Two Brilliant Bits of Street Art

One

and

Two

There now, wasn't that fun?

(H/t Good blog)

WSJ on Deepwater Horizon

The WSJ has a marvelous two parter that's been making the rounds.

• BP Decisions Set Stage for Disaster
• There Was Nobody in Charge
  
  and from the second article...Talk about hubris (emphasis mine):
  
  "In the minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, almost no one on board realized that serious trouble was brewing, other than a few men on the drilling floor—the uppermost of three levels on the massive structure. The sea was as still as glass. A cool wind blew faintly from the north. Capt. Kuchta was hosting two BP executives on board for a ceremony honoring the rig for seven years without a serious accident."

Ow. That stings a little.

(H/t Felix Salmon and CJR)

If Corporations Were People...

Paraphrasing a perfectly apt observation I heard on the radio at lunch.

If I have a few beers before I go home and get pulled over - I get arrested. My car gets impounded. I'm out impound fees, time, and possibly bail money. Then I go to court, where I face more fines and a mark on my record that will raise my insurance rates and make it harder to get a job.

With BP, 11 people are dead and an entire region's environment and livelihood are endangered. You think anyone's going to jail for this?

Let Me Explain

E keeps telling me I should teach - I'm not sure any school would have me, but I'd certainly admit that I love explaining things.

This is an aspect of myself I have inflicted on family and friends unconsciously for decades. It only since I became a parent that I've understood what a compulsion this is for me. I watch my son explain something to me he's only just learned - from me.

He cannot help himself - because I have the same compulsion. I want to explain it, even if I just found out about it a few seconds ago. Frequently because I just found out about it a few seconds ago.

My pat line is that I'm great at explainings things - I'm but just bad at understanding things.

In my current profession - these traits get me invited to present topics to groups, and subject me to public correction.

In some settings that is a bad thing - but the overall goal is to find stuff out. I love finding things out - and there is nothing special about that quality. A moment of discovery - the instant that you realize you really understand something is a great moment.

I've said a truly sickening number of times that after I read Richard Rhodes book The Making of the Atomic Bomb I felt like I could go out and teach a class about building bombs. That's the mark of quality instruction - you end with concepts and details working together in your head.

A book is not a classroom - and despite the absence of a true instructor, I learned a ton.

What made me think about all this was listening to Salman Khan - someone who clearly enjoys explaining things even more than I do.

Khan runs the Khan Academy - a free library of online courses where he explains pretty much damn near everything.

Here he is talking about how he got started out and what he's learned about learning and teaching.
He describes the moment of discovery as an unbeatable high, you gotta love that.



I admire what he's done. A website that offers opt-in, free instruction where the end user is in total control.

He reads testimonials of people who struggled in regular classrooms, but have excelled under his instruction.

There's no one superior way to learn things - but the emergence of new techniques (or the refinement of existing ones) is just a glorious thing.

Rockin'.

Right Back At You, Congressman

Emptywheel flags a lovely exchange between the Interior Secretary and Rep. Lamborn (R-Colorado). Lamborn loudly denounces finger pointing about the mess at the MMS, then proceeds to point a finger at the current administration and suggests we leave it there.

Sec. Salazar is having none of it:



This hardly makes up for the everything that has gone wrong - but it's always nice to see a Congressman called on their bullsh!t.

Creepy and Cool at the Same Time

Felix Salmon posts a bit that didn't make it into his article in Wired. It's about a company named Skymeter.

The idea behind Skymeter is that they use what they call financial-grade GPS: devices in your car which are much more accurate than the GPS devices found in navigation devices or cellphones. They can tell where you are to within a few centimeters, and once you can do that, all manner of possibilities open up in terms of charging not just to get into a city center, but rather to charge by the mile or by the minute on specific streets. Raise prices where congestion is worst, keep them low where it isn’t a problem, and solve lots of other problems at the same time — like easy charging for parking (you just park your car on the side of the road and pay for however long it’s parked there) and for pay-by-the-mile insurance. Or transform the economics of something like Zipcar, which currently just charges by the hour even when charging by a combination of hours and miles would make more economic sense.

Presumably tow trucks would be given these coordinates to identify people who've left their car at a given coordinate too long.

The possibilities are pretty startling - and I certainly like the idea of a world without parking meters - but I have to wonder about a system that essentially turns your parking fees into a monthly bill.

Insurance companies are using a similar technology now - pay as you go kind of insurance, with the idea that you pay for a more accurate representation of your driving habits (that hopefully works in your favor). Some company in Israel has built software that grades your driving based on how you accelerate, corner and brake. As an opt in kind of product, this allows lower risk drivers to self identify and receive lower rates. It also allows a company to screen out high risk drivers a lot easier - with higher premiums.

Makes you wonder.

Random Sip From the Firehose II

• This just in: Robin Givhan is a total idiot.
  
• Trudy Lieberman finds USA Today knows more about health care than we do.
  
• Round the World: Forest Labratories makes Lexapro in the US, yet somehow manages to avoid over a third of its tax liability
  
• Do the shareholders lawyers know this? The Yakuza scammed Lehman brothers out of $350 million dollars
  (It's in the podcast, at about 8:40 in)
• Too right:The Onion says all that needs to be said about media coverage of social networking sites.
  
• Ryan Chittum to Wall Street: Stop acting like small banks are a problem. The money quote:
  "[H]ow about putting it yet another way: There are 775 “problem banks” in the country right now, according to the FDIC. Total assets? $431 billion. Or less than one-fifth the assets of Bank of America alone. If you took all those 775 problem banks, rolled them together into a gigantic ball of suck, they’d still only be the eighth biggest bank in the country."

Haliburton to BP: We Blame You

Click to enlarge

Nola.com and other sources are claiming that BP had invited a testing firm called Schlumberger (SLB) to perform something called a Cement Bond Log (CBL) test in the days before the rig went nova.
In the words of Tim Probert, a Halliburton's executive, the CBL is "the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness" of the well's seal.

For some reason, the SLB folks left the Deepwater Horizon without performing the CBL test.

The rumor mill is citing a considerably more dramatic version of events.

• SLB shows up to do test
• SLB sees oil rig is "kicking heavily", tells BP to shut down the well.
• BP does not.
• SLB asks to be taken off the rig
• BP tells them to wait for the next flight.
• SLB charters their own helocopter and leaves as soon as possible.
• Hours later the Deepwater Horizon blows up.

However, the rumor mill has a number of things wrong (Nola.com's account says the SLB folks were only on standby to perform the test, were not asked to and then left on a regularly scheduled BP flight). Nor was BP required to perform this test:

According to Probert, government regulators at the Minerals Management Service don't require a well owner like BP to order a cement bond log unless it feels uncertain about any of the earlier tests. It's not clear what the results of the positive and negative pressure tests were.

But the human drama of the rumor mill would seem like a good place to start asking questions, though. Did the SLB folks see a well that was "kicking heavily?" - Did they ask to perform their test? Were they concerned for their safety or that of the rig?

Haliburton is clearly making the case they they were in the right - but their version is more information that can be used to pry more information out into the open.

We'll see what BP's response is - and if the SLB folks are willing to go on the record.

(H/t Felix Salmon)

Pay Your Water Bill

HuffPo tells us about Vicki Valentine losing her home to foreclosure for an unpaid water bill.

The original unpaid bill amounted to $362.

However, the city had outsourced its bill collection to private companies by selling tax liens.

You'll never guess who's in the tax lien business (emphasis added):

Buyers range from behemoths such as JPMorgan Chase & Co, and some regional banks and law firms, to small-fry investors lured by late-night television commercials promising quick riches. Investors generally bid in an auction for the right to collect delinquent taxes and other municipal debts on property owners, sometimes by paying only a few hundred dollars. When owners can’t pay, investors can pick up property at bargain prices.

Doesn't sound that bad... I mean the city gets its money saves on labor - and this woman did owe almost $400.

But why did she lose her home?

Investors...can rake in hefty profits. That’s because they can tack on fees and steep interest rates, which can amount to 18 percent annually in Baltimore.

In Valentine’s case, legal fees and other charges climbed past $3,600 – nearly 10 times her original bill.

Valentine was unemployed - so would have had trouble paying the original amount - but the added fees certainly didn't help.

Here's the kicker:

Though Valentine had no way of knowing it, some investors rigged the 2006 Baltimore tax sale auction that led to her eviction, federal prosecutors alleged in court.

The roots of that conspiracy run deep, prosecutors said. For years, a handful of Baltimore real estate lawyers and their investment partners quietly dominated Maryland tax sale auctions, with few questions asked about their bidding tactics or collection policies.

That changed after The Baltimore Sun used city records and court filings to report in March 2007 that hundreds of mainly low-income city residents had been kicked out of their homes over small unpaid bills, ranging from water and sewer charges to minor environmental citations. Some people were driven from family property because they couldn’t afford to pay thousands of dollars demanded by lien holders.

The Baltimore newspaper also documented for the first time that while dozens of parties bid in Baltimore tax auctions in 2006 and 2007, just three investment groups had won about two-thirds of the liens.

Quite the racket they've got going there.

You wonder it was designed before the value of real estate plummeted. Valentine's $46,000 home is currently valued at less than 20K.

Regardless of the motivation - this is government handing its job over to the unscrupulous, because its easier than doing their job.

Spillcam

House and Senate members have posted live camera feeds of the BP oil spill.

Below is footage taken from that feed.

• Sen. Nelson's website
• House committee on global warming

(H/t E and MSNBC)

Shoving Pizzas Under the Door

Amid the latest account of how godawful the BP gulf oil mess is becoming was a great soundbite from the Coast Guard's Admiral Allen:

Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard admiral in charge of the response to the spill, said Wednesday evening that the government had decided to try to put equipment on the ocean floor to take accurate measurements. A technical team is at work devising a method, he said. “We are shoving pizzas under the door, and they are not coming out until they give us the answer,” he said. 

 I feel better already.

Oh, and (from the same NYT article)

• The big scientific question now is what is happening in deeper water. While it is clear that water samples have been taken, the results have not been made public.
• On May 6, NOAA called attention to its role in financing the work of a small research ship called the Pelican, owned by a university consortium in Louisiana. But when scientists aboard that vessel reported over the weekend that they had discovered large plumes undersea that appeared to be made of oil droplets, NOAA criticized the results as premature and requiring further analysis.
• Under scrutiny from NOAA, the researchers have retreated to their laboratories to finish their analysis.

Before and After

This is from 2007 - but is totally worth re-visiting.

Jezebel's un-retouched cover image contest winner.

Just because this kind of evil needs to be seen in daylight. Over and over.

Until we get it.

A Goddamned Shame

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard this phrase:

This interface was designed by my grandmother. She died last week. Do you like it?

I'd have exactly one nickel, courtesy of a former coworker, MP.

MP said this to illustrate the kind of question you should never ask your focus group. It's the kind of joke that gets better the more you think about it.

I worked with MP at CorpWorld before he went on to better things. This was before the purge.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who could have you thinking about their words more than MP. He'd say something and about an hour later, you'd get the joke. Frequently it would be at your expense.

MP's default setting was full-blown contempt for stupid things. CorpWorld was an environment that gave him no reason to change.

But contempt has its price - MP was deskbound because his sense of humor didn't endear him to clients who were neck deep in the kind of behavior he was making fun of.

I always thought that was a great shame - because CorpWorld so desperately needs to laugh at itself. There is so much asinine behavior going on in large organizations, it’s difficult to focus on it. You could argue I avoid doing so, just so I can function. MP was the constant reminder that much of what we did just changed the velocity of our personal hamster wheel.

Observations like that are useful, because they force you to step back and think. MP's wit was not reserved for others - User Experience designers were a favorite target.

Despite being a valid profession, user design is awash with charlatans and quacks. People whose messianic view of themselves blinds them to practical considerations. People like Dustin Curtis. They have the TRUTH, yet the world refuses to see.

I'm talking about people who self style themselves Pimpformation Architects or people like ErikDahl:

"I am equally at home in the worlds of theory and praxis, I often lull myself to sleep at night with thoughts about cultural-semiotics, information bricolage, theories and implications of the social self, as well as concepts of "social-themeparking."

MP's commentary:

I fail to embrace the UX community in part because of the showy, self-important, self-promoting types littered across the Internet with titles like "user experience guru" and "passionate user experience advocate." ...off the top of my head, I don't know any developers who parade around the Internet as "object-oriented guru" and "passionate regex God."

That kind of pushback is useful. Instructive, even.

I used to be (in a very small way) one of those people. I would go into meetings as if I was there to save the world. I can save you, if you will only let me. Several large projects later - I began to understand the total tonnage of what my employers were up against.

If the back end system is a dinosaur - there's precious little that can be done on the front end. Attempts at modern UI will be hamstrung, because they expect modern middleware (that CorpWorld does not possess). MP would point this out at length.

[Central application] doesn't run web services... none of what we'll want is possible until this changes.

I would always argue that we'd do the good we could - but looking back it's hard to find fault with MP's thinking. Deck chairs were rearranged, but the gash in the workflow's hull remained. The good you can do is limited by the extent to which you understand the problem.

Which is why the person who can immediately and unflinchingly identify a problem is so valuable. Unfortunately, they just don't make a lot of friends.

MP and I would email back and forth off and on. I'm terrible and keeping in contact - but MP would send informal surveys. Even sent me a birthday card - though I can't imagine how he would have found that out.

My team leader was better at keeping in touch - made it sound like MP was having trouble getting the job he wanted. That having taken his most recent leap - he felt isolated.

CorpWorld does that to people - you are plug and play components. Most meetings start with introductions "I'm so and so's replacement." Being in a room with people you know - or have known - is a rare thing.

MP had made the full blown jump, everybody was new - and his chosen specialty wasn't hiring him. It was clearly a rough ride.

But obviously I didn't know the half of it.

This morning - one of MP's coworkers emailed us to tell us the other half.

A few weeks ago, MP was up for a big job interview and was preparing like mad. He'd done mock interviews to prepare and (as always) did so without notes. MP is brilliant that way. The stuff he's interested in, he knows inside out and backwards.

MP could be acerbic, but his intelligence and drive are unmistakable. Surely no employer could miss that.

However the interview went - MP clearly was not satisfied. He went home and called family to say it had not gone well.

Then nothing for two days.

I don't have the specifics - but it is abundantly clear that shortly after his interview, MP killed himself.

I started looking for the details before realizing that they would do no good.

The world has one less bright and funny person.

I'd said before that there are things that are immune to all reason.

This is one of them.

Green, Clean & Dirty

The Daily Green lists 15 foods worth buying organic

(This is based on the amount of pesticides found on representative samples of this type of food, as well as the food's tendency to retain chemicals it comes into contact with.)

1. Meat
2. Milk
3. Coffee
4. Celery
5. Peaches
6. Strawberries
7. Apples
8. Blueberries "one of the dirtiest berries on the market"
9. Nectarines
10. Bell Peppers
11. Spinach
12. Kale
13. Cherries
14. Potatoes
15. Grapes

-and 15 clean foods you don't need to buy organic

1. Onion
2. Avocados
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mango
6. Asparagus
7. Sweet Peas
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Papaya
12. Watermelon
13. Broccoli
14. Tomatoes
15. Sweet Potatoes

(Their UI sucks so hard, I'm listing the items for easy reference. You want the whys and methodology, you'll have to endure their stupid slide show)

(H/t Newsweek)

History, As Told By Texas and Arizona

Chauncey DeVega posts a what if timeline of US history to showcase the idiocy that is the Texas Education Board.

That's the funny version. The reality would only be amusing if it wasn't going to pass.

[Cynthia Dunbar] is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.

The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.

...There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

Here's a live blog of the vote of the Texas Education Agency:
And here's a sample of their idiocy:

12:15 – ...The Texas State Board of Education has stricken from the standards references to “capitalism” and “free market” because the board’s right-wingers think “capitalism” is a negative term. The only permitted term for such an economic system will be “free enterprise.” We wouldn’t believe this if we hadn’t just watched it happen. This is so stupid it makes our head hurt.

12:28 – Board member Mavis Knight offers the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight points out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.

12:32 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar argues that the Founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America. And she’s off on a long lecture about why the Founders intended to promote religion. She calls this amendment “not historically accurate.”

12:35 – Knight’s amendment fails on a straight party-line vote, 5-10. Republicans vote no, Democrats vote yes.

12:38 – Let the word go out here: The Texas State Board of Education today refused to require that students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others. They voted to lie to students by omission.
Here was the amendment again: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” And this board, on a vote of 10-5, said they don’t want Texas students to learn about this basic protection for the religious freedom of everyone in America.

I have to believe that while it is relatively easy for a deranged group of lunatics to seize control of state agency for a short time - rational thought will push back with a vengeance.

I'm remembering those utter dorkwads from the Dover School district getting the stuffing beaten out of them. So perhaps there's hope.

In the meantime, I'm sure I know what Dr. Plait would say: Texas: Doomed.
(H/t JK)

Deepwater in Big Pictures

Boston.com's The Big Picture does the Gulf oil disaster:

Blobs of oil from the massive spill float on the surface of the water on May 5, 2010
in Breton and Chandeleur sounds off the coast of Louisiana. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Eavesdrop on Your Cell? No. Kill You? Yes.

Greg Marx runs through some tepid coverage of the Obama administration's decision to authorize the extrajudicial killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen accused of fomenting terrorist violence.

Here's the money quote:

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.

“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

I'd have to agree.

I can't imagine that the Obama administration's proposed solution can stand up to legal scrutiy.

I get that a total bar on deliberate attacks on Americans can result in some crazy situations
-High value foreign target pals around with nobody American for protection
-US troops encounter a known American fighter on the battlefield and are not allowed to call in airstrikes or artillery.

You would think that military rules of engagement could deal with most of these situations - - but the idea that the US can deliberately assassinate an American without some kind of external check is about as contrary to the idea of secure in ones person as you can get.

This sh!t's gotta stop.

Good News Amid Bad News

When you look at all the sh!t that's gone down in the past year or so:

-The financial collapse
-Soaring unemployment
-Fort Hood
-The underwear bomber
-The Times Square bombing
-Iran Elections
-Afghanistan's decent
-Iraq's decent
-and now the DeepWater Horizon debacle.

It makes you glad that Sen. McCain didn't win. Not because Pres. Obama is great mind you -

Because can you imagine all this stuff on McCain's desk? He'd have had a stroke.

-and we'd be in the era of President Palin.

*shudder*

Reverse For Hire Ad

This was total genius.

Deepwater Horizon, Spin, and the Numbers Game

Just some delightful bits making the rounds:

Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates

The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be at least 10 times the size of official estimates, according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR.

At NPR's request, experts examined video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.

BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that.

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

And:

U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits

The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

But never fear, BP's CEO sets the record straight:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," [BP CEO Tony] Hayward said.

And besides, government and industry seem to agree - why does it matter how big the problem is?

[BP spokesman] David H. Nicholas, said in an e-mail message that “the estimated rate of flow would not affect either the direction or scale of our response, which is the largest in history."

"I think the [5,000 barrels/day] estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate," said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things."