Playing Political Bingo with Boat People

A cross post for Global Voices: An upturn in the arrival of refugees to Australia by boat has brought tragedy and controversy. The issue of border protection that dominated the 2001 Federal election has re-emerged with extra venom. A refugee boat has exploded off the north west coast.Three people are dead, two are missing and more than thirty have been injured, some with very serious burns. Three members of the Australian Defence Force, which was towing the boat, are among the injured. Western Australian police say three people are dead and two are missing following an explosion on board an asylum-seekers' boat being escorted to Christmas Island this morning. Three dead, dozens injured after explosion on asylum boat ABC News Online 17 April 2009 Allegations that the fatal explosion was caused by asylum seekers have also revived the political storm surrounding the children overboard affair. Claims that fuel was deliberately poured over the small wooden fishing vessel before the blast will be the focus of inquiries by police and the Northern Territory coroner. Sabotage fear on boat blast The Age 17 April 2009 A political stoush has erupted with Opposition parliamentarians accusing the government of causing the increase in boat people and encouraging people smuggling through its changes to border protection. Bloggers are also taking off the gloves. Gary Sauer-Thompson at Public Opinion bemoaned the attempts to politicise asylum seekers again: Doesn't the old hang on. The Liberals are banging the drum about border security, bad asylum seekers, boat people and soft on security. It is just like a replay of the old children overboard affair with undercurrent of Asian hordes invading Australia because they read The Australian and realized that Rudd Government has gone soft on the processing of asylum seekers. The reality is that most asylum seekers arrive by plane, many are sent back, whilst the asylum seekers who arrive by boat are processed on Christmas Island. Children are treated more humanely, the so-called “Pacific Solution”, which had people sent to Nauru has been abolished and it has scrapped temporary protection visas, as well as reforming detention policy. banging an old drum Mark Thomson’s blog, Seeking Asylum Down Under, has a clear purpose: Yes, we remember! Blame the victims for their own plight, extract as much sensationalism out of the role of people smugglers, put words in the mouth of ADF personnel who cannot answer for themselves, and then whip up public sentiment against refugees. Throw in dollops of confected outrage over your political opponents complete lack of preparedness to face down the ‘threat' and you have the typical Lib's stock in trade response to the terrible plight of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. Oh, I forgot - then you set about making weak neighbouring countries complicit in policies that violate human rights! Human rights in Australia - the fear & smear Liberals are at it again over asylum seekers! Another progressive blog, Club Troppo, was more restrained: Yesterday’s “boat people” explosion near Ashmore Reef west of Darwin, in which 3 people were apparently killed outright and many more seriously injured, has eerie if obvious parallels with the “children overboard” saga of 2001 which helped John Howard to his third successive election victory. Returning to the present, there is a crucial difference between the situation the “children overboard” and “Tampa” asylum seekers faced and that of yesterday’s group whose boat apparently caught fire and exploded. The current group didn’t face being towed back out to sea, and they almost certainly didn’t face prolonged immigration detention while their protection visa applications were processed. In those circumstances, WA Premier Colin Barnett’s claims that the asylum seekers deliberately doused their vessel and the surrounding waters with petrol doesn’t seem to make sense. There must be more to it than we’re being told, unless these particular asylum seekers simply hadn’t heard that the old Howard government “towaway zone” or ”lock ‘em up offshore and throw away the key” policies were no longer operative. There’s a lot more to be told about this story. The old explosive asylum story reignites The alternative view was put strongly by Andrew Bolt, newspaper columnist for Rupert Murdoch’s Herald-Sun and perhaps Australia’s best known and controversial right-wing blogger: AT least three boat people now dead. So how much “kinder” do Kevin Rudd’s policies seem now? John Howard was supposed to be the cruel one, said Labor. It was Howard when Prime Minister who put in the Pacific Solution, whisking illegal boat people to Nauru, rather than land them here. Too harsh, said Kevin Rudd, and scrapped it. It was Howard who cut the legal circus that allowed illegal immigrants to play the system for years, until we gave up trying to deport them. Too harsh, said Rudd, and laid on lawyers. It was Howard who cut the lure of benefits and then imposed on illegal immigrants the imminent threat of return. Too harsh, said Rudd, and scrapped the Temporary Protection Visas, giving all illegal immigrants—including well-heeled ones fleeing no particular danger—instant access to permanent residency with all the tempting benefits and rights. Too harsh, said Rudd. And enlightened opinion cheered. Now we were nice. Really? So how nice is it to have now lured at least three people to their deaths? To have not one child overboard—oh, what a confected scandal that was—but a whole boatload of 49? Yes, indeed. This is a “people overboard” scandal, but for real this time. People overboard, and the kindness than kills Possum Comitatus at Pollytics did not show any restraint when condemning Bolt’s post: … there is no larger magnet for outright bigotry than asylum seekers. With refugees it’s literally Moral Panic Bingo; Islam, terrorists, race, xenophobia – refugees are the ultimate canvas upon which the shallow end of the public affairs pool can paint their own preferred pathological animosities. If you don’t believe me, then undertake an experiment: Write down 9 favourite themes of the small minded nutjob set, not specifically about any given thing, any old generically bigoted idiocy will do – then pop on over to the usual creatures that prey on such feeble minded antipathy and read the comments sections on any post they have about asylum seekers. Every time one of your predicted themes is mentioned by a commenter, mark it off - you won’t have to read far before you’ll be shouting “Wingnut Bingo!”. Of all the Wingnut Bingo halls in the land, there is none bigger than that hosted by The Undescended Testicle.* He started yesterday with his sneering innuendo, of asylum seekers being “Lured by Rudd to their deaths?”. There really are no boundaries that Bolt’s hysterical Rudd Rage refuses to cross – although the only thing really being “lured” here are miscreants by the bucketful into Andrew Bolt’s site –herding the dross of the internet into News Ltd advertising by playing up to their shallow and spiteful little fantasies. Why Andrew Bolt should be Sodomised with a Calculator – Part 142 Not the usual sort of criticisms we expect from a statistician and psephologist. For his data analysis you’ll have to visit Possum’s post. It appears that most of those on the boat were fleeing Afghanistan, a country where Australian troops are currently fighting the Taliban.

Mentoring Senior Faculty & Post Tenure Review?

So in my continuing obsession about faculty mentoring, I've decided to shift focus to senior faculty mentoring for this week and see if I can solicit any views/advice about what happens to mentoring and career planning post-tenure. I think as a group we law professors tend to focus on pre-tenure mentoring because the path to obtaining tenure can be so tricky and the costs of failing to obtain tenure so great. And I'm not suggesting here that we have all done as much work as we should have in developing effective strategies for mentoring pre-tenure folks - or for that matter, even non-tenured folks such as many clinical and writing faculty. I just thought it might be interesting to think a little bit about post-tenure mentoring programs and strategies, see if they even exist and, if so, whether we could obtain some trickle-down effects that would help junior faculty. Or vice versa ie if these programs don't exist, could we learn something useful about junior faculty mentoring that we might apply to senior faculty mentoring? In particular, I'm interested in whether schools with post tenure review use that as a form of mentoring/career development for senior faculty, or rather regard it is a shaming mechanism to avoid deadwood in the top ranks? My school doesn't have a formal system of post-tenure review although we have talked about it on occasion. We have never been sure what form it should take other than an annual review meeting with the dean(s). Nevertheless, I'm sure there are issues that we all face post-tenure about career development on which we could use plenty of advice from our colleagues. Questions I've been thinking about recently include: What kind of writing should post-tenure folks be doing? Should it be predominantly the same as pre-tenure writing or is it good for us and our institutions to do all those things we may have been discouraged from doing pre-tenure e.g. shorter, solicited symposium articles? op-eds? blogs? joinly authored work? books? Should we be more experimental with our teaching post-tenure, and in what ways? Co-teaching? Trialling new technologies? Joint projects with classes at other schools (either domestically or internationally)? More interdisciplinary teaching? AND of course the big professional development question. Where do we see ourselves individually in 5-10 years? Presumably some of us would like to move up the ranks to a higher-ranked school or perhaps to a school where there are greater opportunities for developing things we are interested in? Some of us may be guilty of toying with the idea of trying our hand at administration - associate deaning, center development, or moving on to some central university committees perhaps? Some of us may be looking to have experiences in organizations or boards outside of our home institutions and may need advice on how to get connected. So what do senior faculty do about these things? Presumably the obvious trick is to identify one or two good mentors early on who can help and assist throughout a career with these kinds of issues. Of course, many people are in the situation where they are the only person or one of only a few people at their institution in a particular area - so for advice about external issues, they will have to find outside mentors. And, on the other side of the coin, how do we tenured folks feel about mentoring our more senior colleagues? Presumably most of us feel obliged (and hopefully delighted and inspired) to mentor tenure track people. But how seriously do we take the obligation to mentor each other post tenure? Again, I don't really know - just interested in how people feel on this question and what strategies people are adopting to deal with these post-tenure career issues. Are there formal structures in place or are informal structures the norm? Would it be better if we had more formal structures? And should the role of post-tenure review (where it exists) be more of a mentoring exercise or merely a check that senior folks are still being productive. In other words, are these programs prescriptive (eg "When are you going to write your next article and what will it be about?") or more collaborative (eg "Where do you see yourself in 5 years and what resources/help/advice do you need from the school and your colleagues to get there?")

New York's Finest in LA - 1977

It was 32 years ago yesterday and today, that The Ramones made their sophomore appearance on LA's Sunset Strip.They debuted at the Roxy in August of 1976, and in February 77, they headlined a New York's finest set of days at the Whisky a Go Go down the street with Blondie opening. Blondie headlined the previous two days, sharing the stage with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.Coincidentally, all three of those seminal 70s bands are in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame!These gigs showed me what Beatlemania might possibly have been like. My friends and I were excited and had been anticipating the double-header of these CBGB all stars for weeks, if not months.Not sure if it is "fun" being a superstar... but it seems that the blonde faction of that week in February 1977 at the Whisky a Go Go made it all the way to the top of the charts and made grand careers out of chart topping.

[Project] - Flex Developer at MTV Networks/Neopets

Location: Glendale, CA  3+ years experience in multimedia design, development, architecture & deployment of applications The position will require working closely with related technical design & development teams (including web development, database, application & systems) both domestically and internationally  This individual will tackle configuration and debugging tasks through issue isolation and deductive reasoning, understand technical service interdependencies, drive towards technical solutions for multi-tiered systems and support effective teams.  multimedia application and game design, development and integration of end-user digital products Field Expertise & Acumen (Background)The required Field Expertise & Acumen for this position include: Expertise in Action Script 2/3  Expertise in the Flex 2/3 Framework including creating custom components  Knowledge of User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design  Candidate must have experience with all software development life cycle phases (Project planning, requirements definition, Systems design, Implementation, Integration and testing, installation, deployment, & Maintenance )  Object Oriented Programming; including all facets relevant to Action Script 3.0  Object Oriented Design; including solutions to new challenges using existing design patterns  Testing frameworks such as Flex Unit, and application micro-architectures such as Cairngorm and Model-View-Controller(-Service)  In relation to Flash; knowledge of CSS, HTML, JavaScript  Knowledge of UML a plus Multimedia design, development Technical Skills The Technical Skills sought for this position include: Multiplayer game development experience strongly preferred  Experience integrating with PHP (v4,v5)  Basic knowledge of design and typography Capable of leading peer-level developers Solid communication, documentation skills Capable of understanding business objectives and able to translate business goals into technical design Experience Level 3+ years experience in multimedia application and games production  3+ years of successful track record of commercial development experience This is a project position. To Apply: Send resume to mia.burgess@mtvstaff.com Click here to read the whole listing

Frazer Institute Seeks Better Measures of Policy Variables

George Gilder emphasizes that the importance of entrepreneurship to economic growth has been missed by many economists, in part because of the difficulty of measuring both the inputs of entrepreneurship (e.g., courage, persistence, creativity, etc.) and the outputs of entrepreneurship (e.g., happiness from more challenging work, greater variety of products, etc.). Unfortunately this is not just an academic problem, because economists' policy advice is based on their models, and their models focus on what they can measure. If they can't measure entrepreneurship, then policies to encourage entrepreneurship are neglected. Now the Frazer Institute, is seeking proposals to improve the measurement of important poorly measured policy-relevant variables. This initiative is in the spirit of the good work that the Frazer Institute has done in correlating measures of economic freedom with measures of economic growth. I have been asked to publicize this initiative, and am pleased to do so: Dear Art Diamond, The Fraser Institute is launching a new contest to identify economic and public policy issues which still require proper measurement in order to facilitate meaningful analysis and public discourse. We hope you can help promote this contest by posting it on your weblog, artdiamondblog. The Essay Contest for Excellence in the Pursuit of Measurement is an opportunity for the public to comment on an economic or public policy issue that they feel is important and deserves to be properly measured. A top prize of $1,000 and other cash prizes can be won by identifying a vital issue that is either not being measured, or is being measured inappropriately. Acceptable entry formats include a short 500-600 word essay, or a short one-minute video essay. Complete details and a promotional flyer are available at: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/programsandinitiatives/measurement_center.htm. Entry deadline is Friday, May 15th, 2009. Sponsored by the R.J. Addington Center for the Study of Measurement. Enquiries may be directed to: Courtenay Vermeulen Education Programs Assistant The Fraser Institute Direct: 604.714.4533 courtenay.vermeulen@fraserinstitute.org The Fraser Institute is an independent international research and educational organization with offices in Canada and the United States and active research ties with similar independent organizations in more than 70 countries around the world. Our vision is a free and prosperous world where individuals benefit from greater choice, competitive markets, and personal responsibility. Our mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government interventions on the welfare of individuals. An important source of Gilder's views, obliquely referred to in my comments above, is: Gilder, George. Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise: Updated for the 1990s. updated ed. New York: ICS Press, 1992.

Dumbo Octopus

lady icicle

Little Lady Icicle is dreaming in the north-land And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all a-glow; For the frost has come and found her With an ermine robe around her Where little Lady Icicle lies dreaming in the snow. Little Lady Icicle is waking in the north-land, And shaking in the north-land her pillow to and fro; And the hurricane a-skirling Sends the feathers all a-whirling Where little Lady Icicle is waking in the snow. Little Lady Icicle is laughing in the north-land, And quaffing in the north-land her wines that overflow; All the lakes and rivers crusting That her finger-tips are dusting, Where little Lady Icicle is laughing in the snow. Little Lady Icicle is singing in the north-land, And bringing from the north-land a music wild and low; And the fairies watch and listen Where her silver slippers glisten, As little Lady Icicle goes singing through the snow. Little Lady Icicle is coming from the north-land, Benumbing all the north-land where'er her feet may go; With a fringe of frost before her And a crystal garment o'er her, Little Lady Icicle is coming with the snow. - Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

Hate Radio

The pendejón pictured here used to have a mid-day talk show on Florida’s RealRadio 104.1. He billed his show as "the rantings and ravings of an ignorant backwoods motherfucker."Oh okay, those were my words. He said it was a "mixture of outrageous daily, biker attitude and personality, and right-wing style rants."His name is Edward Shannon Burke, got angry at his dog, got a handgun and threatened to shoot it last week. The gun then discharged, "accidentally" and the bullet went through the dog's leg and hit his wife, Catherine, on the side of her head, according to a report.Interesting visual, either the dog was on Catherine's head, or she was on the floor. Who can say since the incident happened about 10:45 p.m. Wednesday at the couple's home.In a recording of Burke's 911 call, he tells the dispatcher he was playing with a gun that he didn't know was loaded, and it went off. He says the bullet struck the side of his wife's head. Catherine was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening. The dog lost her tail and could lose a leg.The pendejón has been charged with two counts — aggravated battery with a weapon and animal cruelty. However, he was not released from jail because his arrest was a violation of his DUI probation in Orange County. When Burke posted $5,000 bail on the probation charge, he was released. He was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet monitor.Now Catherine has filed for a restraining order.That 104.1 FM said Burke would not be back on the air should come as no surprise to his idiot following, but I'm sure it will.This entire sorry episode sounds like a bad country and western song.Speaking of ignorant, there's Michael Savage. He's a piece of work. He's hateful, ignorant, and scary and worse, he has his own talk show. If we were able to see what he looks like on the inside, the unevolved image to the right is what we would no doubt see. That I know someone that looks like this does not make me happy...however, I digress.Moving on...Savage has said things like, "Latinos breed like rabbits," "Muslims need deporting" and as for autistic children, "in 99 per cent of cases it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."Now, as a result of his ignorant blather he's found himself on a list with 15 other people who, according to British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, he has "fomented hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way" as to cause violence if they were allowed into the country." In other words, they're undesirables.Despite what the British Government might believe, this slug is pissing and moaning that he's been lumped together with a neo-Nazi and a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard. As a result, he claimed he will sue the Home Secretary for defamation by association. He might even suggest that his listeners not travel to Britain. This brings up another question, do any of them have passports?Democrats, Guantanamo inmates' lawyers, civil liberties campaigners, illegal immigrants (he calls them "brown supremacists"), feminists, Islamic groups and homosexuals - especially campaigning homosexuals ("anal rights" as he puts it delicately) - Savage lays into them all. And let's not forget the homeless, the Clintons, CNN, academics and any remaining liberals – America's enemies at home and abroad are everywhere, according to the Savage world view.He wasn't always the hatemonger that he turned into.He was born Michael Alan Weiner in the Bronx, New York, in 1942. His father was a "gruff and profane" Russian Jewish immigrant who sold antique bronzes and apparently passed on his political cynicism. His mother was a Roman Catholic Italian-American. Savage, who frequently makes jokes about Jewish celebrities for his largely Christian audience, rarely alludes to his ethnic origins. After being awarded a biology degree and seeking to emulate his hero, Charles Darwin, he moved to Hawaii in the 1960s where he earned master's degrees in anthropology and botany, traveling the South Pacific investigating the medicinal properties of plants.He became an expert on herbs and homeopathy, and wrote 18 books about it, including one in which he advocated the use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes. He also wrote one about the importance of being a good steward of our environment and wrote about our "plant allies."At some point during the 1980s, the self-proclaimed "Mr Nice Guy Nutritionist" started to turn into "Mr Nasty Guy Broadcaster."Either he's simply chasing ratings, or he really is a bigoted asshole who believes the sewage he spews. Your call.

PR Pitching and Blacklists

In all this tempest in a teapot over Gina Trapani's Wiki - PR people are ignoring a few basic facts: it was her personal email address; it's intrusive; PR is still not training; junior staff is not being supervised ... the list can go on and on.I think I've pitched LifeHacker once in my career - and pretty sure I used the tips@lifehacker.com email address. Eh, I can't remember, but odds are I did ... because I'm sure that list is still being used, and the old firm isn't on the Wiki. Bondage TeapotOriginally uploaded by publicenergy. But, you know, one of the problems with PR is that we rely too much on technology. We are not dialing phones like we used to, so are missing out on the development of real face-to-face conversations and relationships.So, I'm going old school. I've hired a former FBI agent. He used to be deep undercover in the mafia, and went by Johnny. He's digging up records for me - all legally, of course, with no pre-texting - for cell phone numbers. None of this wimpy work phone crap, though: I'm going hardcore and getting personal mobile phone numbers.Because, when I call, I want to be able to reach the person immediately. No voicemail (like reporters return calls, snort). Just direct connects.If this does not work, there is always showing up at the homes. That's the next step - popping over for breakfast or dinner (no pork, please, I'm Jewish). We'll get those meetings, and we'll get that coverage ... because I'm going that extra mile.That's just how I roll.

Can You live a Quality Life with Chronic Pain?

Are you living with chronic pain?Being sick is unavoidable, especially life threatening sickness. As much as you want to be present with the people you love but your constant aches often interfere with your ability to do just that. Being in that painful situation, the best option maybe is the need to change your life in many dramatic ways, listen to your body. You need to find a comfort zone within your life to save your sanity while you live a quality life with chronic pain. Focusing on the pain will deter you from focusing on what you can do and appreciate your life.

Business this week

Pundits continued to ponder the communique issued by the members of the G20 at the end of their summit in London. The agreements main points include a promise of more money for the IMF, taking its funding to $750 billion; an increase in countries access to Special Drawing Rights, the IMFs synthetic currency; a promise to crack down on tax havens; and the establishment of a Financial Stability Board. The G20 members also committed themselves to supporting $250 billion-worth of new global-trade guarantees and gave assurances they would put a freeze on new protectionist measures. See article Ford announced that after a successful debt-for-equity swap programme it had reduced its outstanding automotive debt by $9.9 billion, from $25.8 billion at the end of last year. General Motors and Chrysler are negotiating with their lenders and bondholders to reduce their debt in order to avoid bankruptcy. ...

Post and Courier learns of Cape Fear deal

Four days after federal regulators closed North Carolinas Cape Fear Bank and approved Charleston-based First Federal to take over the failed institutions eight locations, The Charleston Post and Courier got around to writing about it. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Cape Fear Bank on Friday and immediately announced that the branches would reopen under the First Federal moniker Monday morning. The move is significant for First Federal because it represents a new market for the thrift, one of South Carolinas largest financial services companies. So while The State, Rock Hill Herald, Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer, Myrtle Beach Sun News, Hilton Head Island Packet and other papers in the Carolinas and the nation ran the story on their websites the day it occurred, the hometown P&C got around to it when it was good and ready. The otherwise mundane Post and Courier story did include this illuminating paragraph: The transition has gone smoothly, said Dee Bee Wright, First Federals vice president of investor relations. The employees have been extremely helpful. Theyre really a great group of folks and easy to work with. The Cape Fear folks probably realize theyre lucky to have jobs after last weeks train wreck, even if it wasnt their fault. Did anyone expect that given todays economy they were going to be surly and uncooperative when new management started calling the shots?

Messenger, shot

Accounting rules are under attack. Standard-setters should defend them. Politicians and banks should back offIN PUBLIC, bankers have been blaming themselves for their troubles. Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone else: the accounting standard-setters. Their rules, moan the banks, have forced them to report enormous losses, and its just not fair. These rules say they must value some assets at the price a third party would pay, not the price managers and regulators would like them to fetch. Unfortunately, banks lobbying now seems to be working. The details may be arcane, but the independence of standard-setters, essential to the proper functioning of capital markets, is being compromised. And, unless banks carry toxic assets at prices that attract buyers, reviving the banking system will be difficult.On April 2nd, after a bruising encounter with Congress, Americas Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rushed through rule changes. These gave banks more freedom to use models to value illiquid assets and more flexibility in recognising losses on long-term assets in their income statements. Bob Herz, the FASBs chairman, decried those who impugn our motives. Yet bank shares rose and the changes enhance what one lobbying group politely calls the use of judgment by management.

Third Inaugural

Thank you for your kind attention. Mr. F.W. Thomas is hosting one more thrilling evening of readings, artistic display and song before he leaves for his summer vacations in parts unknown. The pleasure of your company is kindly requested. This is the last edition of the F.W. Thomas Performances until Sept. 18, so please come and soak in elevating proceedings as if it were your last night on earth, because in many ways, it will be. This event will again occur at the Warehouse Theater on Monday June 12 at 7:30PM. Admission is $3. The Warehouse Theater is located at 1017-1021 7th Street NW. It is a short and not altogether unpleasant walk from the Chinatown/Gallery Place Metro. Phone is 202 783 3933. The June 12 event will feature:Andrew Beaujon, managing editor of the Washington City Paper and a former senior contributing writer for Spin will read from his new book, "Body Piercing Saved My Life."Josh McIlvain, a singer, author and songwriter living in New York City, where he performs his own compositions under the mysterious and alluring name of Sex Cop, will be singing songs. He maintains a MySpace presence here.T.M. Lowery, cartoonist, artist and creator of the Skeleton Kids will present more hilarious items from his illustrated personal journal and offer advice to the lost and lovelorn. See his work here.Matthew Summers-Sparks, humorist and short story writer whose work has been published in The New York Times, Mississippi Review, McSweeney’s, reading stories. The F.W. Thomas Performances will be hosted and introduced by yours truly, Adam Mazmanian, a writer living in D.C., a contributor to the Washington City Paper, and who was voted by his high-school graduating class as "Most Likely To Serve As Spectral Conduit for the Ghost of a Minor Nineteenth-Century Writer." The series is named for F.W. Thomas (1811-1866), the attorney, novelist, satirist, polemicist, poet, journalist, government employee and a dear personal friend of Edgar Allan Poe.Thanks as always to Miss Katie Lederer, official acting amanuensis and subaltern to the estate of F.W. Thomas. And thanks also to Olsson's Books & Records, who will be acting as our Bookseller of Record in our never-ending quest to move units.

Design is an island

If design is responsive motion in a space of all possible designs, then some designs are acceptable and some are not. Designing, then, is like walking an island. As long as you don’t get your feet wet, the design is okay. (This is a visual way of describing design as an optimization problem, but I’ll stick with the metaphor because it turns out to be surprisingly apt.) The “water line” in design isn’t fixed and rigid. Just as tides change the sea level, tides affect what is an acceptable design. The holiday season is high tide for many retailers. Designs that are acceptable at other times of the year break down in the 10% of the year when you do 50% of your business. Changes that are acceptable in February or March introduce unacceptable risk in October and November. If you are moving from one design to another in safe steps, it may be acceptable to get your feet wet temporarily as long as you don’t drown when the next tide comes in. Changes introduced during less stressed times such as overnight fit this picture. On the other hand, if you don’t have less stressed times, then your options for moving from one design to another are reduced. These constraints on design change become constraints on the design. Climbing higher on an island requires effort, just as improving designs require effort. If you are above the waterline and in no danger, further investment in design may be money better spent elsewhere. I cringed a bit as I wrote this, as I like leaving designs as clean as possible. Even then I only climb the peak I’m on, refining the design for the current set of requirements. I don’t seek out the highest peak on the island, or in the world. This mountain may be good enough for a year, or even forever. If the sea level is high enough there may only be a single island, a single family of designs that makes sense. More often, though, design is an archipelago, with contrasting islands shouldering into the open air. For example, SOA and REST may both work for a distributed application. Rising waters in the form of higher performance, reliability, or a changing programmer community might drown one or the other option. Many of the gentlemanly discussions about SOA and REST seem to rely on hypotheticals, “Yes, you idiot, but if the water level rises 25 meters your option will clearly be under water.” It would be more productive to characterize the aspects contributing to sea level and discuss ways of safely moving back and forth. Some have proposed the metaphor (or more than metaphor) of attractors for design. Acceptable designs for a particular set of constraints seem to cluster around a few “styles”. I don’t have the background or time to expand on this now, but it may be fertile ground for future exploration: why do designs cluster to form islands? Returning to our watery tropical paradise (as long as you are visualizing islands you may as well visualize pleasant ones), another common occurence in software development is an earthquake which jumbles and restructures the landscape. The one that struck me yesterday was testability. I had a just fine, dry feet design until I went to write a unit test. At that, the whole landscape changed. It wasn’t just that the water level rose a little higher. By introducing the need to unit test, whole islands sank like Atlantis into the sea. Other designs that had seemed impossibly remote rose up as acceptable alternatives. As you can see, this process is accompanied by a fair amount of smoke and heat. Decreasing downtime is another example of tectonic change in design. Reducing downtime by an order of magnitude requires not just a better design, but a different design. Increasing reliability changes the shape of the seabed. Before we return to the mundane world from the sun and surf I’ll stretch the metaphor one more bit. Changing in safe steps (a topic I see I need to address soon) sometimes requires moving underwater. When the current island starts to sink, moving to another island is necessary. This may require special preparations to move about underwater for a time. For example, if safe steps require reducing the efficiency of servers, you might bring in extra servers to handle the load while taking the steps. Moving to another island (escaping a local maxima) often requires making a design worse in various ways–increasing duplication, reducing efficiency, making code harder to understand–before it can be made better again. If you can leap from island to island, so much the better, but prudence dictates safe steps in most circumstances. Given the prevalence of tectonic activity in software development, some underwater travel is inevitable. Better to prepare for it and limit the amount of time spent breathing from a tank than spend exponential effort erecting a tower on a platform on a (soon to be former) mountain. Being prepared for both overland and underwater travel is the best preparation for software design success. I am looking for sponsors for the Responsive Design Project. If your organization would like early access to results, workshops, reading groups, and the karma that attaches to those who fund Good Works, please contact me.

Yellojkt At The Newseum

One of the many interactive features to do at the Newseum (when I'm not stalking Maureen Dowd or sneaking up on George Snuffleupagus) is the Be A Reporter station. They have a whole area with a bunch of green screens where you can make your own news video. Some of the scripts are blander than others. This one for the White House backdrop was actually very timely when I made it two weeks ago. Stevie Wonder had just been honored by President Obama. Unlike a lot of video kiosk type souvenir gimmicks, this one is pretty reasonably priced. After making the video, you can get a 4x6 print of a screen capture with a link to the video. I've downloaded mine and then uploaded it to YouTube, as a lot of people have. As a Press Pass member at the Museum, I get unlimited takes at the video booth. While I read the script verbatim this time, the temptation to monkey with the text is nearly irresistible. Maybe next time.BlatantCommentWhoring": What news story should I cover next time?