Worth remembering
In the Spring 2002 issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Robert D. Chapman shared a little history that explains some of our intelligence failures prior to 9-11. (Chapman is a retired CIA operations officer with covert experience.
"Back in the Cold War, a deep terrorist penetration agent reported that an (unidentified) commercial airliner was going to be hijacked. We knew if we blew the whistle, this valuable one-in-ten thousand agent would be blow sky-high."
The agency decided that they would only intervene if an American citizen was on board. None were and the plane was hijacked.
"Several years later a congressional oversight committee heard about the incident and reamed the agency until it hurt, "
Going forward, the agency would not have the option to protect an agent in this way. This could explain why we have a hard time getting inside the terror network.
Chapman also reminds us of the post-Watergate fallout:
"When the oversight committees learned of the Agency's support of the anti-Allende coup in Chile, there was hell to pay. Case officers following orders were threatened with criminal prosecution. To pay for their legal defense, homes were mortgaged and college nest-eggs robbed; good, competent officers quit over it. For an operation undertaken years before, they faced prosecution in an entirely different era."
CYA isn't always about avoiding embarrassment or advancing careers. Why would any young CIA officer take risks when he saw the punishment meted out to senior officers during the Church/Pike era?
In a similar vein, i have little sympathy for the pundits and nano-pundits calling for more aggressive special operations and condemning the military brass for timidity. When General Garrison displayed the old can-do spirit in Mogadishu, his career was destroyed because the operation turned into a public relations disaster.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Metropolitical
Jeff Jarvis declares:
There is no such thing as a pure Democrat and so I'm not one. There is no such thing anymore as a pure Republican and Robb's not one.
The parties play both sides of every street and so we, the voters, have to do the same thing.
I assume that he believes this is something new since he coined a neologism to describe it. But is was ever thus. Our parties have always been loose coalitions whose members disagreed with each other.
The Roosevelt coalition had liberals, urban machine loyalists, and conservatives in the South. Republicans in 1940 were both interventionist and isolationist, liberal and conservative.
Jeff Jarvis declares:
There is no such thing as a pure Democrat and so I'm not one. There is no such thing anymore as a pure Republican and Robb's not one.
The parties play both sides of every street and so we, the voters, have to do the same thing.
I assume that he believes this is something new since he coined a neologism to describe it. But is was ever thus. Our parties have always been loose coalitions whose members disagreed with each other.
The Roosevelt coalition had liberals, urban machine loyalists, and conservatives in the South. Republicans in 1940 were both interventionist and isolationist, liberal and conservative.
In Praise of Bosses
The old machines which were so much a part of Democratic politics do not enjoy a good reputation. And there is not doubt that they were corrupt and small-minded throughout their history.
But they once did this country and the world a great service. In 1944 they forced FDR to drop Henry Wallace as his VP and put Truman on the ticket.
Wallace was a flake of the first order. But even worse, he was dangerously pro-Stalin. Among his closest advisors were men like Harry Dexter White who were Soviet spies.
It is hard to imagine what the post-war world would have looked like if Wallace had succeeded FDR in 1945. We can be sure that Wallace would not have taken the hard-line Truman did and that Stalin would have made even more gains than he did.
So hats off to the old-line bosses. For all their faults, they were right on the most important question in the world in 1944.
The old machines which were so much a part of Democratic politics do not enjoy a good reputation. And there is not doubt that they were corrupt and small-minded throughout their history.
But they once did this country and the world a great service. In 1944 they forced FDR to drop Henry Wallace as his VP and put Truman on the ticket.
Wallace was a flake of the first order. But even worse, he was dangerously pro-Stalin. Among his closest advisors were men like Harry Dexter White who were Soviet spies.
It is hard to imagine what the post-war world would have looked like if Wallace had succeeded FDR in 1945. We can be sure that Wallace would not have taken the hard-line Truman did and that Stalin would have made even more gains than he did.
So hats off to the old-line bosses. For all their faults, they were right on the most important question in the world in 1944.
This is really odd
Family fears for famous scientist Stephen Hawking
THE world's greatest living scientist, Stephen Hawking, was in hospital yesterday under round-the-clock surveillance.
His family fear he is being earmarked by a deranged attacker who might try to sabotage the equipment and medicines that are keeping him alive.
Professor Hawking has pneumonia and has been in hospital since before Christmas.
Yet it is not the bronchial infection, serious in a 62-year-old man of such physical frailty, that is the chief cause of the terrors his family live with each day.
It is that the person intent on doing him grievous harm - and who appears to have succeeded in doing so already on numerous occasions - will go one step too far if not stopped soon.
Family fears for famous scientist Stephen Hawking
THE world's greatest living scientist, Stephen Hawking, was in hospital yesterday under round-the-clock surveillance.
His family fear he is being earmarked by a deranged attacker who might try to sabotage the equipment and medicines that are keeping him alive.
Professor Hawking has pneumonia and has been in hospital since before Christmas.
Yet it is not the bronchial infection, serious in a 62-year-old man of such physical frailty, that is the chief cause of the terrors his family live with each day.
It is that the person intent on doing him grievous harm - and who appears to have succeeded in doing so already on numerous occasions - will go one step too far if not stopped soon.
Not a Positive Sign
Exodus of senior agents creates FBI 'brain drain'
Since the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington, more than three dozen senior-level agents, assistant directors and section chiefs have left the bureau in what some agents are labeling "brain drain."
More are likely to follow over the next year because the current 197 senior agents have an average service time of 19 years and four months. That is just eight months shy of the 20 years of service required for agents to retire with full pension benefits.
Exodus of senior agents creates FBI 'brain drain'
Since the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington, more than three dozen senior-level agents, assistant directors and section chiefs have left the bureau in what some agents are labeling "brain drain."
More are likely to follow over the next year because the current 197 senior agents have an average service time of 19 years and four months. That is just eight months shy of the 20 years of service required for agents to retire with full pension benefits.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Sensible
I liked this from Dave Koppel in the Corner
The media is certainly capable of artificially inflating a trivial error into a disaster that can wreck a political career--as the media did when Dan Quayle used a spelling of "potato" that was proper in the mid-twentieth century, but which had become archaic by the 1990s. Howard Dean's speech to his supporters in Iowa last night strikes me as even less important, substantively, than "potato(e)." Dean struck a tone that's more typical of a college football coach than of a typical presidential candidate--but the speech hardly showed that Dean was going crazy, or having a breakdown, or any other mental problem.
I liked this from Dave Koppel in the Corner
The media is certainly capable of artificially inflating a trivial error into a disaster that can wreck a political career--as the media did when Dan Quayle used a spelling of "potato" that was proper in the mid-twentieth century, but which had become archaic by the 1990s. Howard Dean's speech to his supporters in Iowa last night strikes me as even less important, substantively, than "potato(e)." Dean struck a tone that's more typical of a college football coach than of a typical presidential candidate--but the speech hardly showed that Dean was going crazy, or having a breakdown, or any other mental problem.
"Pundits got it wrong"
From Howard Kurtz
In other words, just about everything you heard and read about the Iowa caucuses in November and December was wrong. Particularly those endless pieces about the importance of strong grass-roots organizations. The press would have done better if all the reporters had taken a long vacation.
The Fourth Estate has now gotten Dean wrong twice. Underestimating him in early 2003, overestimating him going into '04.
****
Now the same press folks who were wrong about how Iowa was going to break will tell you what Iowa means, how this scrambles the deck in New Hampshire, and so on.
For the next 48 hours, it will be all about Kerry is surging! Edwards is surging! Dean is fading!
And a good question from Lane Core
If pollsters can be so wrong the day before the event, when are they ever right except by coincidence? And why do we depend on them so much?
I think this might be a partial answer
The media love Iowa because it is a publicity gimmick that gives the networks huge clout over the nomination process. In 1984, Mondale got 48.9 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses and Gary Hart just 16.5 percent -- a three to one margin -- but the networks awarded Hart with a huge free publicity bounce that was his key to beating Mondale in New Hampshire the following week. In 2000, Steve Forbes had a much stronger second place showing (30.5% to George W. Bush's 41%), but the media ignored Forbes and lavished their attentions on Iowa-skipping John McCain, who rode the networks to victory in New Hampshire. It's the media caucus. Iowans get to merely participate.
From Howard Kurtz
In other words, just about everything you heard and read about the Iowa caucuses in November and December was wrong. Particularly those endless pieces about the importance of strong grass-roots organizations. The press would have done better if all the reporters had taken a long vacation.
The Fourth Estate has now gotten Dean wrong twice. Underestimating him in early 2003, overestimating him going into '04.
****
Now the same press folks who were wrong about how Iowa was going to break will tell you what Iowa means, how this scrambles the deck in New Hampshire, and so on.
For the next 48 hours, it will be all about Kerry is surging! Edwards is surging! Dean is fading!
And a good question from Lane Core
If pollsters can be so wrong the day before the event, when are they ever right except by coincidence? And why do we depend on them so much?
I think this might be a partial answer
The media love Iowa because it is a publicity gimmick that gives the networks huge clout over the nomination process. In 1984, Mondale got 48.9 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses and Gary Hart just 16.5 percent -- a three to one margin -- but the networks awarded Hart with a huge free publicity bounce that was his key to beating Mondale in New Hampshire the following week. In 2000, Steve Forbes had a much stronger second place showing (30.5% to George W. Bush's 41%), but the media ignored Forbes and lavished their attentions on Iowa-skipping John McCain, who rode the networks to victory in New Hampshire. It's the media caucus. Iowans get to merely participate.
Monday, January 19, 2004
Confession
I feel sorry for Dennis Kucinich and am startled to realize that i feel a certain amount of admiration for the man.
On policy, the man is a complete moonbat. I doubt that there are many issues we agree on. But the man campaigned hard for his positions even though he knew the odds were heavily against him. His showing in Iowa will provide fodder for Leno and Letterman and their imitators in the blogosphere. Yet, in the end, he-- not the jokers-- is the heir of TR. He went into the arena while they sniped from the cheapseats.
Kucinich took his case to the voters through retail politics. The guys mocking him on TV got their megaphone by knowing the right asses to kiss in New York and Hollywood. I know which one i think is more admirable.
I know that conservatives are supposed to be excited that Dennis Miller is pro-Bush and that Arnold won in California. But to tell you the truth, i'd swap both of them for a half dozen candidates willing to log the miles and endure the mockery while they carried the conservative message into (currently) inhospitable areas.
Justin Katz comments here.
I feel sorry for Dennis Kucinich and am startled to realize that i feel a certain amount of admiration for the man.
On policy, the man is a complete moonbat. I doubt that there are many issues we agree on. But the man campaigned hard for his positions even though he knew the odds were heavily against him. His showing in Iowa will provide fodder for Leno and Letterman and their imitators in the blogosphere. Yet, in the end, he-- not the jokers-- is the heir of TR. He went into the arena while they sniped from the cheapseats.
Kucinich took his case to the voters through retail politics. The guys mocking him on TV got their megaphone by knowing the right asses to kiss in New York and Hollywood. I know which one i think is more admirable.
I know that conservatives are supposed to be excited that Dennis Miller is pro-Bush and that Arnold won in California. But to tell you the truth, i'd swap both of them for a half dozen candidates willing to log the miles and endure the mockery while they carried the conservative message into (currently) inhospitable areas.
Justin Katz comments here.
Margaret Cho
Michele is right to condemn the Freepers for their vicious emails to Margaret Cho. But Cho is in no position to cry foul: her own words are as bigoted and hateful as the emails she received.
There is one difference. The loonies who attacked her speak for no one but themselves. Cho was a guest blogger for Dean and and a judge for Moveon.org's anti-Bush commercial contest as well as a headline act at their fundraiser.
Michele is right to condemn the Freepers for their vicious emails to Margaret Cho. But Cho is in no position to cry foul: her own words are as bigoted and hateful as the emails she received.
There is one difference. The loonies who attacked her speak for no one but themselves. Cho was a guest blogger for Dean and and a judge for Moveon.org's anti-Bush commercial contest as well as a headline act at their fundraiser.
The Politics Below the History
In the great pageant of liberal historiography, liberal/progressive presidents continually rout the forces of reaction. Jefferson's Democrats defeat Adams and the Federalists, Wilson defeats the Republicans, and FDR dominates politics for a generation.
What is seldom noted is that all these decisive "progressive victories" were entirely dependent on slavery and Jim Crow.
In 1800 Jefferson would have lost to Adams if the Electoral College tally reflected the free population of the states. The Virginian won because of the extra votes the southern states for for their slave population.
In 1916, Wilson won re-election with a margin of 23 in the Electoral College. Were it not for the votes of the Jim Crow South, he would have lost.
In the 1942 election, Republicans won 20 out of 25 Senate seats out the South. The Democrats held the House by a slim margin of 222-209. Nearly half of those seats came from the land of poll taxes, literacy tests, and voter intimidation.
FDR ushered in near total Democratic control of the Congress from 1933 until 1981. (They were the majority for 44 out of 48 years in both houses). But this dominance was not the result of a popular mandate for liberalism; it was entirely a function of Jim Crow elections. Outside the South, Republicans won a majority of House seats at least eight times in thirteen elections between 1938-1962.
Think i'll send this to OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam.
In the great pageant of liberal historiography, liberal/progressive presidents continually rout the forces of reaction. Jefferson's Democrats defeat Adams and the Federalists, Wilson defeats the Republicans, and FDR dominates politics for a generation.
What is seldom noted is that all these decisive "progressive victories" were entirely dependent on slavery and Jim Crow.
In 1800 Jefferson would have lost to Adams if the Electoral College tally reflected the free population of the states. The Virginian won because of the extra votes the southern states for for their slave population.
In 1916, Wilson won re-election with a margin of 23 in the Electoral College. Were it not for the votes of the Jim Crow South, he would have lost.
In the 1942 election, Republicans won 20 out of 25 Senate seats out the South. The Democrats held the House by a slim margin of 222-209. Nearly half of those seats came from the land of poll taxes, literacy tests, and voter intimidation.
FDR ushered in near total Democratic control of the Congress from 1933 until 1981. (They were the majority for 44 out of 48 years in both houses). But this dominance was not the result of a popular mandate for liberalism; it was entirely a function of Jim Crow elections. Outside the South, Republicans won a majority of House seats at least eight times in thirteen elections between 1938-1962.
Think i'll send this to OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam.
Carnival of the Capitalists
is up and can be found here. This week's edition is especially wide-ranging. Check it out.
is up and can be found here. This week's edition is especially wide-ranging. Check it out.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Good use of a Super Bowl spot
I'm generally dubious of Super Bowl ads. They are expensive and high risk. But P&G has come up with an innovative way to use them that has a lot of merit.
P&G purchased one spot. They then had an internal competition among their brands and agencies to see which commercial would air.
(Charmin won.)
That's not a bad incentive. It probably stimulated an uptick in creative thinking across their product line as competition usually does. For a big company like P&G, that's a good return on an investment of four or five million dollars.
I'm generally dubious of Super Bowl ads. They are expensive and high risk. But P&G has come up with an innovative way to use them that has a lot of merit.
P&G purchased one spot. They then had an internal competition among their brands and agencies to see which commercial would air.
(Charmin won.)
That's not a bad incentive. It probably stimulated an uptick in creative thinking across their product line as competition usually does. For a big company like P&G, that's a good return on an investment of four or five million dollars.
Intelligence Matters
Last night on PBS, Fronline looked into the Katrina Leung case. She is the Chinese double or triple agent who had affairs with two of her FBI handlers. They may have compromised some of the most important counterintelligence operations of the last 10 years (e.g. Wen Ho Lee). The show was really well done and the website is packed with information on the case.
Edward Jay Epstein has several new items up on his website.
Army scientists were unable to replicate the anthrax weapons used in fall 2001 attacks using tools available to a "lone nut" scientist.
The "paper trail" that the FBI believes confirms that Atta was in the US on 8 April 2001, not in Prague.
A discussion of Team B and the nature of intelligence analysis.
Junk Yard Blog wonders if there are dots that have to be connected with the OKC bombing. He has posted on this a few times and i like that he doesn't push beyond the facts. You won't find a full-blown conspiracy theory here, just questions that haven't been answered.
Last night on PBS, Fronline looked into the Katrina Leung case. She is the Chinese double or triple agent who had affairs with two of her FBI handlers. They may have compromised some of the most important counterintelligence operations of the last 10 years (e.g. Wen Ho Lee). The show was really well done and the website is packed with information on the case.
Edward Jay Epstein has several new items up on his website.
Army scientists were unable to replicate the anthrax weapons used in fall 2001 attacks using tools available to a "lone nut" scientist.
The "paper trail" that the FBI believes confirms that Atta was in the US on 8 April 2001, not in Prague.
A discussion of Team B and the nature of intelligence analysis.
Junk Yard Blog wonders if there are dots that have to be connected with the OKC bombing. He has posted on this a few times and i like that he doesn't push beyond the facts. You won't find a full-blown conspiracy theory here, just questions that haven't been answered.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
"September 11 as a 'wakeup call'"
A very good, very thought-provoking post over at Turnabout.
It appears, in fact, that the effect of 9/11 has been to reinforce rather than reverse existing tendencies. That’s not surprising. The normal response to attack is to reaffirm basic principle.
A very good, very thought-provoking post over at Turnabout.
It appears, in fact, that the effect of 9/11 has been to reinforce rather than reverse existing tendencies. That’s not surprising. The normal response to attack is to reaffirm basic principle.
Forgotten Men II
Around here everyone agrees that the Eagles's conversion of the 4th and 26 against the Packers is the greatest play in Eagles history. But it wasn't the most important. That honor should go to Chuck Bednarik's open field tackle of Jim Taylor in the 1960 championship game. That play stopped the Packers on the Eagles's 8 yard line as time expired and gave Philadelphia their last NFL title.
The amazing thing about that tackle is that Bednarik made it after PLAYING 58 MINUTES in the game. "Concrete Charlie" was the last of the two-way players. In 1960 he played center on offense and linebacker on defense. It is hard to imagine a tougher combination to play well at the same time: block Rosie Grier or Sam Huff when your team has the ball, fight off Jerry Kramer or tackle Jim Brown when you don't. A cornerback or receiver can take some plays off; a linebacker or O-lineman hits and gets hit on every play.
Bednarik played both positions on a championship team when he was 35 years old. That's a level of toughness that makes thugs like Ray Lewis look like kiddies.
Oh yeah. Before Bednarik went to college, he flew 30 missions over Germany as a waist gunner on a B-24. He earned the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters.
Around here everyone agrees that the Eagles's conversion of the 4th and 26 against the Packers is the greatest play in Eagles history. But it wasn't the most important. That honor should go to Chuck Bednarik's open field tackle of Jim Taylor in the 1960 championship game. That play stopped the Packers on the Eagles's 8 yard line as time expired and gave Philadelphia their last NFL title.
The amazing thing about that tackle is that Bednarik made it after PLAYING 58 MINUTES in the game. "Concrete Charlie" was the last of the two-way players. In 1960 he played center on offense and linebacker on defense. It is hard to imagine a tougher combination to play well at the same time: block Rosie Grier or Sam Huff when your team has the ball, fight off Jerry Kramer or tackle Jim Brown when you don't. A cornerback or receiver can take some plays off; a linebacker or O-lineman hits and gets hit on every play.
Bednarik played both positions on a championship team when he was 35 years old. That's a level of toughness that makes thugs like Ray Lewis look like kiddies.
Oh yeah. Before Bednarik went to college, he flew 30 missions over Germany as a waist gunner on a B-24. He earned the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Outrage!
What do you mean Bob Hayes isn't in the Hall of Fame yet?
The best evidence of athletic greatness is when they have to change the rules to keep the game interesting because of your ability. That's why i think Wilt was a better basketball player that Michael Jordan. Same thing happened with the Doomsday Defense in Dallas and the Steel Curtain.
The next level is when you change the way the game is played. By that measure Bob Hayes deserves to be in--- teams went to the zone defense because of his speed and receiving ability. I know he has had personal problems in retirement--- big deal. Bullet Bob was one of the greatest receivers ever to play in the NFL.
What do you mean Bob Hayes isn't in the Hall of Fame yet?
The best evidence of athletic greatness is when they have to change the rules to keep the game interesting because of your ability. That's why i think Wilt was a better basketball player that Michael Jordan. Same thing happened with the Doomsday Defense in Dallas and the Steel Curtain.
The next level is when you change the way the game is played. By that measure Bob Hayes deserves to be in--- teams went to the zone defense because of his speed and receiving ability. I know he has had personal problems in retirement--- big deal. Bullet Bob was one of the greatest receivers ever to play in the NFL.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Super Bowl Ads
A thirty-second spot in this year's Super Bowl is going to cost $2.25 million. That's a record and is up 7% over last year.
Given their high cost and the intense scrutiny they receive, breaking commercials on the Super Bowl is a high risk proposition. Get it wrong and you've tossed away a big chunk of this year's advertising budget.
There is also the danger of hyper-awareness. Viewers watch, evaluate, and discuss the commercials as commercials. The underlying product can easily get lost. Often advertisers end up making a "great commercial" rather than one that most effectively conveys their message.
Some companies have to advertise on the Super Bowl. Budweiser commercials are almost a tradition. New movies, because they have to build awareness quickly, can benefit from the huge audience. Most of the other advertisers are rolling the dice in the hope that they can catch lightening the way Apple did with the "1984" spot.
UPDATE: Justin Katz comments here.
A thirty-second spot in this year's Super Bowl is going to cost $2.25 million. That's a record and is up 7% over last year.
Given their high cost and the intense scrutiny they receive, breaking commercials on the Super Bowl is a high risk proposition. Get it wrong and you've tossed away a big chunk of this year's advertising budget.
There is also the danger of hyper-awareness. Viewers watch, evaluate, and discuss the commercials as commercials. The underlying product can easily get lost. Often advertisers end up making a "great commercial" rather than one that most effectively conveys their message.
Some companies have to advertise on the Super Bowl. Budweiser commercials are almost a tradition. New movies, because they have to build awareness quickly, can benefit from the huge audience. Most of the other advertisers are rolling the dice in the hope that they can catch lightening the way Apple did with the "1984" spot.
UPDATE: Justin Katz comments here.
"Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory "
A long paper by Colin S. Gray that is well worth reading.
A sample of his bracing clarity:
It is not entirely true to argue, for example, that a bad idea can only be defeated by a better idea. There are times, as from 1939 to 1945, when a particularly bad idea--Hitler's vision of a racially pure Thousand Year Reich-- needs to be shot.
He writes intelligently about the war on terror and the correlation of forces:
Technology is not a panacea. The attractive proposition that the United States currently enjoys an unassailable military technological lead which has sharply reduced the value of allies, and which can deliver decisive victory more or less to order, is fragile or wrong on all counts. Technology is only one of strategy's dimensions,
and it is by no means the most important.
***
Because war is not solitaire, even an excellent army may fail to deliver victory. Policy simply may ask too much of its military instrument, or it may hamstring military operations with damaging political constraints.
One way in which policy asks too much is to expect quick and decisive victories in modes of war where that is impossible. For example, a key factor in decisive victory is the enemy's willingness to admit defeat. That is one of the reasons guerilla wars are so hard to win.
In words attributed to Mao Tse-tung: There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing
as a decisive battle.
Similarly, German doctrine and strategy in 1941-42 failed because Stalin, unlike the French, refused to accept that crushing operational defeats were strategically decisive.
A long paper by Colin S. Gray that is well worth reading.
A sample of his bracing clarity:
It is not entirely true to argue, for example, that a bad idea can only be defeated by a better idea. There are times, as from 1939 to 1945, when a particularly bad idea--Hitler's vision of a racially pure Thousand Year Reich-- needs to be shot.
He writes intelligently about the war on terror and the correlation of forces:
Technology is not a panacea. The attractive proposition that the United States currently enjoys an unassailable military technological lead which has sharply reduced the value of allies, and which can deliver decisive victory more or less to order, is fragile or wrong on all counts. Technology is only one of strategy's dimensions,
and it is by no means the most important.
***
Because war is not solitaire, even an excellent army may fail to deliver victory. Policy simply may ask too much of its military instrument, or it may hamstring military operations with damaging political constraints.
One way in which policy asks too much is to expect quick and decisive victories in modes of war where that is impossible. For example, a key factor in decisive victory is the enemy's willingness to admit defeat. That is one of the reasons guerilla wars are so hard to win.
In words attributed to Mao Tse-tung: There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing
as a decisive battle.
Similarly, German doctrine and strategy in 1941-42 failed because Stalin, unlike the French, refused to accept that crushing operational defeats were strategically decisive.
"A Great Conserative Filmmaker"
From City Journal, a nice appreciation of Whit Stillman.
In 1991—a bad year for culture, what with grunge, Oliver Stone’s JFK, and Boyz N the Hood—American filmmaker Whit Stillman, then 39, quietly released Metropolitan, the first of three witty, articulate social comedies that will prove as immortal as Hollywood’s golden comedies of the 1930s.
From City Journal, a nice appreciation of Whit Stillman.
In 1991—a bad year for culture, what with grunge, Oliver Stone’s JFK, and Boyz N the Hood—American filmmaker Whit Stillman, then 39, quietly released Metropolitan, the first of three witty, articulate social comedies that will prove as immortal as Hollywood’s golden comedies of the 1930s.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Blogosphere/Mote/Beam
So Roger Simon was dismissive of blogs on Meet the Press. The blog boomers are predictably irate.
Jeff B. in the comments alerts us to a rather numbnutty discussion of blogs on Meet The Press; transcript here. The choicest moment is Roger Simon (not The Roger Simon, Our Roger Simon, the one who comes up first on Google, but the Other Roger Simon, the Dead Tree Roger Simon) insulting us all, which is to say the audience he wishes he had
More people probably read Instapundit than Roger Simon's blog. But Simon's readers on paper (US News and op-ed pages) far outnumber any blog's readership. So i don't think he is insulting readers "he wishes he had." A buzzmachine endorsement would create an increase in readership so tiny that no analyst could find it inside of the noise of real life data.
Joanne Jacobs left a comment that is kind of funny when you step back and think about it.
Your analysis of the banality of Wrong Roger's prose was priceless. I call it "Look, Ma, I'm writing!" writing. And I hate it. "Fine writing" is usually a substitute for reporting or thinking. If the columnist has something to say, he or she just says it without any blowing snow.
When I was a columnist, I worked hard to have something to say in every column. They cut down trees to make newsprint to put out newspapers. I owed it to the trees to make their sacrifice meaningful.
I agree that Simon's columns are often banal. But that is hardly a dimension where the (traffic weighted) blogosphere does better. And the typical big political blog is hardly a place where new ideas or critical thinking carry the day. I stopped reading Sullivan and Kaus etc. because i realized i knew what they were going to say about almost any issue before i read them.
A few days ago Kevin Holtsberry astutely summarized the prevailing realities of political blogging.
what I am considering giving up is the back and forth commentary, fisking, ranting, and what have you that occupies your typical blogger. I just find myself having less and less to say about current events. And it is largely frequent and heated discussions of current events that give the Blogosphere its traffic. A good example of what makes me tire of the whole thing is this Calpundit post on Brooks and the Neocons. It is not so much his post, although it is that too, but the comments that drive me to despair. To me these comments are a microcosm of the larger phenomenon: angry accusations, smarmy asides, bald assertions, and people talking past each other.
This isn't to say that all blogs are like this. (Check out my blogroll; all of those blogs are excluded from this indictment). But good blogs that don't play by the rules--who don't rant, who post on subjects not on the front page of today's newspaper-- those blogs are rare and have trouble drawing traffic.
UPDATE: Hell in the Handbasket has some spot-on comments.
So Roger Simon was dismissive of blogs on Meet the Press. The blog boomers are predictably irate.
Jeff B. in the comments alerts us to a rather numbnutty discussion of blogs on Meet The Press; transcript here. The choicest moment is Roger Simon (not The Roger Simon, Our Roger Simon, the one who comes up first on Google, but the Other Roger Simon, the Dead Tree Roger Simon) insulting us all, which is to say the audience he wishes he had
More people probably read Instapundit than Roger Simon's blog. But Simon's readers on paper (US News and op-ed pages) far outnumber any blog's readership. So i don't think he is insulting readers "he wishes he had." A buzzmachine endorsement would create an increase in readership so tiny that no analyst could find it inside of the noise of real life data.
Joanne Jacobs left a comment that is kind of funny when you step back and think about it.
Your analysis of the banality of Wrong Roger's prose was priceless. I call it "Look, Ma, I'm writing!" writing. And I hate it. "Fine writing" is usually a substitute for reporting or thinking. If the columnist has something to say, he or she just says it without any blowing snow.
When I was a columnist, I worked hard to have something to say in every column. They cut down trees to make newsprint to put out newspapers. I owed it to the trees to make their sacrifice meaningful.
I agree that Simon's columns are often banal. But that is hardly a dimension where the (traffic weighted) blogosphere does better. And the typical big political blog is hardly a place where new ideas or critical thinking carry the day. I stopped reading Sullivan and Kaus etc. because i realized i knew what they were going to say about almost any issue before i read them.
A few days ago Kevin Holtsberry astutely summarized the prevailing realities of political blogging.
what I am considering giving up is the back and forth commentary, fisking, ranting, and what have you that occupies your typical blogger. I just find myself having less and less to say about current events. And it is largely frequent and heated discussions of current events that give the Blogosphere its traffic. A good example of what makes me tire of the whole thing is this Calpundit post on Brooks and the Neocons. It is not so much his post, although it is that too, but the comments that drive me to despair. To me these comments are a microcosm of the larger phenomenon: angry accusations, smarmy asides, bald assertions, and people talking past each other.
This isn't to say that all blogs are like this. (Check out my blogroll; all of those blogs are excluded from this indictment). But good blogs that don't play by the rules--who don't rant, who post on subjects not on the front page of today's newspaper-- those blogs are rare and have trouble drawing traffic.
UPDATE: Hell in the Handbasket has some spot-on comments.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Good Point
From Colby Cosh:
One thing Easterbrook might have expanded upon in exploring our material condition, a thing that's fascinated me since my days awash in Edwardian and interwar newspapers, is the way that people used to die of infection, and of now-easily-treatable medical problems, so easily. The slightest scrape could do in a healthy adult until after the Second World War.
From Colby Cosh:
One thing Easterbrook might have expanded upon in exploring our material condition, a thing that's fascinated me since my days awash in Edwardian and interwar newspapers, is the way that people used to die of infection, and of now-easily-treatable medical problems, so easily. The slightest scrape could do in a healthy adult until after the Second World War.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Tribal Politics
From the American Spectator:
The substantive issues of this next election are going to be few and far between. Assuming the nominee is Dean and that Bush doesn't decide to quit while he's ahead, both candidates will tilt away from gun control, toward more entitlement spending, toward liberalized immigration policies, toward staying in Iraq, and against reducing the size of government. The issues don't matter nearly as much as either keeping or gaining power, if they matter at all.
Rather, the contrast is, for lack of a better term, tribal -- though the affinity is cultural rather than genetic. Red and blue state designations are still in use because different voters feel that that says something about who they are. If you want to see yourself as a progressive, affluent, educated type and you live in a red state, you're likely to gaze longingly at certain parts of the map.
From the American Spectator:
The substantive issues of this next election are going to be few and far between. Assuming the nominee is Dean and that Bush doesn't decide to quit while he's ahead, both candidates will tilt away from gun control, toward more entitlement spending, toward liberalized immigration policies, toward staying in Iraq, and against reducing the size of government. The issues don't matter nearly as much as either keeping or gaining power, if they matter at all.
Rather, the contrast is, for lack of a better term, tribal -- though the affinity is cultural rather than genetic. Red and blue state designations are still in use because different voters feel that that says something about who they are. If you want to see yourself as a progressive, affluent, educated type and you live in a red state, you're likely to gaze longingly at certain parts of the map.
What they mean by the right stuff
You have got to read this account of the Gimli Glider.
HT: Hell in a Handbasket.
You have got to read this account of the Gimli Glider.
HT: Hell in a Handbasket.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Trendsetters and Beer Drinkers
Interesting column in Ad Age on marketing to hipsters. The author likes the current Miller campaign (see why i disagree) because it appeals to the trendy consumers without seeming to target them. That sounds like marketing nirvana.
The column hits on one major problem with marketing to the hip.
Until recently, my drinking crony Dan -- a just-hip-enough Brooklynite who knew trucker caps were trendy before anyone else (but had the decency never to wear one) -- was a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker. When I last saw him he had switched. Why the new brew, Dan? "I knew Pabst was over when I saw it in the [New York] Times," he half-joked.
This is tough on the Times. And it's unfair to Pabst, which has sustained a sales resurgence based on working-man brand values, scarcity and price. But it shows how easily an influencer can be turned off a brand by the knowledge that the masses are being turned on to it. Patrick Meyer, founder of marketing consultancy Fusion 5, is passionate on this. "Brands get hot and respond by turning up the volume with huge media buys," he says. "But blasting the public just switches the core consumer off."
It is a looking-glass kind of world where marketing success ("we're trendy") can immediately lead to failure ("that's so yesterday, everyone drinks it"). If the goal is to win over a lot of average consumers by being hip, what happens when the mass popularity drives away the "trend-setters"?
This type of marketing just seems self-defeating, not to mention overly complex. It depends on influencing a market segment with a veiled message so that they will create the main message that will drive purchases by the profitable segments.
Interesting column in Ad Age on marketing to hipsters. The author likes the current Miller campaign (see why i disagree) because it appeals to the trendy consumers without seeming to target them. That sounds like marketing nirvana.
The column hits on one major problem with marketing to the hip.
Until recently, my drinking crony Dan -- a just-hip-enough Brooklynite who knew trucker caps were trendy before anyone else (but had the decency never to wear one) -- was a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker. When I last saw him he had switched. Why the new brew, Dan? "I knew Pabst was over when I saw it in the [New York] Times," he half-joked.
This is tough on the Times. And it's unfair to Pabst, which has sustained a sales resurgence based on working-man brand values, scarcity and price. But it shows how easily an influencer can be turned off a brand by the knowledge that the masses are being turned on to it. Patrick Meyer, founder of marketing consultancy Fusion 5, is passionate on this. "Brands get hot and respond by turning up the volume with huge media buys," he says. "But blasting the public just switches the core consumer off."
It is a looking-glass kind of world where marketing success ("we're trendy") can immediately lead to failure ("that's so yesterday, everyone drinks it"). If the goal is to win over a lot of average consumers by being hip, what happens when the mass popularity drives away the "trend-setters"?
This type of marketing just seems self-defeating, not to mention overly complex. It depends on influencing a market segment with a veiled message so that they will create the main message that will drive purchases by the profitable segments.
Case Studies
One of the real problems with business education is the heavy use of prepackaged case studies. While they purport to hone critical thinking skills, they also impart false lessons. Future managers come to believe that the information in front of them is complete, reliable, and predictive. The only thing left to do is exercise some thinking and then make a decision.
In real life it will never be that simple. Numbers are shaky and dirty data is a persistent problem. In the beginning there won't be enough critical information on the matter at hand. At the same time , there will be a flood of trivial and irrelevant material that demands attention.
It is tempting to wait until more data and better data can be obtained. Unfortunately, time is often a critical competitive dimension.
One of the real problems with business education is the heavy use of prepackaged case studies. While they purport to hone critical thinking skills, they also impart false lessons. Future managers come to believe that the information in front of them is complete, reliable, and predictive. The only thing left to do is exercise some thinking and then make a decision.
In real life it will never be that simple. Numbers are shaky and dirty data is a persistent problem. In the beginning there won't be enough critical information on the matter at hand. At the same time , there will be a flood of trivial and irrelevant material that demands attention.
It is tempting to wait until more data and better data can be obtained. Unfortunately, time is often a critical competitive dimension.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
New Orleans
On this day in 1815, Andrew Jackson decisively defeated the British Army at New Orleans.
Robert Remini, in The Battle of New Orleans, wrote:
The victory was unexpected. The British had had the better of it in most of the land and sea battles and even burned Washington, DC. At New Orleans they had 8,000 regulars who were veterans of Wellington's army that had defeated the French in Spain. Jackson had only 4,000 troops most of whom were militiamen and recent volunteers.
Even more surprising was the lop-sided outcome. British losses were 291 dead, 1,262 wounded and 484 taken prisoner. The Americans lost only 55 KIA, 185 wounded and 93 missing.
We rarely commemorate the battle today, but for those who were alive in 1815 and for their children, it was a different story. Remini, again:
On this day in 1815, Andrew Jackson decisively defeated the British Army at New Orleans.
Robert Remini, in The Battle of New Orleans, wrote:
There was a time when the United States had heroes and reveled in them. There was a time when Andrew Jackson was one of those heroes, along with the men and women who stood with him at New Orleans and drove an invading British army back into the sea.
The victory was unexpected. The British had had the better of it in most of the land and sea battles and even burned Washington, DC. At New Orleans they had 8,000 regulars who were veterans of Wellington's army that had defeated the French in Spain. Jackson had only 4,000 troops most of whom were militiamen and recent volunteers.
Even more surprising was the lop-sided outcome. British losses were 291 dead, 1,262 wounded and 484 taken prisoner. The Americans lost only 55 KIA, 185 wounded and 93 missing.
We rarely commemorate the battle today, but for those who were alive in 1815 and for their children, it was a different story. Remini, again:
Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century did believe that January 8 would be remembered like July 4-- both dates representing the nation's first and second declaration of independence from Great Britain. Indeed some called the War of 1812 the Second War for Independence. Generally speaking, widespread observance of January 8 as a day of national celebration continued for the next fifty years.
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Huh?
Jeff Jarvis is discussing John LeCarre:
Which seems to imply that he thinks the Cold War was not about good and evil. Come on, more Poles died at Katyn Forest than the total deaths on 9-11-01. How is opposing Stalin and his heirs more complicated morally than the struggle with Iraq or al Qaeda?
The only world le Carre could understand was the world of the cold war. Today's world, which really is about evil and good, is beyond him. He wants to complicate it. He wants to turn it into an overcomplicated fable. But it's not. Osama is bad. Saddam is bad. Blair is not. Bush is not. It's really rather obvious.
Computer Models
Earlier i quoted Michael Crichton:
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right
Clifford Stoll cuts to the heart of why this is so:
Computers hide mistakes in logic while sanctifying information with an aura of truth.
(Sorry, i wrote down the quote but failed to get the proper citation. It's from several years ago, probably from Silicon Snake Oil.)
A model will spit out reams of information and data. It seems so concrete and precise: percentages are calculated to two decimal places.
Yet deep in the unseen guts of the model are a bunch of WAGs and SWAGs put there at 1.30 in the morning by analysts desperately trying to make their deadlines.
In Denial
FrontPage Magazine has a brief article on the non-reaction to John Earl Haynes’s and Harvey Klehr’s book.
Liberal mainstream publications largely ignored the book, with reviews mostly appearing in conservative newspapers and magazines, such as the Washington Times, Commentary Magazine, and the Weekly Standard.
***
The lack of reaction to In Denial is a reflection of the difficulty that anticommunist historians, such as Mr. Klehr and Mr.Haynes, have had in challenging the academic establishment on its assessment of American communism.
The piece is short and doesn't do justice to the research that went into the book. The authors show how the "revisionists" have obstinately refused to revise their conclusions about Stalinism, American Communists, and anti-communists despite a flood of new documents. Creationists do fewer contortions to hold onto their worldview.
FrontPage Magazine has a brief article on the non-reaction to John Earl Haynes’s and Harvey Klehr’s book.
Liberal mainstream publications largely ignored the book, with reviews mostly appearing in conservative newspapers and magazines, such as the Washington Times, Commentary Magazine, and the Weekly Standard.
***
The lack of reaction to In Denial is a reflection of the difficulty that anticommunist historians, such as Mr. Klehr and Mr.Haynes, have had in challenging the academic establishment on its assessment of American communism.
The piece is short and doesn't do justice to the research that went into the book. The authors show how the "revisionists" have obstinately refused to revise their conclusions about Stalinism, American Communists, and anti-communists despite a flood of new documents. Creationists do fewer contortions to hold onto their worldview.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
A quiz with a point
Found this via Ipse Dixit:
Holocausts of Communism Test
For the record, i scored as "an Advanced student of Communist atrocities." Just goes to show that reading the Reader's Digest can pay off.
Found this via Ipse Dixit:
Holocausts of Communism Test
For the record, i scored as "an Advanced student of Communist atrocities." Just goes to show that reading the Reader's Digest can pay off.
Monday, January 05, 2004
Central Staffs
Corporate staffs, especially central planning staffs, have few defenders anymore. Since In Search of Excellence most businesses writers have come down in favor of decentralization and line units. GE used to have a large and powerful planning staff, but Jack Welch dismantled and dispersed it. Most turnaround CEOs have followed suit.
The critique of planning staffs argues that they just generate paper, distract line managers, and generally make the business slow to respond. Nearly every indictment of GM and Ford notes that they were hamstrung by the power of their Finance department while the Japanese ate their lunch.
This critique is largely correct in my experience. The plans and projects are bureaucratic exercises, not courses of action which yield marketplace gains.
But what i find intriguing is that it is a different story in the military sphere. The rise of the staff-- especially the general staff-- is a critical element in operational prowess and military effectiveness.
The German experience is the most studied. A strong general staff was a key part of the Prussian military reforms which revived the army after Napoleon crushed Prussia in 1805-06. It played a key role in the rapid victories in the wars of unification (1864-1871) and was the critical instrument in the development of the Blitzkrieg.
The importance of a general staff is almost universally accepted by military historians. Lee's failure to develop a modern staff is one of the causes for the CSA's defeat. Patton had a good staff which was why he could respond so quickly in the relief of Bastogne. The French general staff was the antithesis of their German opponents which explains many of their failures between 1914 and 1940.
I'll hazard a few reasons for the difference in performance of military and corporate staffs.
1. The best military staffs are made up of officers who previously served in line positions and know they will return to such positions. The worst corporate horrors seem to come from companies where the staff world can provide a career path (Finance, Audit, HR, etc.). Staff-line rotation serves to broaden perspectives and as a reality check.
2. The German staff officers were trained in the totality of war-- history, planning, tactics, leadership. All too often corporate staffs have a limited, specialized toolkit that they apply to every problem. Not every situation can be approached as a question of financial control or process reengineering.
3. General staff officers were selected after a rigorous screening process which looked at intellectual potential, past-military performance, and academic preparation. Combined with their service in line positions, this ensured that they were respected by the officer corps as a whole. Too many corporate staffs fail to win this respect and must rely on executive fiat to gain even minimal cooperation.
4. Business staffers generally operate with the assumption that the world is predictable. Most of their efforts are devoted to measuring, explaining, and eliminating variances. The German General Staff understood that war was unpredictable-- as von Moltke said, "no plan survives contact with the enemy."
5. Business staffs generally assume that they have the answer and success is just a matter of applying the right template. Often those templates and methods come prepackaged by consultants. The best general staffs serve a vital role in creating new doctrine by studying past operations and potential enemies. The US Marine Corps had worked through the problems of amphibious warfare by 1937, The roots of Blitzkrieg are found in von Seeckt's creation of 57 study groups tasked to analyze the 1914-1918 war. He did this in 1919 and assigned nearly 10% of the officer corps to this task.
See also,
Waiting for our Clausewitz
Clausewitz (II)
Corporate staffs, especially central planning staffs, have few defenders anymore. Since In Search of Excellence most businesses writers have come down in favor of decentralization and line units. GE used to have a large and powerful planning staff, but Jack Welch dismantled and dispersed it. Most turnaround CEOs have followed suit.
The critique of planning staffs argues that they just generate paper, distract line managers, and generally make the business slow to respond. Nearly every indictment of GM and Ford notes that they were hamstrung by the power of their Finance department while the Japanese ate their lunch.
This critique is largely correct in my experience. The plans and projects are bureaucratic exercises, not courses of action which yield marketplace gains.
But what i find intriguing is that it is a different story in the military sphere. The rise of the staff-- especially the general staff-- is a critical element in operational prowess and military effectiveness.
The German experience is the most studied. A strong general staff was a key part of the Prussian military reforms which revived the army after Napoleon crushed Prussia in 1805-06. It played a key role in the rapid victories in the wars of unification (1864-1871) and was the critical instrument in the development of the Blitzkrieg.
The importance of a general staff is almost universally accepted by military historians. Lee's failure to develop a modern staff is one of the causes for the CSA's defeat. Patton had a good staff which was why he could respond so quickly in the relief of Bastogne. The French general staff was the antithesis of their German opponents which explains many of their failures between 1914 and 1940.
I'll hazard a few reasons for the difference in performance of military and corporate staffs.
1. The best military staffs are made up of officers who previously served in line positions and know they will return to such positions. The worst corporate horrors seem to come from companies where the staff world can provide a career path (Finance, Audit, HR, etc.). Staff-line rotation serves to broaden perspectives and as a reality check.
2. The German staff officers were trained in the totality of war-- history, planning, tactics, leadership. All too often corporate staffs have a limited, specialized toolkit that they apply to every problem. Not every situation can be approached as a question of financial control or process reengineering.
3. General staff officers were selected after a rigorous screening process which looked at intellectual potential, past-military performance, and academic preparation. Combined with their service in line positions, this ensured that they were respected by the officer corps as a whole. Too many corporate staffs fail to win this respect and must rely on executive fiat to gain even minimal cooperation.
4. Business staffers generally operate with the assumption that the world is predictable. Most of their efforts are devoted to measuring, explaining, and eliminating variances. The German General Staff understood that war was unpredictable-- as von Moltke said, "no plan survives contact with the enemy."
5. Business staffs generally assume that they have the answer and success is just a matter of applying the right template. Often those templates and methods come prepackaged by consultants. The best general staffs serve a vital role in creating new doctrine by studying past operations and potential enemies. The US Marine Corps had worked through the problems of amphibious warfare by 1937, The roots of Blitzkrieg are found in von Seeckt's creation of 57 study groups tasked to analyze the 1914-1918 war. He did this in 1919 and assigned nearly 10% of the officer corps to this task.
See also,
Waiting for our Clausewitz
Clausewitz (II)
Peter Drucker
Provocative as usual in this Fortune interview.
I believe you should outsource everything for which there is no career track that could lead into senior management. When you outsource to a total-quality-control specialist, he is busy 48 weeks a year working for you and a number of other clients on something he sees as challenging. Whereas a total-quality-control person employed by the company is busy six weeks a year and the rest of the time is writing memoranda and looking for projects.
Provocative as usual in this Fortune interview.
I believe you should outsource everything for which there is no career track that could lead into senior management. When you outsource to a total-quality-control specialist, he is busy 48 weeks a year working for you and a number of other clients on something he sees as challenging. Whereas a total-quality-control person employed by the company is busy six weeks a year and the rest of the time is writing memoranda and looking for projects.
Michael Crichton
Let me add my voice to the chorus. These two speeches by Michael Crichton are brilliant.
Aliens Cause Global Warming
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
***
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right
Why Speculate?
Today, of course everybody knows that “Hardball,” “Rivera Live” and similar shows are nothing but a steady stream of guesses about the future. The Sunday morning talk shows are pure speculation. They have to be. Everybody knows there's no news on Sunday.
***
We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn't a real problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air. The same thing is true now of issues like species extinction and global warming. You never hear anyone say it's not a crisis.
Let me add my voice to the chorus. These two speeches by Michael Crichton are brilliant.
Aliens Cause Global Warming
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
***
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right
Why Speculate?
Today, of course everybody knows that “Hardball,” “Rivera Live” and similar shows are nothing but a steady stream of guesses about the future. The Sunday morning talk shows are pure speculation. They have to be. Everybody knows there's no news on Sunday.
***
We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn't a real problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air. The same thing is true now of issues like species extinction and global warming. You never hear anyone say it's not a crisis.
Saturday, January 03, 2004
"Blogs vs. journalism"
Julie has a long and thoughtful response to Jessica's question mentioned earlier.
Julie has a long and thoughtful response to Jessica's question mentioned earlier.
Friday, January 02, 2004
Favorite Posts
I've decided that these are my favorite posts for each month that i've been doing this:
March, History, Italy and the Nazis
April, Waiting for our Clausewitz
May, The Agony of the Agency
June, Good Old Boys
July, Rise of the Creative Class
August, The Miracle On The Vistula and Forgotten Men (Jim Ryun)
September, Better than fiction (Charles Goodnight)
October, Mission to Niger and a Cautionary Tale from Vietnam
November, Getting Hip to Squareness
December, Software
I've decided that these are my favorite posts for each month that i've been doing this:
March, History, Italy and the Nazis
April, Waiting for our Clausewitz
May, The Agony of the Agency
June, Good Old Boys
July, Rise of the Creative Class
August, The Miracle On The Vistula and Forgotten Men (Jim Ryun)
September, Better than fiction (Charles Goodnight)
October, Mission to Niger and a Cautionary Tale from Vietnam
November, Getting Hip to Squareness
December, Software
Taking Stock
I had originally started to put together a subject index for last year's posts. But it turned out that i had posted more than i thought and on too many topics. Still, it was interesting to go back and look at what i've written.
The first post was nothing special. And the plain fact is most of what ended up here had a pretty short shelf-life-- Janeane Garafolo? Michael Moore at the Oscars?
Over the year i got Instalanched, twice. I got drawn into blog controversies. I wrote a lot about Rick Bragg and the NY Times but took the unpopular side. Like a lot of bloggers i defended Gregg Easterbrook and i got ticked off about the Kobe Bryant case.
And, like many others i blogged about blogs and the blogosphere.
I planned to write more about business and marketing. I did write a fair amount about advertising. Somehow I also ended up defending Walmart repeatedly.
This post brings more visitors via search engines than anything else here.
I had originally started to put together a subject index for last year's posts. But it turned out that i had posted more than i thought and on too many topics. Still, it was interesting to go back and look at what i've written.
The first post was nothing special. And the plain fact is most of what ended up here had a pretty short shelf-life-- Janeane Garafolo? Michael Moore at the Oscars?
Over the year i got Instalanched, twice. I got drawn into blog controversies. I wrote a lot about Rick Bragg and the NY Times but took the unpopular side. Like a lot of bloggers i defended Gregg Easterbrook and i got ticked off about the Kobe Bryant case.
And, like many others i blogged about blogs and the blogosphere.
I planned to write more about business and marketing. I did write a fair amount about advertising. Somehow I also ended up defending Walmart repeatedly.
This post brings more visitors via search engines than anything else here.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Westerns
James over at Hell in a Handbasket offers up five Westerns for people who think they don't like westerns. It's an interesting list and it is hard to argue with his picks.
Also, he is offering to share some of his recipes-- not for ammo but for food. Simple to prepare but good eats to break the fast food habit. I say go for it. Too many recipes are for people who like to cook and therefore think of 90 minutes in the kitchen as recreation.
James over at Hell in a Handbasket offers up five Westerns for people who think they don't like westerns. It's an interesting list and it is hard to argue with his picks.
Also, he is offering to share some of his recipes-- not for ammo but for food. Simple to prepare but good eats to break the fast food habit. I say go for it. Too many recipes are for people who like to cook and therefore think of 90 minutes in the kitchen as recreation.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Well said
Electric Venom on Rumsfeld and the "stop-loss" measures:
I can't even say that I disagree with the rationale. We do need to maintain sufficient force presence, after all. Still, it sure chaps my hide when I remember that in April Rumsfeld was pushing to reduce our military presence in the Gulf Region and military sources leaked reports that prior to the war's onset, Rumsfeld had repeatedly cut the number of participating troops "by as much as half." In May, he continued pushing for a "lighter" military, particularly the Army, and insisted that we needed fewer personnel worldwide. In June he implied that with higher-tech but lighter-weight weapons, the military could get by on significantly reduced manpower.
But then came July, when Rumsfeld evidently caught on to the fact that in a ground war, a "lighter and leaner force" is synomymous with high attrition. Come August, Rumsfeld began putting out the word that "significant numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea." Yet two months later - after announcing extended tours - Rumsfeld began cutting the number of troops stationed in all three locations, beginning with 30,000 fewer soldiers in Iraq.
There's more, so RTWT. And the comments should prove interesting as well.
Electric Venom on Rumsfeld and the "stop-loss" measures:
I can't even say that I disagree with the rationale. We do need to maintain sufficient force presence, after all. Still, it sure chaps my hide when I remember that in April Rumsfeld was pushing to reduce our military presence in the Gulf Region and military sources leaked reports that prior to the war's onset, Rumsfeld had repeatedly cut the number of participating troops "by as much as half." In May, he continued pushing for a "lighter" military, particularly the Army, and insisted that we needed fewer personnel worldwide. In June he implied that with higher-tech but lighter-weight weapons, the military could get by on significantly reduced manpower.
But then came July, when Rumsfeld evidently caught on to the fact that in a ground war, a "lighter and leaner force" is synomymous with high attrition. Come August, Rumsfeld began putting out the word that "significant numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea." Yet two months later - after announcing extended tours - Rumsfeld began cutting the number of troops stationed in all three locations, beginning with 30,000 fewer soldiers in Iraq.
There's more, so RTWT. And the comments should prove interesting as well.
Blog Debate
Jessica invites comments on the following:
Resolved: This House (OK, this Blog) believes that the collective knowledge of the blogosphere is greater than the collective knowledge of professional journalists regardless of the subject.
My $.02--The sheer number of bloggers ensures that they will win in terms of "collective knowledge". OTOH, it is much easier to find the really knowledgeable journalists than it is to find the really knowledgeable bloggers.
Jessica invites comments on the following:
Resolved: This House (OK, this Blog) believes that the collective knowledge of the blogosphere is greater than the collective knowledge of professional journalists regardless of the subject.
My $.02--The sheer number of bloggers ensures that they will win in terms of "collective knowledge". OTOH, it is much easier to find the really knowledgeable journalists than it is to find the really knowledgeable bloggers.
Paul Samuelson
David Warsh has a nice appreciation of Paul Samuelson at Economic Principals
Our Marshall
But there can't be much doubt that scientific economics in the second half of the 20th century belonged to Samuelson and Cambridge, Massachusetts, much as most of the first half belonged to [Alfred] Marshall and Cambridge, England.
It is hard to argue with that. Foundations of Economic Analysis revolutionized how economists wrote for each other and his textbook Economics was a best-seller for decades. However, elegant mathematics is no substitute for empirical validity and Samuelson often failed in this area.
Economics defended Soviet economic performance right up to the fall of the regime. Samuelson's economic analysis failed to discern the complete bankruptcy of central planning. That's a pretty big blind spot.
David Warsh has a nice appreciation of Paul Samuelson at Economic Principals
Our Marshall
But there can't be much doubt that scientific economics in the second half of the 20th century belonged to Samuelson and Cambridge, Massachusetts, much as most of the first half belonged to [Alfred] Marshall and Cambridge, England.
It is hard to argue with that. Foundations of Economic Analysis revolutionized how economists wrote for each other and his textbook Economics was a best-seller for decades. However, elegant mathematics is no substitute for empirical validity and Samuelson often failed in this area.
Economics defended Soviet economic performance right up to the fall of the regime. Samuelson's economic analysis failed to discern the complete bankruptcy of central planning. That's a pretty big blind spot.
Monday, December 29, 2003
Mad Cow
Say Anything takes me to task for my earlier post:
Bad news for Bush? In what way? Did Bush somehow infect the cow with the disease? I certainly don't understand that assertion. Things like this happen, I don't see how it can be directly blamed on the President.
Bad news for two reasons.
First, regulation is not a good issue for Republicans. Public concerns about the food supply and the need for greater oversight gives the Democrats an issue when they haven't had many.
Second, the economic fallout will be concentrated in states that are part of the GOP base. Bad times in the farm belt will be a drag on his electoral momentum.
Thanks to Scott, i found these posts on the subject of MCD that are thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Say Anything takes me to task for my earlier post:
Bad news for Bush? In what way? Did Bush somehow infect the cow with the disease? I certainly don't understand that assertion. Things like this happen, I don't see how it can be directly blamed on the President.
Bad news for two reasons.
First, regulation is not a good issue for Republicans. Public concerns about the food supply and the need for greater oversight gives the Democrats an issue when they haven't had many.
Second, the economic fallout will be concentrated in states that are part of the GOP base. Bad times in the farm belt will be a drag on his electoral momentum.
Thanks to Scott, i found these posts on the subject of MCD that are thoughtful and thought-provoking.
European Heroes
I agree completely with this post:
I have always had great respect for the Polish people and the Polish nation. Their love of democracy and martial valor throughout the years puts them up there on my list of favored nations.
I've tried to note just a few of the times that Poland played a pivotal role in protecting western civilization (see here and here, for example).
At some point i copied down this quote from Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn from 1956 which sums up the matter nicely:
It is quite true that there is an aristocratic aspect of the Polish and Hungarian character, an aspect to be found in all classes, which prompts these nations rather to die than be slaves and to put chivalry and liberty above mere physical survival.
I agree completely with this post:
I have always had great respect for the Polish people and the Polish nation. Their love of democracy and martial valor throughout the years puts them up there on my list of favored nations.
I've tried to note just a few of the times that Poland played a pivotal role in protecting western civilization (see here and here, for example).
At some point i copied down this quote from Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn from 1956 which sums up the matter nicely:
It is quite true that there is an aristocratic aspect of the Polish and Hungarian character, an aspect to be found in all classes, which prompts these nations rather to die than be slaves and to put chivalry and liberty above mere physical survival.
football
Kevin Holtsberry has a good post on the end of the NFL regular season. This is an excellent summation of the Steelers's failure, both last night and all season long:
On paper the Steelers have the talent but they didn't live up to it this year. On offense, other than the gutsy Hines Ward, I don't think anyone stepped up and made plays when it counted. Maddox had three interceptions, a fumble, and was sacked five times last night!
Kevin Holtsberry has a good post on the end of the NFL regular season. This is an excellent summation of the Steelers's failure, both last night and all season long:
On paper the Steelers have the talent but they didn't live up to it this year. On offense, other than the gutsy Hines Ward, I don't think anyone stepped up and made plays when it counted. Maddox had three interceptions, a fumble, and was sacked five times last night!
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Was Saddam Conned on WMDs?
This is from the Guardian
New theory for Iraq's missing WMD: Saddam was fooled into thinking he had them
According to the theory, Saddam and his senior advisers and commanders were told by lower-ranking Iraqi officers that his forces were equipped with usable chemical and biological weapons.
The officers did not want to tell their superiors that the weapons were either destroyed or no longer usable.
The trouble for Britain was, the theory goes, that MI6's informants were the senior officials close to Saddam - with the result that British intelligence was also hoodwinked.
The hypothesis, which is being spread privately by officials, is open to the interpretation that the government is searching for an excuse, however implausible, for failure to discover any WMD in Iraq.
Sorry, but i think this is a stretch. It just does not square with the real risks the scientists and officers would have faced. Imagine, Saddam or Uday orders a live demonstration of the weapons (maybe against a bunch of political prisoners). What happens when the army commanders admit that they don't really have the weapons? The outcome would not have been pretty, and the generals knew that.
Wouldn't they be more likely to understate the number and effectiveness of the weapons? Blame it on the supply people or the scientists?
This argument calls to mind the sophistical attempts of revisionist historians to explain away VENONA and the Soviet documents that came to light in the 1990s. When these turned out to confirm that the Soviets did have spies throughout the US (including Hiss, White, and the Rosenbergs), revisionists claimed that the KGB operatives were lying, that they made stuff up to advance their careers.
In their new book, In Denial, Klehr and Haynes demolish this argument. They point out that is bears more resemblance to movies like Our Man in Havana and books like The Tailor of Panama than to the reality of KGB work. They wrote:
The Soviet KGB, however, lived in a state of institutionalized anxiety, constantly on the watch for hostile intelligence services foisting double agents and disinformation on it. The implication that a succession of KGB station chiefs in New York, Washington, and San Francisco, over a period of years, successfully conspired to conduct a massive con game, and that either they had been bamboozled by their own field officers or they were deceiving Moscow by claiming to have scores of fictitious agents, is simply risible. Any officer practicing such deceit would risk not merely recall and discipline but, during the Stalin era, execution. KGB headquarters was not a credulous patsy but a suspicious taskmaster.
This is from the Guardian
New theory for Iraq's missing WMD: Saddam was fooled into thinking he had them
According to the theory, Saddam and his senior advisers and commanders were told by lower-ranking Iraqi officers that his forces were equipped with usable chemical and biological weapons.
The officers did not want to tell their superiors that the weapons were either destroyed or no longer usable.
The trouble for Britain was, the theory goes, that MI6's informants were the senior officials close to Saddam - with the result that British intelligence was also hoodwinked.
The hypothesis, which is being spread privately by officials, is open to the interpretation that the government is searching for an excuse, however implausible, for failure to discover any WMD in Iraq.
Sorry, but i think this is a stretch. It just does not square with the real risks the scientists and officers would have faced. Imagine, Saddam or Uday orders a live demonstration of the weapons (maybe against a bunch of political prisoners). What happens when the army commanders admit that they don't really have the weapons? The outcome would not have been pretty, and the generals knew that.
Wouldn't they be more likely to understate the number and effectiveness of the weapons? Blame it on the supply people or the scientists?
This argument calls to mind the sophistical attempts of revisionist historians to explain away VENONA and the Soviet documents that came to light in the 1990s. When these turned out to confirm that the Soviets did have spies throughout the US (including Hiss, White, and the Rosenbergs), revisionists claimed that the KGB operatives were lying, that they made stuff up to advance their careers.
In their new book, In Denial, Klehr and Haynes demolish this argument. They point out that is bears more resemblance to movies like Our Man in Havana and books like The Tailor of Panama than to the reality of KGB work. They wrote:
The Soviet KGB, however, lived in a state of institutionalized anxiety, constantly on the watch for hostile intelligence services foisting double agents and disinformation on it. The implication that a succession of KGB station chiefs in New York, Washington, and San Francisco, over a period of years, successfully conspired to conduct a massive con game, and that either they had been bamboozled by their own field officers or they were deceiving Moscow by claiming to have scores of fictitious agents, is simply risible. Any officer practicing such deceit would risk not merely recall and discipline but, during the Stalin era, execution. KGB headquarters was not a credulous patsy but a suspicious taskmaster.
Mad Cow
Instapundit opines "I think it's the swine flu of the 21st century, but I'm glad I don't own McDonald's stock." Of course, he is neither a doctor nor a cattle rancher.
Julie who knows about agriculture and rural communities writes "This is a big deal, and it's going to hurt agriculture in every way possible." I think she is much closer to the mark.
This is also very bad news for Bush.
Say Anything rightly argues against over-reaction: "The cow that tested positive was still alive meaning that it, and likely the herd it is a part of, haven't yet entered the food market."
Instapundit opines "I think it's the swine flu of the 21st century, but I'm glad I don't own McDonald's stock." Of course, he is neither a doctor nor a cattle rancher.
Julie who knows about agriculture and rural communities writes "This is a big deal, and it's going to hurt agriculture in every way possible." I think she is much closer to the mark.
This is also very bad news for Bush.
Say Anything rightly argues against over-reaction: "The cow that tested positive was still alive meaning that it, and likely the herd it is a part of, haven't yet entered the food market."
Monday, December 22, 2003
Sad
National Review decided to mark Christmas with a mean-spirited article wholly lacking in Christian charity. I find it hard to see how one can reconcile the Good Samaritan with Scrooge before his epiphany.
National Review decided to mark Christmas with a mean-spirited article wholly lacking in Christian charity. I find it hard to see how one can reconcile the Good Samaritan with Scrooge before his epiphany.
"Contra College"
Aaron has another good essay; this one looks at college, class, and education. No point in trying to excerpt it, it is too good not to read the whole thing.
On the value of "elite" diplomas, the work of Alan Krueger is interesting. Here is a brief discussion of one of the economics paper he co-authored which found that there is no economic value:
They find that school selectivity, measured by the average SAT score of the students at a school, doesn't pay off in a higher income over time. "Students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges," the researchers write.
For at least a generation, college costs have risen faster than inflation. Students and parents spend savings and take on debt in order to attend expensive, elite colleges to get a leg up on the competition. Yet, it appears that elite colleges do not deliver that advantage.
If a private business acted this way, they would be in the sights of class-action lawyers and probably subject to congressional hearings. Certainly "60 Minutes" or "Dateline" would do their best to "investigate".
Aaron has another good essay; this one looks at college, class, and education. No point in trying to excerpt it, it is too good not to read the whole thing.
On the value of "elite" diplomas, the work of Alan Krueger is interesting. Here is a brief discussion of one of the economics paper he co-authored which found that there is no economic value:
They find that school selectivity, measured by the average SAT score of the students at a school, doesn't pay off in a higher income over time. "Students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges," the researchers write.
For at least a generation, college costs have risen faster than inflation. Students and parents spend savings and take on debt in order to attend expensive, elite colleges to get a leg up on the competition. Yet, it appears that elite colleges do not deliver that advantage.
If a private business acted this way, they would be in the sights of class-action lawyers and probably subject to congressional hearings. Certainly "60 Minutes" or "Dateline" would do their best to "investigate".
Life of a Salesman
Steve Sailer reviews Big Fish in the most recent American Conservative. It's not on-line, unfortunately. But this is just too good to share:
Nobody is more scorned in theory than the salesman, especially since Miller's 1949 drama, in which Bernard, the straight-A nerd next door who is Miller's alter ego, gets his revenge on the all-American (and thus doomed) Loman family by becoming a Supreme Court litigator, while the Lomans' sports and business ambitions shatter. Yet, nobody is more popular in real life than the successful jock-turned-salesman.
Speaking of Miller, the December Commentary has an essay by Carol Iannone which contains this assessment of the playwright.
Though Gottfried acknowledges that most of Miller's later plays are filled with characters spouting wildly unrealistic, politically inflected dialogue, he fails to see the single animus that has long driven Miller's work-the willed resentment toward American society, th overwrought, obdurate sense of condemnation and outrage. In Miller's hands, tragedy consists not in the individual's encounter with solemn powers greater than himself. Rather, tragedy is the failure to stand against patent corruption and foolishness, in the form of such life-crushing American villains as demanding fathers, witless salesmen, and witch-hunting antiCommunists. The idea that society might represent something more than betrayal and wasted sacrifice, that authority properly wielded might be admirable, that the dutiful son and quiet hero might deserve even more honor than the creative types who challenge every stricture-all this seems beyond the imaginative capability of our "greatest living playwright."
Gottfried calls Miller a "typical liberal." It would be fairer to say that he is a strange artifact of an American Left whose formulaic slogans were once a fixture on the cultural scene but whose fortunes in recent decades seemed to have waned somewhat (at least at home). The comeback of Arthur Miller suggests that, like the hackneyed dramas embodying them, these slogans have neither died nor fallen away, but only lain dormant.
Steve Sailer reviews Big Fish in the most recent American Conservative. It's not on-line, unfortunately. But this is just too good to share:
Nobody is more scorned in theory than the salesman, especially since Miller's 1949 drama, in which Bernard, the straight-A nerd next door who is Miller's alter ego, gets his revenge on the all-American (and thus doomed) Loman family by becoming a Supreme Court litigator, while the Lomans' sports and business ambitions shatter. Yet, nobody is more popular in real life than the successful jock-turned-salesman.
Speaking of Miller, the December Commentary has an essay by Carol Iannone which contains this assessment of the playwright.
Though Gottfried acknowledges that most of Miller's later plays are filled with characters spouting wildly unrealistic, politically inflected dialogue, he fails to see the single animus that has long driven Miller's work-the willed resentment toward American society, th overwrought, obdurate sense of condemnation and outrage. In Miller's hands, tragedy consists not in the individual's encounter with solemn powers greater than himself. Rather, tragedy is the failure to stand against patent corruption and foolishness, in the form of such life-crushing American villains as demanding fathers, witless salesmen, and witch-hunting antiCommunists. The idea that society might represent something more than betrayal and wasted sacrifice, that authority properly wielded might be admirable, that the dutiful son and quiet hero might deserve even more honor than the creative types who challenge every stricture-all this seems beyond the imaginative capability of our "greatest living playwright."
Gottfried calls Miller a "typical liberal." It would be fairer to say that he is a strange artifact of an American Left whose formulaic slogans were once a fixture on the cultural scene but whose fortunes in recent decades seemed to have waned somewhat (at least at home). The comeback of Arthur Miller suggests that, like the hackneyed dramas embodying them, these slogans have neither died nor fallen away, but only lain dormant.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
More Football
Flyover Country takes issue with the football posts (here).
On most points we just have different tastes. I dislike a lot of the showboating; he thinks it's sometimes entertaining. To each his own.
It is true that i think Vick is over-rated. But that has more to do with the media hype than with Vick's talent. No one can measure up to the media acclaim Vick has received. In a season he was injured Vick drew more attention than QBs who are leading their teams into the playoffs.
The Joe Horn/Terrell Owens deal is a similar matter. I don't like publicity stunts, but i am bothered more by ESPN devoting so much attention to them. Is Joe Horn really a better receiver than Hines Ward or Marvin Harrison? If he is not, why give him so much air time.
I just want players to become famous for their overall performance, not for their theatricality.
As for Butkus, it is true that he probably wouldn't be a Hall of Famer today. But that's because the NFL changed the rules to increase passing and scoring. If TO or Joe Horn had to play Butkus in his prime, under the rules of that era, it would be a different story.
Flyover Country takes issue with the football posts (here).
On most points we just have different tastes. I dislike a lot of the showboating; he thinks it's sometimes entertaining. To each his own.
It is true that i think Vick is over-rated. But that has more to do with the media hype than with Vick's talent. No one can measure up to the media acclaim Vick has received. In a season he was injured Vick drew more attention than QBs who are leading their teams into the playoffs.
The Joe Horn/Terrell Owens deal is a similar matter. I don't like publicity stunts, but i am bothered more by ESPN devoting so much attention to them. Is Joe Horn really a better receiver than Hines Ward or Marvin Harrison? If he is not, why give him so much air time.
I just want players to become famous for their overall performance, not for their theatricality.
As for Butkus, it is true that he probably wouldn't be a Hall of Famer today. But that's because the NFL changed the rules to increase passing and scoring. If TO or Joe Horn had to play Butkus in his prime, under the rules of that era, it would be a different story.
Friday, December 19, 2003
The Young and the Pointless
This is a great article on how advertisers over-value the 18-34 demographic.
Advertisers have their reasons for targeting teens and 20-somethings. First among them is the belief that long-term brand loyalties are set when people are young and impressionable. The problem is that the belief is based on market research that is 40 years out of date. "It's a cliché and a fallacy to think you can build a customer for life," says Al Ries, a longtime New York ad exec who is now a marketing consultant in Atlanta. "As people grow up, they change brands."
This isn't just a problem for advertisers:
Why should we care if advertisers have been duped into paying extra for teenage eyeballs? Because it's one big reason that so much of the dial--and the broader culture--is filled with dreck. "Network executives lose a lot of sleep trying to figure out what will hold fast the slippery attention of people in their late teens, 20's and early 30's," writes Jonathan Dee. "It is the principle by which a great deal of our popular culture--not just TV, but music, movies, radio--comes into existence." Take away the unearned premium demanded by shows that skew young and there might be more room for entertainments that aren't embarrassing to grown-ups.
One major hurdle to correcting this over-valuation is that the people who create advertising and buy advertising time tend to be 18-34 college-educated urbanites. They will still tend to advertise on programs that appeal to and flatter them (Friends, Seinfeld).
The author overstates his case here, however.
The "customer for life" cliché isn't the only blunder behind advertisers' youth fixation. Mr. Cracknell tells of a gin brand he worked for that would panic every few years when research showed the average age of its customers to be 50. They were acting on the "my customers are all about to die" fallacy, which leads companies to look for replacement customers on the playground. (This strategy may work for cigarette manufacturers, but is not widely applicable otherwise.)
Sears and GM (especially Buick, Olds, and Cadillac) were badly hurt when baby boomers failed to behave as their parents had. The advancing age of their average customer was an indication that their assumptions about customer lifecycle behavior were out-of date.
This is a great article on how advertisers over-value the 18-34 demographic.
Advertisers have their reasons for targeting teens and 20-somethings. First among them is the belief that long-term brand loyalties are set when people are young and impressionable. The problem is that the belief is based on market research that is 40 years out of date. "It's a cliché and a fallacy to think you can build a customer for life," says Al Ries, a longtime New York ad exec who is now a marketing consultant in Atlanta. "As people grow up, they change brands."
This isn't just a problem for advertisers:
Why should we care if advertisers have been duped into paying extra for teenage eyeballs? Because it's one big reason that so much of the dial--and the broader culture--is filled with dreck. "Network executives lose a lot of sleep trying to figure out what will hold fast the slippery attention of people in their late teens, 20's and early 30's," writes Jonathan Dee. "It is the principle by which a great deal of our popular culture--not just TV, but music, movies, radio--comes into existence." Take away the unearned premium demanded by shows that skew young and there might be more room for entertainments that aren't embarrassing to grown-ups.
One major hurdle to correcting this over-valuation is that the people who create advertising and buy advertising time tend to be 18-34 college-educated urbanites. They will still tend to advertise on programs that appeal to and flatter them (Friends, Seinfeld).
The author overstates his case here, however.
The "customer for life" cliché isn't the only blunder behind advertisers' youth fixation. Mr. Cracknell tells of a gin brand he worked for that would panic every few years when research showed the average age of its customers to be 50. They were acting on the "my customers are all about to die" fallacy, which leads companies to look for replacement customers on the playground. (This strategy may work for cigarette manufacturers, but is not widely applicable otherwise.)
Sears and GM (especially Buick, Olds, and Cadillac) were badly hurt when baby boomers failed to behave as their parents had. The advancing age of their average customer was an indication that their assumptions about customer lifecycle behavior were out-of date.
Advertising Metrics and the Problem of Interpretation
One common metric used by marketers to evaluate advertising effectiveness is "recall". After their ads run with sufficient reach and frequency, research firms survey the target audience of the ads to see how many remember seeing/hearing the ad, its central message, etc.. If those numbers don't come in high enough, the usual response is to blame the advertising for being unmemorable and the agency for insufficient creativity.
That line of reasoning assumes that the advertising was seen and heard. In the age of the remote control, Tivo, impatient viewers, and proliferating commercials, that assumption is not tenable. The radio program may have 500,000 listeners, but how many sit through the six or seven or eight ads thrown at them during commercial breaks? The best ad in the world will look ineffective if it is slotted fifth in an eight spot block. Too many people will have zapped away.
Advertisers demand that their agencies "cut through the clutter" of competing ads. It is time that they look at media outlets and ask why they create clutter by putting together massive blocks of often insipid ads. While the eighth commercial does increase marginal revenue for the TV or radio station, it probably reduces the impact of the other ads.
Similarly, advertisers are going to have to come to grips with the impact of recording technology on viewership. It may be that technophiles are a lost cause for broadcast commercials. But advertisers can at least stop paying to "reach" an audience that is unreachable. NBC et. al. will not do the necessary analysis; that would take money out of their coffers. But any company serious about marketing ROI has to pay attention to this problem.
One common metric used by marketers to evaluate advertising effectiveness is "recall". After their ads run with sufficient reach and frequency, research firms survey the target audience of the ads to see how many remember seeing/hearing the ad, its central message, etc.. If those numbers don't come in high enough, the usual response is to blame the advertising for being unmemorable and the agency for insufficient creativity.
That line of reasoning assumes that the advertising was seen and heard. In the age of the remote control, Tivo, impatient viewers, and proliferating commercials, that assumption is not tenable. The radio program may have 500,000 listeners, but how many sit through the six or seven or eight ads thrown at them during commercial breaks? The best ad in the world will look ineffective if it is slotted fifth in an eight spot block. Too many people will have zapped away.
Advertisers demand that their agencies "cut through the clutter" of competing ads. It is time that they look at media outlets and ask why they create clutter by putting together massive blocks of often insipid ads. While the eighth commercial does increase marginal revenue for the TV or radio station, it probably reduces the impact of the other ads.
Similarly, advertisers are going to have to come to grips with the impact of recording technology on viewership. It may be that technophiles are a lost cause for broadcast commercials. But advertisers can at least stop paying to "reach" an audience that is unreachable. NBC et. al. will not do the necessary analysis; that would take money out of their coffers. But any company serious about marketing ROI has to pay attention to this problem.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Tivoing Radio
Jeff Jarvis thinks we will soon be able to do just that. I wonder, though. Eventually, advertisers are going to catch on to the fact that the show's audience is not the same as the audience for their commercials. (That's what happens with zappers, Tivo, VCRs, etc.; people skip over the ads).
If i was in the magazine business or owned an agency strong in direct mail or print, i'd commission research that measured just how large the current drop-off is between radio/TV audiences and the commercial audience.
And it is wrong to assume that all this consumer empowering technology is going to produce a richer array of program choices. If ad revenue drops (because no one hears the commercials), stations will look for cheap, syndicated filler. Radio will become even more homogenized. (Sort of like local television--- go anywhere in the country and you get to watch the same Seinfeld reruns at 5:30 and 7:00 pm).
Jeff Jarvis thinks we will soon be able to do just that. I wonder, though. Eventually, advertisers are going to catch on to the fact that the show's audience is not the same as the audience for their commercials. (That's what happens with zappers, Tivo, VCRs, etc.; people skip over the ads).
If i was in the magazine business or owned an agency strong in direct mail or print, i'd commission research that measured just how large the current drop-off is between radio/TV audiences and the commercial audience.
And it is wrong to assume that all this consumer empowering technology is going to produce a richer array of program choices. If ad revenue drops (because no one hears the commercials), stations will look for cheap, syndicated filler. Radio will become even more homogenized. (Sort of like local television--- go anywhere in the country and you get to watch the same Seinfeld reruns at 5:30 and 7:00 pm).
That Atta-Iraq Memo
I'll grant you that the memo first reported by the London Telegraph is suspect. But as i read the Newsweek story "debunking" the memo, i worry that we are jumping the gun in discounting the whole idea.
The FBI is relying heavily on a timeline and paper trail.
The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn't begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.
The only problem is that these are easy to fake. Anyone can register as Mohammed Atta at a motel, check his email, or ride airplanes under that name.
In fact, if you were going to slip out of the country for a meeting with an intelligence operative, you might have an accomplice use your credit card, etc., just to help cover your tracks.
I await further analysis by Mark Reibling and Edward Jay Epstein
But in the meantime i might as well take advantage of the Beltway Traffic Jam
I'll grant you that the memo first reported by the London Telegraph is suspect. But as i read the Newsweek story "debunking" the memo, i worry that we are jumping the gun in discounting the whole idea.
The FBI is relying heavily on a timeline and paper trail.
The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta's movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn't begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.
The only problem is that these are easy to fake. Anyone can register as Mohammed Atta at a motel, check his email, or ride airplanes under that name.
In fact, if you were going to slip out of the country for a meeting with an intelligence operative, you might have an accomplice use your credit card, etc., just to help cover your tracks.
I await further analysis by Mark Reibling and Edward Jay Epstein
But in the meantime i might as well take advantage of the Beltway Traffic Jam
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
A Good Pat Buchanan Column
Why Do They Hate Dixie?
“Howard Dean wants the white trash vote,” wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer in mockery of the Vermonter. “[T]hat’s clearly what [Dean] meant when he said he wanted the votes of ‘guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.’”
After Dean was savaged by Al Sharpton, who called the Confederate flag an “American swastika,” Krauthammer was rhapsodic. His humiliation serves Dean right, Krauthammer chortled. He should never have pandered to Southern “yahoos” and “rebel-yelling racist redneck[s
Why Do They Hate Dixie?
“Howard Dean wants the white trash vote,” wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer in mockery of the Vermonter. “[T]hat’s clearly what [Dean] meant when he said he wanted the votes of ‘guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.’”
After Dean was savaged by Al Sharpton, who called the Confederate flag an “American swastika,” Krauthammer was rhapsodic. His humiliation serves Dean right, Krauthammer chortled. He should never have pandered to Southern “yahoos” and “rebel-yelling racist redneck[s
Don't Know What to Make of This
Offices of Interpreter's Lawyers Searched
Air Force investigators searched the offices of al-Halabi's military lawyers Thursday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, his civilian lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said Tuesday. The investigators, who had a military warrant, copied the hard drive of one of the defense lawyers' computers, Rehkopf said.
Offices of Interpreter's Lawyers Searched
Air Force investigators searched the offices of al-Halabi's military lawyers Thursday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, his civilian lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said Tuesday. The investigators, who had a military warrant, copied the hard drive of one of the defense lawyers' computers, Rehkopf said.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Will Vick be the Second Coming of Randall Cunningham?
Even when he was out with an injury, Michael Vick received more media attention than many QBs who actually played each week. Now Atlanta has fired Dan Reeves so they can get a coach who is more in tune with their young QB.
I was gratified to see the old-school Colts of Manning and Dungy beat the Falcons like a cheap drum. Maybe TMQ is right about those football gods.
I am leery of extrapolating any QB's performance after 15 or 20 games (see Kurt Warner, Kordell Stewart, Tommy Maddox). This is especially true with unconventional QBs like Vick. Initially they shred standard defenses with their mobility and speed. But coordinators catch on once they have a couple dozen games on film and they gameplan better. It is then a question of the QB learning how to cope with schemes designed to stop HIM, not a conventional QB. (Age and injury also are a problem since they eventually slow down all fee-noms).
Often, that is an insurmountable hurdle. But Atlanta has decided to stake their future on a young QB to the point that the next coach will have to be amenable to Vick.
I'm reminded of young Randall Cunnigham and Buddy Ryan. RC was unbelievable at times-- his somersault over the Giant defender and into the end zone still makes highlight reels. But he became a Buddy Ryan pet and never developed into the QB he could have been. Teams eventually contained him and his passing skills never matched his running ability.
If that happens with the Falcons and Vick i won't be sad.
Even when he was out with an injury, Michael Vick received more media attention than many QBs who actually played each week. Now Atlanta has fired Dan Reeves so they can get a coach who is more in tune with their young QB.
I was gratified to see the old-school Colts of Manning and Dungy beat the Falcons like a cheap drum. Maybe TMQ is right about those football gods.
I am leery of extrapolating any QB's performance after 15 or 20 games (see Kurt Warner, Kordell Stewart, Tommy Maddox). This is especially true with unconventional QBs like Vick. Initially they shred standard defenses with their mobility and speed. But coordinators catch on once they have a couple dozen games on film and they gameplan better. It is then a question of the QB learning how to cope with schemes designed to stop HIM, not a conventional QB. (Age and injury also are a problem since they eventually slow down all fee-noms).
Often, that is an insurmountable hurdle. But Atlanta has decided to stake their future on a young QB to the point that the next coach will have to be amenable to Vick.
I'm reminded of young Randall Cunnigham and Buddy Ryan. RC was unbelievable at times-- his somersault over the Giant defender and into the end zone still makes highlight reels. But he became a Buddy Ryan pet and never developed into the QB he could have been. Teams eventually contained him and his passing skills never matched his running ability.
If that happens with the Falcons and Vick i won't be sad.
NFL: Quality and Records
Another problem with the NFL is the increasing focus on individual records. This is a problem for a sport that is a pure team game with complex interdependencies not subject to easy statistical analysis. This is especially true for the defensive side of the ball.
After Bruce Smith captured the "all-time" sack record* Michael Wilbon wrote
Bruce Smith wasn’t great as a Redskin, but the greatness of his career is undeniable. He and Reggie White are unarguably the greatest defensive ends of their time. They ate quarterbacks for lunch and turned offensive coordinators into mumbling fools by the middle of every week. Maybe White was a hair better; he played tackle, lined up anywhere and everywhere and wrecked offenses. Smith, at his best, was so much prettier to watch. He always had the pure moves that allowed him to use his quickness to beat his man. A step below White and Smith are Chris Doleman and Richard Dent, with Charles Haley behind them. Their primary value: they got to the quarterback. They brought down the men who play the most valuable position, certainly the most glamorous position in team sports.
The "prettier to watch" comment is telling. Smith gets moved to the top of the heap because he made plays that could be captured by the camera and replayed as a highlight. But the role of the defensive lineman is much broader than that.
Here are some numbers Smith groupies won't talk about.
In four Super Bowls, Smith and the Bills's defense gave up an average of 142 yards rushing and 388 yards total offense. Contrast that with the Bob Lilly Cowboys. In two Superbowls they gave up an average of 74.5 yards on the ground and 257 total. Or how about the Joe Greene Steel Curtain? An average of 96.5 on the ground, 255 total yards in four Super Bowls. In fact, Greene's worst Super Bowl is better than Smith's best.
Lilly got one ring and Greene grabbed four. Smith, of course, was 0 for 4 when it mattered most.
*all time defined as since 1982. So we don't really know how Smith stacks up against Alan Page, Deacon Jones, or Big Daddy Lipscomb.
Another problem with the NFL is the increasing focus on individual records. This is a problem for a sport that is a pure team game with complex interdependencies not subject to easy statistical analysis. This is especially true for the defensive side of the ball.
After Bruce Smith captured the "all-time" sack record* Michael Wilbon wrote
Bruce Smith wasn’t great as a Redskin, but the greatness of his career is undeniable. He and Reggie White are unarguably the greatest defensive ends of their time. They ate quarterbacks for lunch and turned offensive coordinators into mumbling fools by the middle of every week. Maybe White was a hair better; he played tackle, lined up anywhere and everywhere and wrecked offenses. Smith, at his best, was so much prettier to watch. He always had the pure moves that allowed him to use his quickness to beat his man. A step below White and Smith are Chris Doleman and Richard Dent, with Charles Haley behind them. Their primary value: they got to the quarterback. They brought down the men who play the most valuable position, certainly the most glamorous position in team sports.
The "prettier to watch" comment is telling. Smith gets moved to the top of the heap because he made plays that could be captured by the camera and replayed as a highlight. But the role of the defensive lineman is much broader than that.
Here are some numbers Smith groupies won't talk about.
In four Super Bowls, Smith and the Bills's defense gave up an average of 142 yards rushing and 388 yards total offense. Contrast that with the Bob Lilly Cowboys. In two Superbowls they gave up an average of 74.5 yards on the ground and 257 total. Or how about the Joe Greene Steel Curtain? An average of 96.5 on the ground, 255 total yards in four Super Bowls. In fact, Greene's worst Super Bowl is better than Smith's best.
Lilly got one ring and Greene grabbed four. Smith, of course, was 0 for 4 when it mattered most.
*all time defined as since 1982. So we don't really know how Smith stacks up against Alan Page, Deacon Jones, or Big Daddy Lipscomb.
Acidman is exactly right
when he says that nfl football sucks today
This was especially good:
The NFL isn't a football league anymore. It's nothing but Soul Train in cleats and colorful uniforms.
But it is worse than that. The NFL is in danger of becoming the NBA where players get famous and mug for cameras but don't actually win much. (Exhibit A: that Atlanta receiver who celebrated a TD catch when his team was down 30-6).
I blame ESPN. Their programs demand highlights so they put on flashy plays and players regardless of the overall quality of play, game situation, or contribution to winning. Those "highlights" get replayed over and over and are the currency of celebrity (which is the only scarce commodity left as Aaron points out).
Dominique Wilkins was the original NBA "human highlight film". He made spectacular plays. He was on ESPN nearly every night during the NBA season. He was a much bigger sports celebrity than Michael Cooper of the Lakers. The only problem was that Cooper's defense helped the Lakers win championships, while Wilkins's Hawks won nothing.
when he says that nfl football sucks today
This was especially good:
The NFL isn't a football league anymore. It's nothing but Soul Train in cleats and colorful uniforms.
But it is worse than that. The NFL is in danger of becoming the NBA where players get famous and mug for cameras but don't actually win much. (Exhibit A: that Atlanta receiver who celebrated a TD catch when his team was down 30-6).
I blame ESPN. Their programs demand highlights so they put on flashy plays and players regardless of the overall quality of play, game situation, or contribution to winning. Those "highlights" get replayed over and over and are the currency of celebrity (which is the only scarce commodity left as Aaron points out).
Dominique Wilkins was the original NBA "human highlight film". He made spectacular plays. He was on ESPN nearly every night during the NBA season. He was a much bigger sports celebrity than Michael Cooper of the Lakers. The only problem was that Cooper's defense helped the Lakers win championships, while Wilkins's Hawks won nothing.
One of the Gems of Chicago Radio
is Milt Rosenberg. When i lived in Chicagoland i loved "Extension 720". How many other commercial radio stations do programs with Harold Bloom or Harvey Klehr as guests? Rosenberg now has a blog and it is definitely worth checking out. A nice mix of links that are off the insta-beaten path.
is Milt Rosenberg. When i lived in Chicagoland i loved "Extension 720". How many other commercial radio stations do programs with Harold Bloom or Harvey Klehr as guests? Rosenberg now has a blog and it is definitely worth checking out. A nice mix of links that are off the insta-beaten path.
Monday, December 15, 2003
War Games
Good post on the topic over at Hell in a Handbasket.
I agree completely with him when he writes:
wargames are snazzier than the older ones, but they have less to teach. Less meat on the bone, so to speak. This is due to the X-Box slackers that I've mentioned before. They want easy play and eye candy. This is a shame to a purist like me
It's really disappointing to that the power of the PC has been harnessed to generate pretty graphics instead of more realism (randomness, logistics, hidden movement) than can be incorporated into a playable board game.
Good post on the topic over at Hell in a Handbasket.
I agree completely with him when he writes:
wargames are snazzier than the older ones, but they have less to teach. Less meat on the bone, so to speak. This is due to the X-Box slackers that I've mentioned before. They want easy play and eye candy. This is a shame to a purist like me
It's really disappointing to that the power of the PC has been harnessed to generate pretty graphics instead of more realism (randomness, logistics, hidden movement) than can be incorporated into a playable board game.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Software
An excellent multi-blog discussion on the future of software development. Start here and don't miss the comments.
Even this non-programmer found it interesting.
Aaron describes enterprise software as "disgusting." I doubt that this is mainly the fault of the developers. This software is usually sold as a "solution". Yet Thomas H. Davenport pointed out, ("Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System," Harvard Business Review, v.. 76, number 4, July/August 1998, pp. 121-131), "An enterprise system, by its very nature, imposes its own strategic logic on a company's strategy, organization, and culture." Further, enterprise systems "pushes a company toward full integration" and centralization. I suspect many implementation problems and software modifications represent an undeclared war between centralizers and decentralizers-- undeclared because the internal proponents of enterprise software never make explicit that the goal is to bring the "cowboys" in the business units and business functions to heel.
David Gelernter did identify a mindset by developers that rings true in my experience. He wrote that "when technical people write books, they tend to assume that 'a nontechnical audience' means children." I have often felt that is exactly how many technical types view the people on the business side. Such a viewpoint hinders communication and helps add to the complexity of software.
This is also as good a place as any to plug Gelernter's book Machine Beauty; Elegance and the Heart of Technology. He has a lot to say about computers, software, and the reason for their complexity and users's frustrations. A sample:
"This much is clear: (1) most computer technologists are oblivious to beauty; (2) the best are obsessed with it; (3) the public has a love-hate relationship with beauty in computing; and (4) beauty is the most important quality that exists in the computer world, when all is said and done. "
"Beauty is decisively important to computer technologists because, first, virtual machines are always in danger of drowning in complexity. Hardware machines are held in check by physical reality. {Software builders are free from this limit]... So they go wild; a single programmer alone at his keyboard can improvise software machines of fantastic or even incomprehensible complexity."
"This huge complexity is responsible for software's permanent crisis: if you build a big enough program, it is almost impossible to make it come out right. Studies show that the average commercial software project takes 50% longer that it was supposed to, and one project in four is abandoned.... The 'beta test' is the industry's admission of failure-- the procedure whereby a product that is known to be flawed, but is nonetheless as good as the manufacturer can make it, is handed to expert users in the hopes they will find some of the remaining bugs."
"technology's single most important obligation is to get out of the way. The point of machinery is to make life easier."
"we do get from our fancy computers a tiny fraction of the value they are capable of delivering: we are a nation of Ferrari drivers tooling around with kinked fuel lines at fifteen miles per hour."
An excellent multi-blog discussion on the future of software development. Start here and don't miss the comments.
Even this non-programmer found it interesting.
Aaron describes enterprise software as "disgusting." I doubt that this is mainly the fault of the developers. This software is usually sold as a "solution". Yet Thomas H. Davenport pointed out, ("Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System," Harvard Business Review, v.. 76, number 4, July/August 1998, pp. 121-131), "An enterprise system, by its very nature, imposes its own strategic logic on a company's strategy, organization, and culture." Further, enterprise systems "pushes a company toward full integration" and centralization. I suspect many implementation problems and software modifications represent an undeclared war between centralizers and decentralizers-- undeclared because the internal proponents of enterprise software never make explicit that the goal is to bring the "cowboys" in the business units and business functions to heel.
David Gelernter did identify a mindset by developers that rings true in my experience. He wrote that "when technical people write books, they tend to assume that 'a nontechnical audience' means children." I have often felt that is exactly how many technical types view the people on the business side. Such a viewpoint hinders communication and helps add to the complexity of software.
This is also as good a place as any to plug Gelernter's book Machine Beauty; Elegance and the Heart of Technology. He has a lot to say about computers, software, and the reason for their complexity and users's frustrations. A sample:
"This much is clear: (1) most computer technologists are oblivious to beauty; (2) the best are obsessed with it; (3) the public has a love-hate relationship with beauty in computing; and (4) beauty is the most important quality that exists in the computer world, when all is said and done. "
"Beauty is decisively important to computer technologists because, first, virtual machines are always in danger of drowning in complexity. Hardware machines are held in check by physical reality. {Software builders are free from this limit]... So they go wild; a single programmer alone at his keyboard can improvise software machines of fantastic or even incomprehensible complexity."
"This huge complexity is responsible for software's permanent crisis: if you build a big enough program, it is almost impossible to make it come out right. Studies show that the average commercial software project takes 50% longer that it was supposed to, and one project in four is abandoned.... The 'beta test' is the industry's admission of failure-- the procedure whereby a product that is known to be flawed, but is nonetheless as good as the manufacturer can make it, is handed to expert users in the hopes they will find some of the remaining bugs."
"technology's single most important obligation is to get out of the way. The point of machinery is to make life easier."
"we do get from our fancy computers a tiny fraction of the value they are capable of delivering: we are a nation of Ferrari drivers tooling around with kinked fuel lines at fifteen miles per hour."
The Market Bubble
Jane Galt discusses the market bubble and suggests that evolution is to blame (at least in part).
But if we are programmed that way, why did we have a bubble in 1998 but not in 1980 or 1955?
It's hard to remember today just how new wide-spread individual investing is. Thirty years ago middle class Americans didn't invest, they put money in the bank. (See Nocera, Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class for the best discussion of this transformation.) A certain amount of naivety is to be expected with new investors.
What is astonishing about 1998-2000 is that this naivety was exploited, not mitigated by those who should have known better.
The airwaves were awash with irresponsible advertising that asserted that the average Joe could get rich fast by trading online.
Business media acted more like cheerleaders than watchdogs. CNBC, for example, was happy to provide a platform for money managers and "stock analysts" to hype the market and specific investments.
We now know that those "recommendations" were rife with conflicts of interest. Yet, business journalists were uninterested in pursuing those stories. It was a classic case of reporters being held hostage by their sources.
It is sad that investors were better off reading the business section of the liberal New York Times than they were listening to CNBC or reading Fortune or Red Herring.
Many journalists fell for the siren call of revolution. The Internet promised to be for business what Port Huron and Woodstock were for politics and society in the 1960s and 1970s. Anything was possible because the Net was new, revolutionary, and the stodgy, old, straight, white guys just didn't get it.
Given what we know now, the bubble was also a failure of regulation and government leadership. Yet no one seems interested in the political dimension. We have Clinton facing impeachment and his best shot at survival is a booming economy. Did this make his administration hesitant to act for fear that a market drop would hurt the boss's job approval numbers? Were they thinking about what would happen to Gore in 2000 if they moved aggressively in 1999? Two sectors where Clinton had substantial business support were Silicon Valley (Apple, Oracle, etc.) and investment banking. These were also the areas where the bubble's excesses were most obvious. Coincidence?
Jane Galt discusses the market bubble and suggests that evolution is to blame (at least in part).
But if we are programmed that way, why did we have a bubble in 1998 but not in 1980 or 1955?
It's hard to remember today just how new wide-spread individual investing is. Thirty years ago middle class Americans didn't invest, they put money in the bank. (See Nocera, Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class for the best discussion of this transformation.) A certain amount of naivety is to be expected with new investors.
What is astonishing about 1998-2000 is that this naivety was exploited, not mitigated by those who should have known better.
The airwaves were awash with irresponsible advertising that asserted that the average Joe could get rich fast by trading online.
Business media acted more like cheerleaders than watchdogs. CNBC, for example, was happy to provide a platform for money managers and "stock analysts" to hype the market and specific investments.
We now know that those "recommendations" were rife with conflicts of interest. Yet, business journalists were uninterested in pursuing those stories. It was a classic case of reporters being held hostage by their sources.
It is sad that investors were better off reading the business section of the liberal New York Times than they were listening to CNBC or reading Fortune or Red Herring.
Many journalists fell for the siren call of revolution. The Internet promised to be for business what Port Huron and Woodstock were for politics and society in the 1960s and 1970s. Anything was possible because the Net was new, revolutionary, and the stodgy, old, straight, white guys just didn't get it.
Given what we know now, the bubble was also a failure of regulation and government leadership. Yet no one seems interested in the political dimension. We have Clinton facing impeachment and his best shot at survival is a booming economy. Did this make his administration hesitant to act for fear that a market drop would hurt the boss's job approval numbers? Were they thinking about what would happen to Gore in 2000 if they moved aggressively in 1999? Two sectors where Clinton had substantial business support were Silicon Valley (Apple, Oracle, etc.) and investment banking. These were also the areas where the bubble's excesses were most obvious. Coincidence?
Missing Men
Ad Age (12-08-03)
But turn down the noise, and logic suggests a simple truth: Young men, early to adopt new technologies, are playing more video games, using more DVDs, doing more online-- and watching less broadcast TV.
The networks have tried to argue that viewership isn't dropping, it's all Nielsen's fault for measuring wrong. I like how they assume that the old measures were accurate and the new methods are flawed. Why couldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the past several years of ratings overstated the number of young men watching TV and the new measures now reflect that reality better?
Ad Age (12-08-03)
But turn down the noise, and logic suggests a simple truth: Young men, early to adopt new technologies, are playing more video games, using more DVDs, doing more online-- and watching less broadcast TV.
The networks have tried to argue that viewership isn't dropping, it's all Nielsen's fault for measuring wrong. I like how they assume that the old measures were accurate and the new methods are flawed. Why couldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the past several years of ratings overstated the number of young men watching TV and the new measures now reflect that reality better?
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Roots of Radicalism
I was reading Roots of Radicalism and came across this discussion of the objectives and tactics of the New Left.
Quoting Mark Rudd (SDS president at Columbia):
Mike Goldfield in New Left Notes (1966):
We manufactured the issues. The Institute of Defense Analysis is nothing at Columbia. And the gym issue is bull. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. I had never been to the gym site before the demonstration began. I didn't even know how to get there.
Even Berkeley had a slogan that "the issue is not the issue," meaning that the real issue was not free speech on campus but thoroughgoing social change.
You have to realize that the issue didn't matter. The issues were never the issues....It was the revolution that was everything. The only thing that mattered was what you were doing for the revolution. That is why dope was good. Anything that undermined the system contributed to the revolution and was therefore good.
This is one more reason why ANSWER's participation in the anti-war protests is a problem. They are using the protests to further their revolutionary aims; that the war is a mistake is secondary. One would think that moderate anti-war types would resent having their cause hijacked by Bolshevik wannabees.
Further, since "the issue is not the issue," non-revolutionaries (i.e. most of us) have every right to reject any and all ANSWER-led causes no matter what the ostensible merits of a particular case. They don't care about the merits, but only the utility of the protest to further their Stalinist aims. To be "fair-minded" is to be their patsy.
How Times Change
The Blog from the Core discusses the "entertainment" at a recent Dean fundraiser.
Antiwar comedians raising campaign cash for Democrat Howard Dean last night blasted President Bush as a "piece of living, breathing s - - -" at an angry X-rated fund-raiser in New York.
Couple that with the fact that Dean let Margaret Cho guest blog on his campaign site. On her own blog and in her stand-up act she says charming things like:
The Pope is one press release away from selling indulgences to buy space in heaven, like in the days of Martin Luther - not the King, the father of Lutheranism, Catholicism Lite. I am so angry, I don't want to just rip up a picture of the pope. I want to rip him a new asshole, wearing a condom, and I don't even have a dick, but this is the one time I wish I did. (10/10/03)
Hard to believe that just five years ago Washington was scandalized when a Republican congressman called Clinton a "scumbag."
The Blog from the Core discusses the "entertainment" at a recent Dean fundraiser.
Antiwar comedians raising campaign cash for Democrat Howard Dean last night blasted President Bush as a "piece of living, breathing s - - -" at an angry X-rated fund-raiser in New York.
Couple that with the fact that Dean let Margaret Cho guest blog on his campaign site. On her own blog and in her stand-up act she says charming things like:
The Pope is one press release away from selling indulgences to buy space in heaven, like in the days of Martin Luther - not the King, the father of Lutheranism, Catholicism Lite. I am so angry, I don't want to just rip up a picture of the pope. I want to rip him a new asshole, wearing a condom, and I don't even have a dick, but this is the one time I wish I did. (10/10/03)
Hard to believe that just five years ago Washington was scandalized when a Republican congressman called Clinton a "scumbag."
Dean and Gore
OTB has a round-up of blogger opinion on Gore's endorsement of Dean.
FWIW, when i heard about this, i thought "Nixon, 1964". While the Clintons maneuver to stop or undercut Dean, Gore becomes the leading established Democrat in his camp. If Dean loses, his supporters will remember who worked for them and who worked against them. That will help Gore in 2008, just as the support of Goldwater voters (and Barry's endorsement) clinched it for Nixon in 1968.
OTB has a round-up of blogger opinion on Gore's endorsement of Dean.
FWIW, when i heard about this, i thought "Nixon, 1964". While the Clintons maneuver to stop or undercut Dean, Gore becomes the leading established Democrat in his camp. If Dean loses, his supporters will remember who worked for them and who worked against them. That will help Gore in 2008, just as the support of Goldwater voters (and Barry's endorsement) clinched it for Nixon in 1968.
Monday, December 08, 2003
Newt was supposed to be a historian
Virginia Postrel thinks Newt Gingrich "thinks seriously about strategy (of all sorts)." But you couldn't tell that by the passage she quotes:
Gingrich argues that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. “The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow,” he says. “And that is a very important metric that they just don’t get.” He contends that the civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless, hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The military has the money and the daily contact with the locals. But it’s using the same tactics in a guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
Makes it sound like the Republic of South Vietnam fell to a popular insurrection and a peasant army. But that's not the way it happened. Saigon fell to a modern army that was equipped with Soviet tanks and artillery and that waged a conventional offensive. It was Poland 1939 or Norway 1940.
Outside the Beltway has the right perspective
But what Newt knows about military strategy is just what he's heard others say; he's not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Virginia Postrel thinks Newt Gingrich "thinks seriously about strategy (of all sorts)." But you couldn't tell that by the passage she quotes:
Gingrich argues that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. “The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow,” he says. “And that is a very important metric that they just don’t get.” He contends that the civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless, hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The military has the money and the daily contact with the locals. But it’s using the same tactics in a guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
Makes it sound like the Republic of South Vietnam fell to a popular insurrection and a peasant army. But that's not the way it happened. Saigon fell to a modern army that was equipped with Soviet tanks and artillery and that waged a conventional offensive. It was Poland 1939 or Norway 1940.
Outside the Beltway has the right perspective
But what Newt knows about military strategy is just what he's heard others say; he's not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
OK, I'll Play
So, we're google-bombing as a political tactic?
Well, then, i agree with this fine site that
For an ideal example of a miserable failure, one need look no harder than to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
UPDATE: Okay, i see the cool kids have a different target. That's fine. This is also a miserable failure.
So, we're google-bombing as a political tactic?
Well, then, i agree with this fine site that
For an ideal example of a miserable failure, one need look no harder than to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
UPDATE: Okay, i see the cool kids have a different target. That's fine. This is also a miserable failure.
Hilliary!
From The Blog from the Core
I think Hillary has no intention whatever of running for president next year: she wants the Democratic candidate to get clobbered, and the Democrats to lose even more seats in the Congress, so she can "save" the party in 2008. (If they actually let her try to do that, they'll be conveniently forgetting or ignoring that the party's race towards oblivion accelerated dramatically with the introduction of the Clintons to the White House.)
On his point about the actual effect the Clintons had on the Democratic party, see here.
From The Blog from the Core
I think Hillary has no intention whatever of running for president next year: she wants the Democratic candidate to get clobbered, and the Democrats to lose even more seats in the Congress, so she can "save" the party in 2008. (If they actually let her try to do that, they'll be conveniently forgetting or ignoring that the party's race towards oblivion accelerated dramatically with the introduction of the Clintons to the White House.)
On his point about the actual effect the Clintons had on the Democratic party, see here.
Wal-Mart Weans Suppliers
That's the headline from the print edition of Ad Age (12-1-03). Bentonville doesn't "want to be the sole source of survival for a company." They plan to take steps with any supplier that derives 30% or more of their revenue Wal*Mart sales.
In 2002 Wal*Mart accounted for 18% of sales of P&G products, 23% for Revlon and 21% for Hershey Foods.
That's the headline from the print edition of Ad Age (12-1-03). Bentonville doesn't "want to be the sole source of survival for a company." They plan to take steps with any supplier that derives 30% or more of their revenue Wal*Mart sales.
In 2002 Wal*Mart accounted for 18% of sales of P&G products, 23% for Revlon and 21% for Hershey Foods.
Sunday, December 07, 2003
Malvo, Moose and Motivation
This blogger asks:
Did religion -- namely Islam -- play a role in the killings? Is this connected to Osama's al Qaeda, even if only via ideology?
He has a lot of evidence that the answer is yes.
The JunkYard Blog thinks the police, esp. Chief Moose owes us some answers on questions he didn't cover in his book:
But--they misled the public, whether from noble intent or not. They told us they were looking for a certain profile, when in fact they had much evidence that pointed away from that profile and toward another.
We need to know why.
More on Chief Moose here:
What he doesn’t talk about in his book is some damning evidence that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo could have been caught a lot sooner but for Moose’s insistence that the killer or killers HAD to be white. Despite eyewitness accounts of black or “dark skinned” drivers in the areas of the shootings, Moose (who can’t get past race to save his life) refused to entertain even the thought that the sniper(s) could be anything other than white.
How many people died while Moose was leading a Keystone Cop search for white guys in a white van?
This blogger asks:
Did religion -- namely Islam -- play a role in the killings? Is this connected to Osama's al Qaeda, even if only via ideology?
He has a lot of evidence that the answer is yes.
The JunkYard Blog thinks the police, esp. Chief Moose owes us some answers on questions he didn't cover in his book:
But--they misled the public, whether from noble intent or not. They told us they were looking for a certain profile, when in fact they had much evidence that pointed away from that profile and toward another.
We need to know why.
More on Chief Moose here:
What he doesn’t talk about in his book is some damning evidence that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo could have been caught a lot sooner but for Moose’s insistence that the killer or killers HAD to be white. Despite eyewitness accounts of black or “dark skinned” drivers in the areas of the shootings, Moose (who can’t get past race to save his life) refused to entertain even the thought that the sniper(s) could be anything other than white.
How many people died while Moose was leading a Keystone Cop search for white guys in a white van?
Saturday, December 06, 2003
35 Heroes of Freedom?
Matthew Stinson asks
Is it just me, or does Reason's list of "35 Heroes of Freedom" read like it was written by the president of a high school Cbjectivist club?
Which is just about the perfect description of it. He puts it into perspective with
Larry Flynt gets a nod, but Pope John Paul II, who fought tyrannies more profound than American obscenity law, does not.
Outside the Beltway adds
anyone that thinks the guy who invented Pretty Good Privacy did more for freedom than Lech Walesa, Ronald Reagan, or John Paul II has a very narrow view of reality.
Another thing that struck me when reading the article was their statement that
Half a billion people or more have escaped the gray hand of totalitarian communism.
That is true, but it happened with no thanks to the libertarians. They were opposed to Reagan's military build-up and his confrontational approach to the Soviets.
Matthew Stinson asks
Is it just me, or does Reason's list of "35 Heroes of Freedom" read like it was written by the president of a high school Cbjectivist club?
Which is just about the perfect description of it. He puts it into perspective with
Larry Flynt gets a nod, but Pope John Paul II, who fought tyrannies more profound than American obscenity law, does not.
Outside the Beltway adds
anyone that thinks the guy who invented Pretty Good Privacy did more for freedom than Lech Walesa, Ronald Reagan, or John Paul II has a very narrow view of reality.
Another thing that struck me when reading the article was their statement that
Half a billion people or more have escaped the gray hand of totalitarian communism.
That is true, but it happened with no thanks to the libertarians. They were opposed to Reagan's military build-up and his confrontational approach to the Soviets.
Friday, December 05, 2003
Predictable
LEVI'S REVIEWING DISCOUNT JEANS MARKETING TACTICS
New 'Signature' Line Set Off Price War
Levi Strauss' move into the discount channels may have stimulated even more difficulties for the jeansmaker, which announced on the day of Mr. Marineau's memo that sales will decline for the seventh straight year from its 1996 high of $7.1 billion to an expected $4 billion come January.
Burt Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group/Flickinger Consulting, New York, said the arrival of Levi Strauss Signature stimulated something of a denim price war in the giant discounter's apparel department.
LEVI'S REVIEWING DISCOUNT JEANS MARKETING TACTICS
New 'Signature' Line Set Off Price War
Levi Strauss' move into the discount channels may have stimulated even more difficulties for the jeansmaker, which announced on the day of Mr. Marineau's memo that sales will decline for the seventh straight year from its 1996 high of $7.1 billion to an expected $4 billion come January.
Burt Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group/Flickinger Consulting, New York, said the arrival of Levi Strauss Signature stimulated something of a denim price war in the giant discounter's apparel department.
Unbelievable
Tree display vexes law school
Law Professor Florence Roisman was the first to complain about the original tree. Even undecorated, she said, it was a symbol of Christianity on government property.
"The tree is placed there to celebrate a Christian holiday -- it is not put there in the middle of summer," said Roisman, who is Jewish. "To honor one religion and not honor others is exclusionary. This is unacceptable at a place that presents itself as inclusive of all people."
The Supreme Court disagrees. It has ruled Christmas trees are secular symbols of the holiday. At the same time, the court said putting up trees in a public place gives any other group the right to place a holiday symbol there.
Why do taxpayers put up with subsidizing professors who clearly have too much time on their hands?
Tree display vexes law school
Law Professor Florence Roisman was the first to complain about the original tree. Even undecorated, she said, it was a symbol of Christianity on government property.
"The tree is placed there to celebrate a Christian holiday -- it is not put there in the middle of summer," said Roisman, who is Jewish. "To honor one religion and not honor others is exclusionary. This is unacceptable at a place that presents itself as inclusive of all people."
The Supreme Court disagrees. It has ruled Christmas trees are secular symbols of the holiday. At the same time, the court said putting up trees in a public place gives any other group the right to place a holiday symbol there.
Why do taxpayers put up with subsidizing professors who clearly have too much time on their hands?
Image is everything
My local talk radio station-- WHP-- is running TV ads for its program line-up. Since they carry Michael Savage they include his picture-- complete with cowboy hat as though he is John Wayne or something.
What a crock. The man lives in San Francisco. As noted here, his ravings drip with contempt for those of us who live in the hinterlands and he has been especially contemptuous of the people of Colorado in the Kobe case.
But for publicity purposes, he is a cowboy.
My local talk radio station-- WHP-- is running TV ads for its program line-up. Since they carry Michael Savage they include his picture-- complete with cowboy hat as though he is John Wayne or something.
What a crock. The man lives in San Francisco. As noted here, his ravings drip with contempt for those of us who live in the hinterlands and he has been especially contemptuous of the people of Colorado in the Kobe case.
But for publicity purposes, he is a cowboy.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Nominee Power-politics
This post over at the JunkYard Blog gets it exactly right:
What am I talking about? Those memos, the ones that show for a fact that the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been puppets for various hard left activist groups for the past couple of years. Imagine for a second that a pile of memos demonstrating conclusively that the GOP had been taking orders--not mere suggestions, but orders--from various far right groups, or from industries with vested interests in pending legislation surfaced. Imagine how the press would treat that disclosure--it would be Watergate times two. Imagine how the Dems would treat it--Washington would probably be in the grips of serious scandal fever. And for good reason, really. The parties are meant as ideological vehicles, and as competitive yin and yang to keep government relatively honest and somewhat functional. They are not, however, meant to be merely the above ground operation for various unelected heads of various fringe groups that prefer to operate below the horizon, or that operate out of sight because the American people reject their radical opinions.
This post over at the JunkYard Blog gets it exactly right:
What am I talking about? Those memos, the ones that show for a fact that the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been puppets for various hard left activist groups for the past couple of years. Imagine for a second that a pile of memos demonstrating conclusively that the GOP had been taking orders--not mere suggestions, but orders--from various far right groups, or from industries with vested interests in pending legislation surfaced. Imagine how the press would treat that disclosure--it would be Watergate times two. Imagine how the Dems would treat it--Washington would probably be in the grips of serious scandal fever. And for good reason, really. The parties are meant as ideological vehicles, and as competitive yin and yang to keep government relatively honest and somewhat functional. They are not, however, meant to be merely the above ground operation for various unelected heads of various fringe groups that prefer to operate below the horizon, or that operate out of sight because the American people reject their radical opinions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)