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March 31, 2006
Politicians resign in disgrace: Not in America
The Financial Times reports that the three leaders of Japan's largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, have resigned their seats in the Diet (the Japanese parliament). Seiji Maehara, the party leader, and two of his lieutenants resigned earlier today, because of a scandal. In a press conference quoted in the Wall St. Journal, Maehara stated, "It is my responsibility that the problem was not dealt with immediately."
This horrible "scandal?" A single e-mail message, sent to parliament member Hisayasu Nagata, which alleged that the son of a senior official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had taken money from Takafumi Horie, an Internet entrepreneur who was supposed to have manipulated the stock price of his Livedoor Internet portal. Nagata used the e-mail to make a public accusation before the parliament that the Liberal Democratic Party official had accepted the money.
The e-mail sent to Nagata turned out to be fake and the accusation groundless. So -- after much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the Diet -- Nagata and the leaders of his Democratic Party all resigned.
Can you imagine that? The rough equivalent, in American politics, would be if Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, and Dick Cheney (or Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Nancy Pelosi) all resigned from Congress on the basis of "taking responsibility," as Maehara said was the reason for his resignation.
But no -- American politicians and government officials do not do that. They do not take responsibility for their mistakes. Instead, they stonewall, cover up, blame the media, and insist that they "have no regrets" over their actions, even when they break the law. Tortured captives at Abu Ghraib? No regrets. Warrantless wiretaps? No regrets. Whitewater? No regrets.
Not to belabor the point, but our leaders could learn from the examples of Messrs. Maehara and Nagata and friends. 'Fess up when you mess up (to quote the title of a favorite blues tune). I'd say the Japanese parliamentarians were a little over the top, in resigning their jobs over a bogus e-mail message -- but that's a cultural difference, reflecting the Japanese obsession with honor and face-saving. In substance, they haven't gone over the top at all -- they've simply done the right thing.
It's a shame American politicians don't do that.
Posted by Urbie at 05:59 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2006
Three in a row!
Three 7-free golf scorecards, that is. Those of you who follow my life much too closely have undoubtedly noticed that my e-mail signature concludes with the line, "Happiness is a 7-free card." This refers to a golf scorecard containing no scores worse than 6.
When it comes to scorekeeping, I'm a little obsessive. My card tracks strokes, putts, fairways hit, club usage, greens in regulation, up-and-downs made and missed from inside 60 yards, length of first and last putt on each hole, and total length of putts made. (In reality, that should read "total length of shots holed," since I count hole-outs from off the green in this last stat.)
In my unending efforts to come up with more yardsticks to evaluate my game, I decided, a year or so ago, that a 7-free card was an indication of a consistent, well-played round -- even if the score itself wasn't remarkably low. Looking over my scores for the past few years, I noticed very few 7-free cards -- in one recent year, I think I only had two of them.
So by that measure, it's no small feat that with yesterday's round of 82 at Beaver Creek, I am now riding a string of three consecutive 7-free rounds. What's more, in the fourth round back, I finished with 15 holes of 6 strokes or better, the third hole of the day having been a whopper -- a 10 on the par-5 12th hole (I started on the back nine that day).
Yesterday's round equalled my personal course record at Beaver Creek and was the 13th time I've broken 85 on a regulation (par-70 or more) course. Toward the end of last year, and in a few rounds this year, I've been knocking on the door of breaking 80 -- I mentioned this to the guy at the desk (once a 4-handicapper, he said, but since breaking 80 in the age department, his game has slipped a bit -- at that age, he's entitled, I'd say), and he said, "Breaking 80 is one of those things that just happen. One day, you'll be playing well, and you'll just break 80 -- not by 'trying to do it,' but everything will just fall into place."
Obviously, someone who used to hold down a 4 handicap knows a thing or two about shooting low scores. I don't place a great deal of importance on shooting in the 70s, although it's a goal. For now, I'll take the 7-free scorecards as evidence that I'm heading in the right direction.
Posted by Urbie at 05:54 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
It's a phone -- make it work like one!
In the Wall St. Journal's latest "Middle Seat" column, writer Scott McCartney discussed the FAA's plans to allow people to use cell phones on commercial flights. His followup "Mailbox" column established a new first: completely 100% unanimous feedback from readers, all of whom were opposed to allowing cell phone calls on planes.
Obviously, you know where I stand on this one. But I think the antisocial nature of cell phones wouldn't be so bad if the manufacturers would shift their focus. Instead of adding more bells, whistles, cameras, ringtones, text-messaging features, and other doodads, they should stop further development in those areas and assign all of their engineers to the task of making their products work better as telephones.
This might sound like a strange idea, but if you think about it, why is it that cell phone users are so obnoxious? It's because they find it necessary to SHOUT into the phone. When you're walking down the street, it's easy to tell, without looking, who's having a conversation with someone walking next to them and who's having a phone conversation: the one on the phone is talking at twice the decibel level of the in-person talker.
I'm not entirely sure why this is. I myself tend to talk louder on the cell phone than I have to, so it's not as though I'm getting on my high horse here. It may have something to do with the lack of feedback you get from a cell phone. With an old-fashioned telephone, you always got a certain amount of sound -- your own voice -- coming back at you through the earpiece, and there was always a certain amount of ambient sound coming from the other end; what's called "hall noise" in the recording industry.
With a cell phone, you don't get that feedback -- you can't hear yourself, and you don't hear anything from the other end except when the other person is speaking. I think that's why people yell into their cell phones (which does not improve -- and, in fact, reduces -- how well the caller's voice comes through on the other end). I've tried talking softly on the cell phone myself, and it tends to work fine -- I don't think there's any real correlation between talking louder and being heard. Yet almost everyone does it.
If Motorola, Nokia, and other cell phone manufacturers would devote a year or two of their engineers' undivided attention to figuring out how to make phones provide better feedback -- and provide better error correction so that calls wouldn't be dropped and words would get through more reliably -- you'd find that people would no longer shout into the phone all the time. I'd still like to have airplanes be phone-free zones -- but if the guy in the next seat wanted to make a phone call and could do so in a normal voice, it might not be so bad.
Posted by Urbie at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2006
Tortoise-like plodding seems to work
By now, I'm sure regular readers are clamoring for an update on how things are going at the NAU business school this semester, following last fall's partial setback. Well, thanks to some major realignments in my schedule (relinquishing my job in ITS and opting not to take a couple of difficult courses I'd originally planned on -- those being Advanced Tax and Case Studies in Financial Reporting -- as well as making plans to do an internship in place of my final 3-credit course requirement), it's looking as though I've got the wheels back on.
As has been documented, I'm in the midst of a rematch with Accounting 455 (Financial Reporting III), last semester's Waterloo. This semester has been a somewhat different story -- through sheer force of having enough free hours in a week to sit at my desk and grind out problems upon problems upon problems, I've got a much better grasp of the material than I had last fall. As a result, on the first midterm (just over a month ago), I hit the ball... not quite out of the park, but over the center-fielder's head for a triple, at least. The second midterm, this past Thursday, was probably the toughest one of the semester, and I'm not that confident I did well, but I'm sure my score was better than the one I recorded last fall. So I'm fairly certain that I'll get a passing grade of one sort or another this time around.
I remain at loggerheads with my instructor, but I think we just have some irreconcilable differences and I'm going to have to live with them. She lectures at such a breathless pace that I can't get a handle on what she's talking about, unless I've already got the material down cold from studying here at my desk beforehand. Which begs the question: if I've got the stuff down cold, what's the point of going to the lecture? Well, the point of going to the lecture is that we get automatic points for having done our homework (regardless of whether or not the answers are entirely correct), and there are in-class points to be earned through team quizzes. The latter are an excruciating exercise, but they put points on the scorecard.
At Thursday's exam, my instructor made a snide comment to the effect that "You people need to work on your time-management skills. I've had other faculty complain that you're skipping their classes to study for my test; well, maybe you need to use your time better." I thought that remark was entirely uncalled for -- what does she know about my time-management skills? Truth be told, I did miss my earlier class that day, so I could spend some time collecting my thoughts and getting into the proper frame of mind for her exam. That is hardly an indication of poor time management, though -- essentially, I spend five days a week studying ACC 455. How much better am I supposed to "manage my time?"
In any case, irreconcilable differences or no, I will persevere, and I will not be run out of business school!
Meanwhile, my other two classes are ACC 480 (Auditing) and BA 305 (Business Law II). Neither of these involves a lot of heavy lifting, but they both cover some ground that will probably be useful, if I end up in the accounting profession.
So that's where things stand. The 2005-6 academic year has not produced a lot of highlight-film material, but I continue to plod along toward receiving a BS in accounting (which may, a friend suggested, be a redundancy).
Posted by Urbie at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
101 Ways to Cook Spam!
I have to admit, I was a GMail Ad Skeptic™ for a long time. You know, one of those zero-tolerance privacy-geek types who got all upset when it was announced that GMail's software was going to scan the content of your mail and display sponsored links (a/k/a advertisements) along the top and side of the screen based on what was in the message you were reading.
At first, I found the idea a little bit creepy and Big Brotherish. So I didn't sign up for a GMail address for a few months after it came out. But I finally decided to try it, once the pre-release buzz died down and Google loosened up the entry barriers a little bit (officially, you still need an "invitation" to sign up, but there are plenty of ways around that).
And after a few weeks, I decided I liked the user interface much better than that of any previous Web mail product -- maybe even better than an e-mail client. This became especially true a few months ago, when our remote neighborhood finally got DSL. (Can you believe it? Out here in the wilds of unincorporated Coconino County, we were still dialing up, until last fall!)
So I've been using GMail as my primary address since then. And what's more, I actually like the targeted ads that appear to the right of the message (as well as the non-ad links they serve up).
But what's really amusing is their relatively recent top link -- the one that appears above the message or inbox listing. It serves up a general-interest link (as far as I can tell) when you're in your Inbox... but when you go to your Spam folder, what you invariably get is a recipe for Spam (the Hormel canned-meat food product), from recipesource.com.
I had no idea there were so many things you could do with Spam. They've got recipes for Spam Fajitas, Ginger Spam Salad, Spam Primavera, a Spam Skillet Casserole, a French Fry Spam Casserole, and, perhaps the pièce de resistance, a Spam Hashbrown Bake. (As far as I can tell, however, there is no recipe for Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Eggs, and Spam.)
Who knew that Spam was such a versatile food product? Is there no end to what can be done with spiced pork, chopped up fine and crammed into a can? And who could have imagined that junk e-mail would prove to be a vehicle for such wholesome amusement?
Posted by Urbie at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)