Howard Weaver

Just A Car Guy ponders the insane raises some CEOs make:

TRW CEO John Plant got 510% raise over his 2009 salary of 6.7 million Ford CEO Alan Mulally 524% raise... yet his company has 14 billion in debt Johnson Controls' Stephen Roell 424% raise

So... did those 3 companies make 4 to 500% better business decisions? Better profit? Better products?

Disgusting, but not surprising.

And if so, why???

Some Beltway types are so addicted to the page views she provides that they continue to pretend to think she might matter, after saying for the past two years that she didn’t.

But, really?

Sarah reached her “do it or get off the pot” moment two weeks ago, and stood up, flushed her supporters down the toilet, and walked away.

Does anyone think she might still influence even one percent of those likely to vote in GOP primaries?

When history looks you in the eye and you blink, the parade marches on, with all the other clowns clamoring for the attention you once commanded.

You become not even history, but merely a footnote to it.

Although I guess being the single least qualified candidate for national office in the political history of the United States does count for something.

But now?

Who, really, is asking, “What does Sarah think?”

She faced her ultimate moment of truth in the first week of October.

And she cowered from it, turned her back and ran for cover, shouting all the way, “It’s God’s fault! He closed the door!”

You don’t have to be an atheist to laugh at Sarah trying to blame God for her own inadequacies.

The Mama Grizzly turned out to be a Mama Ostrich–sticking her head in the sand, so she wouldn’t have to see what a fool she’d made of herself.

I don’t think she’ll ever be able to look herself in a mirror and acknowledge the extent to which she made fools of the gullible and dimwitted who supported her for the past three years, while she carried out the cynical scam that made her a multi-millionaire, even as it left them high and dry–or low and wet, submerged beneath the sewage of her words.

I shouldn’t be doing this, rooting for the Cardinals, that is. A rich team, with a winning tradition, and a mad-scientist manager playing against a team that hasn’t won in almost thirty years. But I am and I’m not apologizing for it.


The Brewers have turned into a caricature of a baseball team. Lead by a lunatic center fielder who was discarded by both the Pirates and the Nationals, they’ve turned into a chest pounding, look-at-me bad joke. In the pressure of the NLCS, their defense has fallen apart, their offense has been inconsistent and their pitching ordinary.

The Cardinals shouldn’t, by any measure, be playing in October. They lost Adam Wainwright, one of their best pitchers, before the season even started. They struggled to score runs, Matt Holiday was in and out with illnesses and injuries and King Albert didn’t have his usual extraordinary season. They relied instead on Lance Berkman, who surprised everyone with an excellent offensive year in the twilight of his career. All Berkman did was hit over .300 with 31 homers and 94 RBIs after the Yankees and Astros gave up on him.

The Cardinals also added by subtracting. They unloaded Colby Rasmus, their every day center fielder who insisted on using dear old Dad as his hitting coach and added starting pitcher Edwin Jackson. Rasmus, presumably with his father’s help, batted .225 for Toronto. Jackson, since early September has won every game he’s pitched.

And so we head to Milwaukee for Game 6, with the Cardinals leading 3 games to 2.  Tony LaRussa shuffling pitchers in and out with surgical precision and the Brewers beating their chests.

Matt Taibbi:

Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

At the end of my article in the current issue (Subscribe! TM) about the devastating hack of my wife's Gmail account, I promise a detailed online how-to about password generation and other handy security tips.

That will come ... real soon now

In the meantime, let me deal with the most frequent questions that have shown up in emails, concerning one of my two must-do recommendations*: if you use Gmail, you must switch on the two-step authentication system. For the official word from Google about this feature, see this and this. Here are the main questions I keep receiving:

1) Can I use this system even if I'm out of cell phone range? Yes. The app that generates new authorization codes is clock-based, rather than depending on a signal. (At least that is how the one for my Android phone works). You can get a code from the app on your smartphone whether or not it has any coverage at all.

2) What if I lose my phone or don't have it with me? You can generate a special set of one-time-use codes, print them out, and keep them in your purse or wallet. Then you use one of those if you happen to want to log on somewhere and you don't happen to have your phone. OK, if you're mugged, someone could get those codes -- and in theory, if the muggers also know your password (before you changed it), and understood what the codes were, they could get into your Gmail account. But that would be low on my list of worries during a mugging.

3) Is this a big nuisance? It is "a" nuisance, but not a big one. The nuisance/reward tradeoff is  comparable to having to carry keys to your house, versus leaving the door unlocked. On any machine you normally use for email, you can set things up so you have to enter the authorization code once per 30 days. It's only when you're using some unfamiliar machine -- at an internet cafe, at someone's home or office -- that you have to enter a code as well as your password. It's a five-second chore each time you do it. On the other hand, it creates a virtually impassable barrier for someone in Lagos or Moscow or Tianjin who has cracked your password but without the code, still cannot get into your account.  It protects you from what my wife encountered: the loss of six years' worth of mail, documents, photos, life. Take your choice. (And there can be a small additional one-time nuisance in generating special "application specific codes" for your iPad and certain other devices and mail programs. Tough it out.)

That's it for a few days. But do it now!
____

* Oh, yes, the other must-do chore: For any account that matters -- banking, email, sensitive data of any sort -- use a password that applies to that account alone, and that you have never used anywhere else. Reasoning explained in the piece.

Ina Fried, reporting on first-day iPhone 4S preorders:

“AT&T has seen extraordinary demand for iPhone 4S, with more than 200,000 preorders in the first 12 hours alone, the most successful iPhone launch we’ve ever had,” an AT&T representative told [some website]. […]

“We are very, very pleased with the initial first day of iPhone 4S preorders,” Sprint Vice President of Product Development Fared Adib said in a statement. “Today’s sales and the overall customer experience greatly exceeded our expectations.”

But then Fried ends the piece with this:

Initial reaction to the iPhone 4S was somewhat muted, given its similarity to the iPhone 4, though the new device does pack a higher-resolution camera, a faster A5 processor and Siri, its voice-powered assistant software.

Initial reaction by whom? What could be more initial than record-breaking preorders in the first 12 hours consumers were able to order the product? What she really means is that a bunch of self-proclaimed technology experts and analysts had a muted reaction after Apple announced it, and that, as ever with Apple, they just don’t get it.

After the WWDC keynote four months ago, I saw Steve, up close.

He looked old. Not old in a way that could be measured in years or even decades, but impossibly old. Not tired, but weary; not ill or unwell, but rather, somehow, ancient. But not his eyes. His eyes were young and bright, their weapons-grade intensity intact. His sweater was well-worn, his jeans frayed at the cuffs.

But the thing that struck me were his shoes, those famous gray New Balance 993s. They too were well-worn. But also this: fresh bright green grass stains all over the heels.

Those grass stains filled my mind with questions. How did he get them? When? They looked fresh, two, three days old, at the most. Apple keynote preparation is notoriously and unsurprisingly intense. But not so intense, those stains suggested, as to consume the entirety of Jobs’s days. There is no grass in Moscone West.

Surely, my mind raced, surely he has more than one pair of those shoes. He could afford to buy the factory that made them. Why wear this grass-stained pair for the keynote, a rare and immeasurably high-profile public appearance? My guess: he didn’t notice, didn’t care. One of Jobs’s many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. He knew how to focus and prioritize his time and attention. Grass stains on his sneakers didn’t make the cut.

Late last night, long hours after the news broke that he was gone, my thoughts returned to those grass stains on his shoes back in June. I realize only now why they caught my eye. Those grass stained sneakers were the product of limited time, well spent. And so the story I’ve told myself is this:

I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.

Here is a snippet from What Would Google Do?
about Apple as the grand exception to every rule I put forth there:

How does Apple do it? How does it get away with operating this way even as every other company and industry is forced to redefine itself? It’s just that good. Its vision is that strong and its products even better. I left Apple once, in the 1990s, before Steve Jobs returned to the company, when I suffered through a string of bad laptops. But when I’d had it with Dell, I returned to Apple and now everyone in my family has a Mac (plus one new Dell); we have three iPhones; we have lots of iPods; I lobbied successfully to make Macs the standard in the journalism school where I teach. I’m a believer, a glassy-eyed cultist. But I didn’t write this book about Apple because I believe it is the grand exception. Frank Sinatra was allowed to violate every rule about phrasing because he was Sinatra. Apple can violate the rules of business in the next millennium because it is Apple (and more important, because Jobs is Jobs).

So then Apple is the ultimate unGoogle. Right?

Not so fast. When I put that notion to Rishad Tobaccowala, he disagreed and said that Apple and Google, at their cores, are quite alike.

“They have a very good idea of what people want,” he said. Jobs’ “taste engine” makes sure of that. Both companies create platforms that others can build upon—whether they are start-ups making iPod cases and iPhone apps or entertainment companies finding new strategies and networks for distribution in iTunes.
Apple, like Google, also knows how to attract, retain, and energize talent. “Apple people believe they are even better than Google people,” he said. “They’re cooler.”

Apple’s products, like Google’s, are designed simply, but Tobaccowala said Apple does Google one better: “They define beauty as sex,” he said.

Apple understands the power of networks. Its successful products are all about connecting. Apple, like Google, keeps its focus unrelentingly on the user, the customer—us—and not on itself and its industry. And I’ll add that, of course, both companies make the best products. They are fanatical about quality.

But Tobaccowala said that what makes these two companies most alike is that—like any great brand—they answer one strong desire: “People want to be like God.” Google search grants omniscience and Google Earth, with its heavenly perch, gives us God’s worldview. Apple packages the world inside objects of Zen beauty. Both, Tobaccowala said, “give me Godlike power.” WWGD? indeed.

THE SIMPSONS™

September 28, 1990

Mrs. Barbara Bush
The First Lady
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear First Lady:

I recently read your criticism of my family. I was deeply hurt. Heaven knows we're far from perfect and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee bit short of normal; but as Dr. Seuss says, "a person is a person".

I try to teach my children Bart, Lisa, and even little Maggie, always to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them, even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to understand this advice when the very First Lady in the country calls us not only dumb, but "the dumbest thing" she ever saw. Ma'am, if we're the dumbest thing you ever saw, Washington must be a good deal different than what they teach me at the current events group at the church.

I always believed in my heart that we had a great deal in common. Each of us living our lives to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some way out of this controversy. I thought, perhaps, it would be a good start to just speak my mind.

With great respect,

(Signed)

Marge Simpson

Dear Marge,

How kind of you to write. I'm glad you spoke your mind; I foolishly didn't know you had one.

I am looking at a picture of you, depicted on a plastic cup, with your blue hair filled with pink birds peeking out all over. Evidently, you and your charming family — Lisa, Homer, Bart and Maggie — are camping out. It is a nice family scene. Clearly you are setting a good example for the rest of the country.

Please forgive a loose tongue.

Warmly,

Barbara Bush

P.S. Homer looks like a handsome fella!

Carl Bernstein on Watergate and journalism,

Despite some of the mythology that has come to surround “investigative” journalism, it is important to remember what we did and did not do in Watergate. For what we did was not, in truth, very exotic. Our actual work in uncovering the Watergate story was rooted in the most basic kind of empirical police reporting. We relied more on shoe leather and common sense and respect for the truth than anything else—on the principles that had been drummed into me at the wonderful old Washington Star. Woodward and I were a couple of guys on the Metro desk assigned to cover what at bottom was still a burglary, so we applied the only reportorial techniques we knew. We knocked on a lot of doors, we asked a lot of questions, we spent a lot of time listening: the same thing good reporters from Ben Hecht to Mike Berger to Joe Liebling to the young Tom Wolfe had been doing for years. As local reporters, we had no covey of highly placed sources, no sky’s-the-Iimit expense accounts with which to court the powerful at fancy French restaurants. We did our work far from the enchanting world of the rich and the famous and the powerful. We were grunts.

David Strom at ReadWriteWeb notes a trend at hotels to re-jigger lobbies as social spaces in which you can plug in your laptop and hang out, instead of sitting in your disinfected Rectangle of Solitude.

I’d give it a try, especially if free or cheap coffee were involved. I think I might enjoy the company, although if someone actually tried to talk with me, I’d undoubtedly give him the stink eye so I could get back to work. Hey, just because I want to be near other human beings doesn’t mean I want to be your friend.

So, yes, I would want to achieve that refined balance of social and impersonal that is of increasing importance in today’s ever-more-public world, and that is at the heart of Starbucks’ value proposition.

Different languages are spoken at varying speeds but thanks to correlated differences in data-density, the same amount of information is conveyed within a given time period.

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable is, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second -- and the slower the speech thus was. English, with a high information density of .91, is spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, rips along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edges past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

(via @mulegirl)

On Twitter, I’ve been ridiculing the #stormporn in coverage of #Irene: the predictable and numbing repetition, alarmism, and idiocy that is TV. Of course, the storm is serious but the coverage is often laughable and, some would argue, a matter of crying wolf. The inefficiency of the coverage is also boggling: crews everywhere, all shooting the same wind and water, yet saying nothing new.

But obviously, there are many new, more efficient, more informative, more level-headed ways to cover a storm such as this. It’s all only a link away.

CNN iReport and FoxNews amusingly named competitor uReport as well as many media sites post pictures and videos from witnesses. Given the opportunity, witnesses can also provide much more detail. When I oversaw Nola.com, the publisher of the Time-Picayune got us to put up forums so residents could share information about flooded roads. Those same forums were used in Katrina to alert officials to rescue people trapped on roofs.

There is all kinds of data available. There are great maps showing the progress and strength of the storm. Talking Points Memo points to a bunch of outage maps from power companies.

There is much information available directly from governments and their agencies. New York City’s 311 service and site give updates and resources and we can watch the mayor directly on the net. Jen Preston at The New York Times compiled an impressive list of officials using social media to get their messages out. The Wall Street Journal visualized evacuation centers using Foursquare.

Much of the most important information — the forecast — comes from the same sources, such as NOAA and its hurricane center.

And I’m barely scratching the surface of sources of direct information.

So the question the journalists should ask is how they can add value to that. That is the the question must ask constantly now that information can be exchanged so easily and instantly from officials to citizens, data sources to users, and witnesses to witnesses. It’s an everyday question, not just one for emergencies.

Journalists don’t add value by repeating themselves endlessly, but standing in front of random but ultimately uninformative sites where their cameras and trucks happen to be set up (or worse, in the water), by alarming more than informing people.

So how should they? As in some of the example above, they should aggregate and curate reports from witnesses and data from officials. They can visualize data. They provide background and service information. But mostly, shouldn’t reporters report? Standing in the water repeating what we already know over and over is not reporting. Reporting would be finding out what government is not doing — see Katrina. But in truth, with all this information flying by, we don’t need a lot of reporting unless and until government messes up. That’s what is making journalism more efficient and sustainable.

Oh, and journalists and TV networks could still afford a few minutes an hour to deliver real news. While Irene moves up the coast at 14 mph, storms of another sort are still overcoming Syria and Libya, both of which might as well not exist on supposed news networks today. Is that journalism?