« Archives in March, 2005

Free Michael!

March 26, 2005 / posted in Otherwise Uncategorized / 1 Comment

OK, it looks like “Michael Jackson is going down”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/25/jackson.trial/. But it’s not his fault. It’s all of ours. Free Michael! He doesn’t know what he’s doing, we all made him coo-coo.
A basic concept in law is “not guilty by reason of insanity”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity+defense. To drastically oversimplify, if you don’t know the difference between right and wrong, you’ll be sentenced to mental health treatment, rather than being executed. Except in Texas.
So, did Michael molest those boys? Well, he sure acts like he did. I don’t mean that he looks guilty; I mean that he’s got sudden, unexplained flus and back pain. That’s typical of somebody who’s got a dissociative disorder and who has committed a crime when they (or, at least, their dominant personality) is not fully conscious. Somewhere, in the back of his head, Michael knows he did it, and that what he did makes him feel uncomfortable.
But did he know it was wrong? No, because we all spent the last 20 years telling him he should do just such a thing. As far back as I can remember — even in the _Thriller_ years — we all wondered, when will the Gloved One get some? Doesn’t he want to drink and do drugs, like everyone else?
Probably not! Michael probably drank as much, got high as much, and got as much action between the ages of 5 and 15 as any 3 of the people reading this entry have. By the time he told us that Billie Jean was not his lover, well, he probably meant that Billie Jean was not his lover because he was sick and tired of that shit and he wanted to spend his time on something important, like being the King of Pop.
So he distracted us by releasing rumors that said that he slept on a bed of pig fat, in a hyperbaric chamber. Well, that sure distracted us. We all concluded that Michael was weird, and, well, if he’d gotten caught drinking anything but Diet Coke the tabloids — and Tipper Gore — would’ve been all over him.
Then we forgot about the strange sleep rituals and started asking when there would be a Crown Prince of Pop. In what was probably a fit of hopelessness, or, perhaps, a breeding experiment, Michael mated with Elvis’s daughter. But we didn’t want Michael to simply have sex — and we didn’t really believe he was putting his wee-wee in her hoo-ha. So Michael had to go and get some woman pregnant.
But Michael didn’t want sex, or children; he’d done enough of that when he was 12. Instead, he wanted to have what he’d never had — a childhood that didn’t include touring and being beaten up by his father. So he created Neverland and had that! And he even did things with his kids that he wished people had done to him, like letting him hang out a hotel window and putting a towel over his head so he could be alone.
The problem was, now that Michael had withdrawn from the world, people around him saw an opportunity. So long as Michael was in the Neverland, both real and in his head, their gravy train would go on forever and ever. So Michael had to be robbed of grounding experiences. Neverland didn’t just host a few childrens’ parties anymore, it hosted children and their families for years at a time.
And how would Michael treat those children? Well, some amalgam of how he had been treated and how he dreamed a child should be treated. So there were the Neverland aspects, with the games and the fun and nothing you wouldn’t admit to your grandmother. But Michel had been raised in an environment with easy access to alcohol, sex and drugs. Why should these kids not have the same fun that Michael had? The fun nobody ever objected to when Michael was singing about his ABCs and his 123s?
There was nobody around to object now, either. Sure, there could be adult supervision of all of Michael’s play dates. Sure, there could be security video cameras. But both of these would, necessarally, ground Michael — and, if the erstwhile star became grounded, then he might realize he was broke and move to a condo in Hollywood and fire everyone but his publicist and a bodyguard.
So none of the people around Michael suggested he might behave otherwise with the children. And, after the first allegations of molestation, his entourage probably protected him even less — because now their free ride was really threatened. The sooner Michael forgot about the allegations, the better.
And we all loved it! We fought over whether or not he touched the boys. Half of us said he’d never do it, and sent kids to him to take advantage of his largesse. The other half said he’d do it for sure, and sent kids to him to set up the future lawsuits and payoffs.
Poor Michael. He doesn’t know how to behave as a five-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 30-year-old, or a 50-year-old. He shouldn’t be sent to jail for doing something nobody had ever told him was wrong or ever protected him from. Our society made him what he is today; we need to help him to be happy in himself for once. Free Michael!















Restore Terry Schiavo’s Rights!

March 21, 2005 / posted in Politics / 1 Comment

The case of Terry Schiavo, currently “playing itself out in the Federal courts”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/21/schiavo/index.html, is a sad one. I can understand the positions of both Terry’s husband — that her feeding tube should be removed — and of her parents — that Terry’s life should be prolonged. What I can’t understand is Congress’s need to involve themselves in this case. The involvement of the Federal and Florida Legislatures is a simple violation of both Terry and Michael’s rights, and a frightening violation of the seperation of powers enshrined in our Constitution. Per the decision of several courts, Terry should have her feeding tube immediately removed.
This is a weighty statement to make. As courts have said in the past, when there’s doubt, the decision must be made in favor of life. Even taking that into account, removing the tube is reasonable:
* It is both legal and ethical to remove life-prolonging treatment
* Terry has no hope for recovery
* Terry’s parents have been heard, Terry’s husband has been heard, and, to the extent possible, Terry has been heard
* A dispassionate decision has been made by a neutral party — the court — and has been upheld by higher courts
Schiavo’s case has moved beyond these reasonable, ethically- and medically-focused considerations, to be tried in the court of public opinion. The behavior of those who claim to support Terry has been execreable:
* The Schindlers, Mary’s parents, have repeatedly behaved unethically towards her husband
* The Florida and Federal Legislatures’ decision to intervene is, Constitutionally speaking, frightening
Let’s deal with each of these points in turn.
h3. Terry’s Feeding Tube Can Be Removed, Legally and Ethically
The Supreme Court decided, back in 1990, that it was legal for patients to express their wishes, in advance, that they did not wish to have their life prolonged by extraordinary means, and that it was also legal for hospitals and other care-givers to follow these expressed wishes. Further, courts have held that individuals’ wishes can be expressed through living wills or through their verbally-expressed wishes to those around them.
It’s also long been held that some adults can be guardians for other adults and minors, and that these guardians can act in the best interests of those whom they represent. Guardians have long been allowed to make medical care decisions for those they represent, and, more recently, have quite regularly been allowed to make the decision to continue or withhold extraordinary life-prolonging care.
So it’s legal to make this decision. But is it ethical? Well, one of the expert witnesses who testified in the original case that determined that Terry’s tube would be removed, yes. Father Gerald Murphy, a Catholic priest and expert on end-of-life care for the Catholic church, communicated the church’s position in “his sworn testimony”:http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/Testimony%20of%20Father%20Gerard%20Murphy.doc (warning: Word doc). The church draws a clear line between suicide and murder and simply allowing nature to take its course; terminating _extraordinary_ measures, after a long period of time, is not unethical.
h3. Medical Evidence Suggests Terry Has No Hope For Recovery
Terry’s brain has been destroyed by her heart attack and long incapacitation. Depending on what expert you listen to, she either has no cerebral cortex, or very little of her cerebral cortex remains. Her brain stem remains undamaged, and her behavior is “typical”:http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/12720.html of an individual showing only brain stem activity. Prognosis for this condition, after about six months, is extraordinarily poor.
But what about a miracle? As Father Murphy points out, God is omnipotent and omnitient; He doesn’t need us to feed Terry for Him to work a miracle.
h3. Her Parents Have Been Heard — And So Has Terry
A frequently-made argument is “let’s take a little time to hear every side of the case”, or “let’s make sure Terry’s parents have the chance to give their input.” Well, it’s been seven years, isn’t that acting with due patience? And Terry’s parents were heard; the initial order to extubate was given by a court that listened to the testimony of Terry’s husband, her parents, her brother and sister, and many experts, and, with no vested interests, made a “dispassionate decision”:http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder02-00.pdf.
Oh, and, as part of that process, the court did its best to hear Terry’s wishes. While her parents feel that Terry would have wanted to continue to live, the judge didn’t feel that this was a credible interpretation of Terry’s expressed wishes. The judge found that Terry had most likely expressed a wish to be kept alive through extraordinary measures when she was 11 or 12; more recently, individuals including her husband, her brother, and her sister all testified that Terry had expressed distaste for a life prolonged in this way. Unless one believes, against all medical evidence, that Terry has higher mental function, these are Terry’s wishes, and they’re being ignored.
h3. A Dispassionate Decision Has Been Made
Let’s return to the court’s decision. The procedure followed was pretty simple, and standard in cases in which a guardian and other interested parties disagree as to the best course of medical treatment — the two parties appeared as adversaries in court. The court, with no vested interest in either side, made a decision as to which of the two approaches would be best. The decision was “upheld”:http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/2dcaorder01-01.txt by an appeals court and the Florida Supreme Court “declined to review”:http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/summaries/briefs/01/01-559/Filed_04-18-2001_OrderDenying.pdf the case further.
During this time, two court-appointed guardians reviewed the actions of both Terry’s husband and her parents and found that both were acting selflessly, in what they percieved to be Terry’s best interests. These guardians had no reason to support either side, but they chose not to stop Michael Schiavo’s course of treatment.
h3. Her Parents’ Recent Behavior Has Been Unethical
Now we get to the more recent developments. Terry’s parents have moved their case — if they can’t win in court, they’ll try to win in public opinion. This is a tactic long used, for good and for ill, and is in no way unethical. One example is the “Freedom Riders”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders, an effort to move the fight against segregation from Southern courts to the public consciousness. As with many actions, the normative value here is determined by the specific manifestations of the public fight. Unfortunately, here, we see unethical behavior:
* Terry’s parents have suggested — not alleged in court, but suggested in public — that Terry’s husband beat her, causing her injuries. Terry’s husband has never been charged with beating her. Terry’s heart attack was found, in court, to have been caused by the effects of bulimia; the two doctors who were sued, and “from whom $2 million was recovered”:http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/Floridian/The_lost_lesson_of_Te.shtml, never alleged any spousal abuse, although, clearly, it would have been in their interest to do so.
* Terry’s parents have suggested that her husband is just trying to get her money. But Michael has passed up offers of over $1 million to walk away from this case, he passed up the chance to divorce Terry and take half of the recovery for himself; and, in fact, some have alleged that the initial falling-out came because the Schindlers asked for a part of the settlement. Certainly, at this point, there’s no money left, so why would Michael fight over it?
* Terry’s parents have suggested that her husband has not looked out for Terry’s interests. But, court records show, Michael is Terry’s most frequent visitor, he has very aggressively pursued the best care for her throughout her hospitalization, and he’s even become a Respiratory Therapist.
* Then there’s the video. We’ve all seen the pictures of Terry laughing and responding to stimuli. The problem is, as the court has stated, this behavior is a trick of editing. Terry appears to respond to a particular stimulus once, but, in the course of the entire tape, never responds again. Some limited vocalization, movement, blinking, even normal sleeping and waking cycles are normal symptoms of Persistent Vegitative State. The entire tape shows the expected, random, behavior. It’s disturbing, certainly, but no sign of higher brain activity. Should the edited tape have been used as a tool by Terry’s parents? Not if it didn’t show the full range of her behavior. Using the edited portion creates the desired effect, but fails to communicate the truth.
h3. The Florida Legislature’s Bills, and the Recent Act of Congress, Are Unprecedented and, Perhaps, Unconstitutional
Most disturbing are the developments of the last year and, especially, the last few days. First the Florida Legislature and, now, Congress, have attempted to change the outcome of this case. Clearly, the Legislative branch has the right to create or change law. What’s unprecidented is that in this case law is being created not because of changes in society or in values or in commerce or in other interactions, but to change the outcome of one single court case with which some members of the Legislature disagree.
Traditonally, the Legislature has made laws, the Courts have interpreted these laws in specific cases, and individuals have been able to rest confident that their circumstances and outcomes would be predictable, within these bounds. The Constitution separated powers this way both to provide predictability and to minimize the potential for abuse. Now the Legislative branch has, effectively, merged these powers.
We’ve all been traditionally protected not just by law but by Common Law, a set of cultural traditions built up over hundreds of years. It is exclusively the court’s job to apply and interpret Common Law. By including Common Law in our traditions, we ensure continuity and predictability. The Legislature is free to toss aside Common Law and, in fact, has done so here. So, what can we expect will be legal in the future? Well, that can change fast now. We can’t even expect our victories in court to hold up! Now that we know the Legislature will create specific laws to deal with the outcome of specific cases with which it doesn’t approve, how can we know what outcomes will be changed? There are no rules or precedent; any outcome can be changed, in ways inconsistent with other outcomes. The incentive for acting legally has been decreased, and the incentive for seeking influence has been increased.
For over 200 years, the United States has succeeded not least because of a system that maximizes freedom, liberty, and predictability. If you see a change in this system, you’re right. How the latest law will get past the Constitutional challenge is beyond me.
h3. So What Now?
Hopefully, this will all soon be resolved. If the Federal Court refuses to hear the appeal, then everything can end. I know I’m making a written “Living Will”:http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/forms.shtm, and you should too.















There’s Changes Being Made

March 20, 2005 / posted in Meta / No Comments

You may have noticed the changes made to this site: the ads and the (return of the) links box on the right. Nothing like blowing a little vacation on the blog!
The links box is back for a good reason: the Web is all about the links. I had a links box in the original version of this site, but had a hard time keeping it up-to-date and, besides, it was just a box of links to links. Now, it’s a spiffy scrolling box of links. And, yes, I read all of those sites regularly — at least once a week.
There’s only one catch to the links box — it’s only compatible with Firefox, IE 6+, and, probably, Safari and the latest versions of Opera. If you’re using one of the latter two browsers, please tell me of the links box is horribly broken. If you’re not using one of the abovementioned browsers, well, you should be. That includes you, Mac IE users. I used to be one of you, but now I use “a browser that doesn’t suck”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html. Coding for your browsers makes my life harder and limits the fun features that I can inlclude.
The ads were a harder choice. I want to make this a site full of, at least, moderately-engaging content. Ads can take away from that. Fortunately, Google’s AdSense program offers ads that are, at least theoretically, matched to the content on the page. Hopefully the ads will be relatively relevant and interesting; I know I’ve seen a few that have caught my eye.
Ultimately, the ads are here to make me money. As of the time of this writing, I’ve made $0.05. That averages out to… $1.50/month. That won’t quite pay for hosting but it’s actually not too far off what I’m paying. If I could make $2-$7/month, that would be great. $10 would be a small miracle. Seems achievable.
So that’s the changes. More coming someday, including:
* Spiffy month-at-a-glance archive pages, bringing together moblog, blog, and longer entries, to make things more fun for the browser.
* Spiffy category-at-a-glance archive pages, bringing together blog and longer entries, to make things more efficient for the information-seeker.
* A pretty new look!
All when b-school gives me time. So, around August, then.
In the meantime, readers, I’d love to hear what you think! All three of you.















Foremanized

March 18, 2005 / posted in Food / 1 Comment

Like most foodies, I’ve been dismissive of the George Foreman Grill. But, earlier this week, my Wonderful Girlfriend cured me of that. Boy does that grill make a good sandwich.
The biggest strike against the George Foreman Grill is, well, that’s it’s not a grill. Grilling, you see, is all about the direct application of dry heat — that’s foodie for, if you put your hand over the grill surface, the heat’s blasting up at you and there’s no liquid being used in the cooking method. The George Foreman “Grill”, however, includes direct heat (the heated elements touch the food both above and below), but the grill substantially seals around the food and keeps the natural moisture from the food from evaporating — instead, this moisture stays around the food, helping to keep the food moist. This method of cooking is, technically, known as steaming — cooking food through the indirect application of moist heat. So the George Foreman “Grill” doesn’t so much grill as it half-grills, half-steams your food.
And who would want this bastard form of cooking? The moisture will destroy the wonderful caramelization of the grill, while the direct heat will destroy the delicay of the steaming method, or so you’d think. In fact, you get a sufficient dose of that “Maillard reaction”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_Reaction, while cooking with a much easier-to-control system.
One of the problems of grilling is that — because there’s no added liquid — it’s easy to dry out what you’re cooking. Not in the George Foreman Grill! By mostly sealing in the moisture, the Grill ensures there’s little chance of drying out the food. Sure, you give up a lot of the surface browining, but the grill ridges burn a nice crust on the parts of the food that they touch — and that’s a sufficient amount for flavor. For less-skilled cooks, the chance to create good flavor without worrying about overcooking is an incredible opportunity.
Now, for me, I’ll have more fun with a grill pan that can go into the oven for indirect heat and be on the stovetop for direct heat. But that’s me; I’d rather have the challenge of cooking precisely, without a net. Other people are more practical about their cooking. For people who want tasty food, not to cook as a hobby, the George Foreman Grill is a perfect purchase.















Wolfowhat?

March 17, 2005 / posted in Politics / No Comments

So Bush followed up his appointment of a prominent anti-UN pundit to the position of UN Ambassador with the appointment of a divisive individual to be the head of a bank with the word “World” in it. What in the world is going on?
It’s not that “Paul Wolfowitz”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wolfowitz is such a bizarre choice. He’s potentially qualified, with a background in I-banking and a well-developed sense of the interconnectedness of poverty and violence. He’s not actually the right-wing hawk most people take him to be, it’s just that his interests align with the right-wing hawks at the moment. Wolfowitz passionately believes in the need to spread freedom and democracy around the world (in a later blog entry, remind me to talk about the absurdity of pushing representative democracy over popular democracy and the difference between democracy and liberty).
So, anyway, Wolfowitz is no dummy, and he has some of the chops. The problem, really, is the “World” part of this whole Bank thing. Wolfowitz has pissed off a big chunk of the rest of that “World.” How do you get that man in a small room with a buch of European technocrats for years and years and expect them to get along? How do you expect them to move the World Bank forward when they won’t even talk?
It’s unbelievable that a White House that is “so good at, and understanding of, communicating”:http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7925291, would neither know, nor care, the messages they’re sending.
The only thing that can possibly account for this strange stretch of behavior is Bush’s tendency to promote from within a small club. Those who get in this club — Rice, Negroponte, even Cheney — are criticism-proof and persist in their rise to the top. Those out of the club — Powell, O’Neill — leave just as soon as it can be arranged.
And this isn’t ridiculous. Bush got much of what he got in life because he was from inside the small club made up of his father’s friends. This got W through one failed drilling company after another, and helped him to the governorship and the presidency. Why should he not repeat the example shown to him, the example which got him so far in life?
It’s good that Bush’s ‘ol boys’ network includes an African-American woman, a jew, and a Democrat. That’s very inclusive. But a club is a club, and when you prioritize serving the club over message control and over communicating with the rest of the world, that’s a recipe for trouble.















ApplyYourself Hack: What Should Be Done?

March 10, 2005 / posted in B-School / No Comments

If you applied to b-school, you probably had the “fairly mediocre experience”:http://juniorbird.com/archives/000539.html of using “ApplyYourself”:http://applyyourself.com/, a service that allows you to apply, and track the status of your applications, in the most inefficient way possible. This year, some smart boys figured out how to get their admit decisions weeks early by “exploiting a security hole”:http://poweryogi.blogspot.com/2005/03/hbsapplyyourself-admit-status-snafu.html in ApplyYourself. Harvard has “decided to reject”:http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=7841543 everyone it thinks took advantage of this hole. I’m not sure that’s right; there’s more nuance here than meets the eye.
The process of the exploit, as described, is pretty simple: just change the address of the page you’re looking at slightly and you get the supposedly-secret admit decision. Somebody figured out this exploit and posted the process to forums on the BusinessWeek site, and a number (over 100?) of applicants supposedly used the exploit to check their decisions. There’s really several sets of people invloved in this process, each of whom needs to be considered seperately:
# The individual who initially discovered the exploit
# The applicants who took advantage of the exploit
# ApplyYourself, which had security holes
h3. #1: The Discoverer of the Exploit
One distinction between “black hat” hackers and benevolent, security-focused “white hat” hackers is, to vastly oversimplify things, that the “white hat” hacker will often inform the vendor of an application, or ASP of a Web site, of an exploit before describing the exploit in public. I can understand “fooling around” and finding a hole in a Web site, but, ethically, the first thing that the intial discoverer should have done was to inform ApplyYourself. If the ASP had no positive response, the hacker should have informed the business school. Only then should the exploit have been released into the wild. The initial discoverer committed, by any measure, an ethical breach, and his or her admittance should be retracted.
h3. #3: ApplyYourself
I’m dealing with this stakeholder second, because the technical issues are of great interest here, and this is the best forum in which to discuss these issues.
As is pointed out “elsewhere”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/03/08#a7726, the exploit is, itself, pretty trivial. It’s also potentially the sign of worse things. You see, there’s really three kinds of bugs:
# There’s the kind of bugs you get when the program behaves, but not as desired. A trivial example of this is a Web page that’s supposed to have a red background; if a colorblind programmer gives the page a green background, well, that’s a functioning page that isn’t, however, functioning as specified. That’s a bug.
# There’s the kind of bugs you get when the programmer makes a typo. Then things go boom.
# Then there’s the architectural flaw — that’s when the people who wrote the program didn’t think through how the program would work. This is a dangerous kind of bug to find, because one example of bad architecture is often a sign of others, because the base cause of this bug is bad planning, lazy thinking, or a slapdash approach (or, sometimes, insufficient budget).
The ApplyYourself bug is pretty clearly an example of bug type 3. The security in this system just hasn’t been thought out completely enough and implemented in a systematic and granular enough way. Were I an admissions officer, I would expect ApplyYourself to commission an independent external security audit, and release substantial updates for next year.
The corrolary of this is that I would not trust ApplyYourself’s information on who had and hadn’t seen the admissions information, at least until I saw the outcome of that security audit. And this point is important to our next constituency:
h3. #2: The Students Who Took Advantage of the Exploit
Can we really know who looked at whose admit decisions at this point? It’s irresponsible to simply reject anybody who you haven’t positively identified as having viewed their admit decision. A good approach might be to approach people suspected of having used the exploit, but whose illicit access to the system cannot be proved, and give them the opportunity to retract their applications, with no ill effects.
Even assuming we can be 100% sure who used the exploit, retracting admission may still not be the best decision. There’s little to say for the non-technically-oriented individual who read about the exploit and, out of pure impatience, eagerness, or whatever, used the exploit. Well, it’s pretty obvious that, if the admit decision hasn’t been made available to you, it’s not supposed to be available to you. Business involves making judgement calls, and b-school students need to show good judgement. Using this exploit this is most likely not an example of good judgement. This constituency should have the sin of bad judgement added to their files, and their admission reconsidered with this negative information included. It would probably also be best to briefly interview these appicants to learn more about their judgement and character. It’s been said that “nobody was ever fired for blogging”:http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/02/15/nobodys_ever_been_fired_for_blogging.html, that people fired for their blogs were fired for showing bad judgement. Let’s not reject applicants for fooling with URLs, let’s, instead, reject them for showing bad judgement.
But there’s a part of this constituency that might have a good excuse for their behavior. This subgroup contains software engineers and Web developers. For people in this subgroup, it’s usual to tinker with Web sites and applications that you use; it’s just like a carpenter looking at the joins on a table to see how it was made. Nobody would ever say, sorry, you’re a carpenter, you can’t do that. Fooling with other programs is a learning technique for programmers. It’s also a big part of security: trained people find holes in programs all the time, file proper bug reports, and get the problem fixed, making the world better for everyone. It’s unreasonable to expect someone who has “hacked”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_%28technology_slang%29 away at software for years to suddenly stop, especially when that hacking behavior was previously considered positive and ethical. The sin of bad judgement doesn’t stick here, although there could be questions of why experienced software developers didn’t attempt to contact ApplyYourself or their business school of choice with news of the exploit.
So, an apparently simple situation is more complicated in the end. There’s no obvious answer, apart from a security audit at ApplyYourself and a rewrite of some of their code. Ed Felten “suggests”:http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000780.html that people shouldn’t be punished for doing things they might not have known were wrong; hopefully, future b-school applicants will learn from this exploit and consider their best judgement when they find themselves in postion in which they can gain access to otherwise-restricted information. Equally hopefully, business schools admissions staff will be understanding, reasonable, and consistent in considering the many new and innovative ways in which the Internet will allow b-school applicants to show bad judgement.















I Can’t Get No Satisficetion

March 8, 2005 / posted in B-School / No Comments

My teammates this term are great, but one half of my team has a profound difference with the other half — hopefully, it shan’t be irreconcilable. See, half of my team is made of perfectionists; the other half, including me, is made of “satisficers”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing.
What’s a satisficer? Well, a perfectionist, as you all know:
* Prioritizes the quality of output over everything else
* Checks and re-checks work to make sure it’s right
* Will work until the last minute to get things done properly
* Does a perfect job, regardless of the constraints
* Collects information and revises until just before the project needs to be delivered
* Constantly reviews past decisions to ensure that they were optimal
* Sees good as the enemy of best
The satisficer, in contrast:
* Tries to do the best job reasonably possible, given the constraints (in b-school, the constraint usually is time)
* Considers the marginal improvement of outcome (in b-school, often, the grade) when considering any marginal increase in output (hours working, etc.), and only increases output when the outcome justifies said action
* Plans out projects, progressing from stage to stage within a project
* Doesn’t revisit past work or decisions unless they’re particulary disastrous; prefers to forge ahead with the reasonably good work done so far (see marginal ouput vs. marginal outcome above)
* Finishes ahead of time, not at the last minute — and not least because the satisficer is not detail-oriented enough to catch little (or, often, big) mistakes at the last minute
* Sees best as the enemy of good
It was just luck that put me in a group with four other satisficers last semester; I didn’t see this work behavior pattern as a possible source of problems. This semester, it hasn’t been too much trouble, although the three satisficers in my group (including me) have a tendency to try to go home at an early hour, not least because we get frustrated covering the same ground over and over again (better each time, sure, but then we’re back to marginal ouput vs. marginal outcome, and, believe me, I assign the same amount of marginal output a much higher value at 1am than I do at 1pm).
It’ll be fun to see how we solve this. My group is filled with great people and I’m sure we will muddle through somehow. Six people who all want to do well can’t be stopped just by completely different approaches to project strategy and work behavior!















Thank Goodness For The Third World!

March 6, 2005 / posted in Food / 1 Comment

One of the many injustices and trials heaped upon little ol’ me in this life is that I’m “allergic to corn”:http://allergies.about.com/cs/corn/a/aa053199.htm. I actually figured this out a few years ago after spending a couple of years being sick and miserable all the time! But removing corn from my diet has been difficult, it’s in _everything_. I cook a lot of my own food, and eat a lot of organic stuff, but who wants to eat crunchy-granola additive-free foods all the time? That’s why I thank goodness for corn-free foods imported from third-world countries.
I’m not quite sure why these products don’t contain corn syrup, but what they do contain is good old fasioned sugar. Maybe it’s that “corn syrup”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_syrup is “difficult to make”:http://www.corn.org/web/processo.htm, compared to sugar syrup. Maybe it’s a capacity-related issue in the corn industry of other countries, resulting in insufficient corn syrup supply to meet all possible demand. Maybe it’s old equipment that can’t handle corn syrup. Maybe it’s that agricultural policy in some countries makes corn syrup cheaper than sugar and in other countries makes the two prices equal or, even, sugar cheaper. Whatever, the below products are available at your “local”:http://www.google.com/local?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=payless+produce&near=90034&sa=X&oi=locald&radius=0.0&latlng=34028976,-118400481,9535693443252547948 “halal”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halaal “carneceria”:http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/entry?lb=e&p=carniceria.
One long-time favorite is “Pakola”:http://www.pakola.com.pk/products/pakola.html, which is maybe “fresh, fruity, fun for everyone” or maybe “ice cream cola”. Either way, it’s bright green, and from Pakistan.

A new discovery, which warms my heart to no end, is “Choco Listo”:http://www.chocolates.com.co/z_ca_producto.asp?Pproducto=33. Everyone loves powdered hot cocoa, right? Well, if you look at the ingredients on your cocoa, it almost certainly contains corn syrup. Not Choco Listo! Choco Listo is a fine product of Colombia, and, while it contains no corn products, it makes me so happy that it may, in fact, contain that other famous Colombian product, cocaine.
But who cares? Everyone needs soda and instant cocoa. Thank goodness for the Third World!















Syria And Me

March 4, 2005 / posted in Otherwise Uncategorized / No Comments

After years of letting Syria treat Lebanon as a virutal province, our President is finally “suggesting that they leave”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/04/us.syria.ap/index.html. It’s about time! If Clinton had just done the same thing, I wouldn’t have almost gotten married back in college.
My sophomore year of college, I dated this one girl who treated me not so great. Next door to this girl there was this guy who was treating this girl he was dating not so great too. Me and this girl, Sandy, used to hang out in the lounge outside our ill-behaved paramours’ rooms and commiserate.
So, over a few years, Sandy and I became friends. Sandy was a nice Lebanese girl who grew up in Beirut during the civil war there. She had some great stories — one time, a girl mouthed off to Sandy; this girl had grown up in a disadvantaged urban area and criticized Sandy as a spoiled little rich girl who didn’t know what it was like to live in a place where people got shot. Whereupon Sandy told this girl the story of how her house had been shelled by the Israeli Army. Good times, good times.
Now, during the “Lebanese civil war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War, the Israeli and Syrian armies moved into Lebanon and effectively enforced peace. Sandy’s family is Christian, and the Christians more or lest lost the civil war; the Syrians supported a Muslim militia. Sandy feared for her safety if she returned to Lebanon, but she was in the US on a student visa.
One day, Sandy got her new Lebanese passport; it wasn’t the green passport she grew up with, but a red one, the same color as the Syrian passport. She felt this was a sign that her country would soon be absorbed into Syria. How could she stay in the US? Well, maybe if she got hitched. So we hatched a plan to get married.
Then those darned English let her into grad school. And I ended up single to this very day.















Always Listen To The Marketers

March 3, 2005 / posted in Bidness / No Comments

My Management Accounting Prof once told us this great story about how TWA went out of business because they didn’t listen to the Marketers. It may be a bunch of baloney, but when I hear the Accounting people say “up with Marketing!” then I figure it’s time to listen. Also, it’s funny.
Some of my older readers may may remember “TWA”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_World_Airlines, one of America’s most famous, and most red-painted, airlines; my younger audience may have been introduced to TWA when they saw “The Aviator”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/. Leo DiCaprio notwithstanding, TWA was a great American airline for many years, but it fell into some disrepute during the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The specific problem that TWA had was its on-time performance: its planes were horribly late. Naturally, nobody wanted to fly TWA, and its planes were often only about 50% full. This is a real problem for an airline, because it costs a certain amount at minimum to run a plane, fill it with fuel, put in a cockpit crew, etc. — in fact, it costs about the same amount of money to fly one passenger as it does to fly 200. Naturally, your profits are higher if you have 200 passengers in that 737 than they are if you have just 1.
So TWA was in trouble. But the Marketing department came up with a good idea: they took out a bunch of those empty seats — about 20% of the seats in the entire plane. That meant a lot more legroom for all the passengers. And customers loved it! Lots of tourists, who didn’t care if they were a half hour late, opted to spend on the comfy, spacious seats, and TWA’s load factors (% full) skyrocketed.
In fact, the load factors got so high that the planes were full. And then management started thinking “suppose we put in more seats, then we can make more money!” And Marketing was aghast. The only reason TWA was making money was that they had so much legroom! But management was intransigent: those new rows had to go in!
So they did, and people noticed they didn’t have the legroom, plus the flights were still late, so they stopped flying TWA. Then American bought TWA, and now the red and white is gone forever. The moral of the story? Always listen to Marketing.















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