person (who has their own blog) to be a regular reader of your blog, because you admire them and think they’d be interested in what you write. What would you do? Just keep posting my regular stuff and hope they one day notice me is a perfectly acceptable answer, but I imagine there are people who are more creative than that.
Clay Shirky wrote a whole essay about chutzpah without using the word. In it, he argues that men tend to exhibit more of it than women do, and it prevents women (in general) from enjoying the success they otherwise might. Here’s the crux:
There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less. They will also end up in jail less, but I don’t think we get the rewards without the risks.
Tom Coates is somewhat disgusted:
Generally, it’s being viewed as a call to arms to create a new breed of women who are as self-important, self-promoting, shameless and arrogant as some of the worst (and most celebrated) men in the industry. This attitude is being viewed as the ‘way to get ahead’ for any individual wanting to make their mark in the world.
Both essays hit close to home for me. I don’t think of myself as someone who engages in self-promotion, and I am in the tribe that tends to look down on people who I see as self-promoters. I try to do my best, and if people notice and and come back for more, that’s great. If they don’t, I move on (occasionally with some bitterness). That’s how I was raised.
The problem is, when you decline to ask for recognition, you often find your work going unnoticed by people who would probably appreciate it. It’s easy to err on the other side and come across as a preening jerk, at least to people like me, other people don’t seem to mind so much, but most people who are averse to self-promotion rarely run the risk of going that far in the other direction.
Both posts are worth reading, but what I really wonder is whether adults can even recalibrate themselves on the self-promotion axis? At one end are people who go so far as self-promoters that not only do they brag about everything they can do, but they also brag about things that they can’t even do. On the other end are people who toil in obscurity, doing great work and waiting for someone to finally come along and notice and give them a pat on the head. But once your position on the axis is set, I believe it’s hard to change it.
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A blow to America’s self-image
George Washington was not a military genius, but his French allies were:
Frankly I like the version where George Washington was a civilian soldier who did the best he could against his habitually warlike enemies better, anyway. (Via Kottke.)