Category: current events

The Incompetance Mirror

I’ve been attentively watching the media tempest around the things the FBI and CIA missed before September 11th. It seems that we had all the clues and just didn’t put them together. There seems to be a lot of gnashing of teeth over this. The rhetoric is hip-deep and rising, and it amazes me. Knowledge management is an incredibly difficult concept to grasp, much less implement reliably. While things could have been done better, I don’t think crucifying Directory Mueller is going to help anything. From everything I’ve seen and read so far, he’s doing what needs to be done. He’s streamlining the processes of the Bureau, implementing better knowledge management and will probably fix it.

I’ve been thinking about how complex a knowledge management system would have to be to have figured out all of the things congress and the media were expecting this mythical system to figure out. The system would have to take data in many formats (wire taps, field reports, eye witness statements, satellite scans, etc), index it, compare it against all other documents in the system, find links between people, all their aliases, organizations, their leadership, membership, locations, etc and spit out usable results. It’s a massive task, one that from what I know of Government bureaucracy, hasn’t been built yet, and will take a long time to get done. I work at a very large company, and we don’t have a company-wide knowledge management system, even though I’m sure it would save us millions of dollars every year in saved effort and combined infratstructure. We rebuild the wheel over and over because we don’t know what the group next door is doing.

If big business, who actually keep track of the money they make and spend, can’t keep track of its own institutional knowledge, how can we expect the slow moving leviathan that is the government to figure this out overnight, or even in six months.

I hope the Government (and all their institutions public and secret) get the clue and come looking to the private sector and education to figure this problem out.

I’ve got some ideas, and I’ll probably talk about them some more later (and this would probably make more sense if I weren’t watching The Wire while trying to write this).

Usually, Salon leaves the depressing comics to Carol Lay. But, today, Keith gets in on the action.

Tom Tomorrow, my Chevy Blazer and I hate you. You make so much sense, yet, I am somehow driven to now drive more and more, driving over mountain roads, spinning out in wet parking lots and for some odd reason I want to drive into the ocean to show my car’s unique ability to navigate through wet sand and surf.

Sure I can. You just don’t have to do what I say. That’s the wonderful about this country. I have the right to think you’re an idiot, and you have the right to be one.

There’s an article in last Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine that is a perfect example of my new and developing worldview. If you don’t want to go read it, here’s a summary. Two deaf women, both of whom graduated from Gallaudet and are severely hearing impaired were had a child through in-vitro fertilization. The child turned out to be deaf, and that was fine with the parents. The article chronicles the birth of their second child, and their attempts to ensure the child would also be deaf. Now, I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, but I’m glad they have the right to do it, and why not, let’s just add in the fact that they’re a lesbian couple and are able to have kids.

This is a pretty extreme example of what I’ve been thinking about almost daily since September. There is a place for everyone. If you’re a gay deaf woman, there’s a community that will accept and appreciate you. That community is probably not in the Bible belt, but it exists. On the opposite spectrum, if you’re a homophobic Christian fundamentalist, there are places in this world where you’ll feel right at home. Those places probably don’t include San Francisco, or America’s liberal arts colleges. But they do exist. I’ve visited.

I’m pretty much OK with whatever people want to believe, as long as they don’t try to inflict it on others either physically or morally. I’m on a crusade of acceptance. You want to be a tatooed sailor, fine. You want to live in a cave with the bats and throw crap at the walls? Fine with me, as long as you keep it in the cave, and don’t start throwing it at me. I start to have problems when, and this is a word with a lot of baggage, zealots show up. I notice the “true believers” a lot more now. Whether they’re the Pro-Unix/Anti-Microsoft folks, the religious freaks who think that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their way of thinking should be wiped off the face of the earth, or even those in government who think that they’re God’s instrument to impose religious tenets as law – they’re all zealots, and I have a hard time listening to anyone who falls in that camp for very long.

If you can’t understand others’ opinions. If you aren’t open to the idea that maybe what you believe might not be as set in stone as you think it is. If you have the urge to hurt others just because they look, act, think, live differently than yourself. You just might be a zealot, and you may just need therapy.

Again, this is a work in progress, meant for revision. So, if you don’t agree with me, bring it on.

If this (warning: not happy stuff. detailed descriptions of chemical warfare against the Kurds in Northern Iraq – view Reid and James) is true, what can we do? Do we let it continue until they decide their chemical weapons are compact and potent enough to travel undetected they attack us here? Do we finally make up our minds that we won’t stand for government-sponsored genocide, and then do something about it?

We waited several years to get into World War 2, and even then, it wasn’t to stop genocide. We did nothing about Stalin, Pol Pot, or the genocide that occured in the Balkans until it was too late to save thousands of lives. We’ve done nothing about Northern Iraq except try to enforce “no-fly” zones. We (what do I mean by we? do I mean the UN, the US, me?) haven’t forced inspections. We’ve dropped some bombs on some suspected facilities, but Hussein has basically done whatever he pleases for ten years backed by lots of oil money and with no supervision.

I’m not sure what the solution is. After reading the accounts in the article, I want to bomb him. But will whoever replaces him be any better? Should we worry about the replacement when he’s still in power? Do we destroy the infrastructure and leave him there like we did the last time, or will he just rebuild and therefore we’ve only postponed the inevitable?

I think we have to go in, with out without Arab support. If the countries surrounding Iraq and in the Arab world don’t see the problem, there’s nothing we can do to convince them past what has already been done. This truly is a matter of national security – and I don’t mean the price of gas. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see my wife and son die in front of me, bleeding from their eyes, choking to death as their bodies convulse and seep out on the ground. I pray it never happens here, and I think we have enough proof that Iraq wants us destroyed and has been experimenting on its own people to find the most effective way to accomplish it. I would like to think I’m a reasonable guy, and anihilating Saddam, his Armies, his infrastructure and his weapons seems the most logical thing to do. The risk is too great and the evidence too strong not to act.

Am I wrong? I would love to hear from anyone on the topic… It makes me wish my cheapy little host supported PHP or any other scripting language so I could add comments. I need feedback on this one. I’ll post responses that I think coherently agree or disagree (and if I get a ton, I’ll post representative ones).

I promised earlier today that I would try to explain my views of the two big political parties here in the US (I say this because an odd amount of my traffic comes from outside the US). I’m going to try to explain it fairly simply, although that’s one of the problems. We have two major parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. As I get older and realize that I don’t agree with most of the things my parents tried to teach me about politics, I’ve been trying to find the differences between the parties. On the surface, they look an awful lot alike. They both take incredible amounts of money from corporations. They both seem to be bought and paid for on many issues.

To me, the differences come down to a couple things:

• Republicans are simple. For every problem in the world, there is a simple solution. The economy is in a slump? Let’s lower taxes for corporations and the rich to get it moving again! The airlines (or Savings and Loans or the defense industry) are in trouble because they’re horribly mismanaged? Let’s bail them out using taxpayer money, even though some of the companies we’re bailing out haven’t paid taxes in years! We need a new energy policy? Let’s talk to businesses because they obviously have everyone’s best interests at heart. I’m getting carried away here, but the more I see of the Bush administration, the less I like. From Cheney refusing to turn over the Energy Task Force documents (and now we see why – no meetings with environmentalists? How dare you?), to Bush’s handling of China and the Taiwan issue, to the handling of Israel and the Palestinians, it seems that the administration is incapable of handling complexity. I don’t remember this being a problem with Clinton. For all his failings, the guy was sharp.

• Democrats at least make it look like they care about the middle class. For all the people deluded enough to think that the Republican party cares about anyone other than their largest donors, you’re all crazy. Just look at their actions. They’re reducing environmental requirements on corporations left and right, covering up secret meetings with executives, not meeting with environmentalists and now imposing tariffs on foreign goods. Again, I don’t remember anything like this happening during the last administration. The Clinton Administration and the Democratic representatives at least maintained the appearance of caring for the common man. They met with consumer groups, environmentalists and at least made the effort. I’m not seeing the same effort now.

• Don’t worry, the Democrats suck too. Don’t think I’m going to leave the left out. They’re beholden to their big donors too. Unions are the heavies behind the Dems. The DNC also seems to be the party of “causes”. Groups with “issues”, like the environmentalists, Abortion rights activists, women’s groups, etc, all flock to the Democratic party. It can make them seem a little schizophrenic sometimes, and it becomes hard to join them if you have a problem with one of the pillar issue groups within the party. It also has the effect of moving the party to the middle, meeting a lot of moderate Republicans in the process, and watering down any single group’s position. Add to this the fact that the same corporations that donate to the RNC also fill the coffers of the DNC, there are also the same “who’s really in charge” questions with them.

I have to go with the Democrats for the moment, though. I have a thing for opposition parties anyway. Also, for the most part, Democrats don’t try to go for the easy answer. They’re willing to discuss the complexities of a problem and go for the painful solution. Republicans, as a party, don’t seem willing or able to do that. Now, if the whole party was comprised of John McCain, I’d be all for it. He seems like one of the only reasonable people within the party – and they’ve come close to pushing him out on several occasions.

It’s just so hard to decide when candidates are so “handled” now that it’s impossible to get to their real views on an issue. I would love to say that I could vote for someone because they were honest – but how do you know that now either? I have to go by the party, unfortunately, even if I don’t agree with everything. Now that the Republicans are in power, it’s now pretty obvious who’s in charge of the party. It ain’t you and me, and right now, that’s really all I need to know.

There’s more I want to say, and well, I should probably edit this. I’m sure I’ll come back to this topic again and again and again as I refine my point of view. It’s still kind of raw, and now I freely admit I don’t know everything and am still just trying to figure it out.

You know, in the old days, if you didn’t agree with the other side, you at least made the appearance of trying to hear both sides. I have a real problem with a completely pro-business administration. I mean, at least make it look like you care about the rest of us. Read if for yourself.