At what gas price would Americans make changes?

From a comment on The Big Picture: More on Gas Prices:

At what price would gas affect consumer behavior?

I think gas in my birthplace, Quebec (Canada - still), goes for about $6/gallon US. You don't see a lot of SUVs there.

I suspect the price in BC is similar. It would be interesting to compare the per-foot costs of suburban vs. urban homes in Vancouver vs. Seattle. If $6/gallon gas changes behavior then the suburban/urban per foot costs ratio in Vancouver area should be smaller than in the Seattle area. (One might have to adjust for tax structure differences.)

I've long guessed that US middle-class behavior will change significantly (mass transit choices, preference for urban living) when gas hits $7/gallon. Can't say why, but I figure it's about the adjusted Canadian price. Mostly it would be a trend to smaller homes, smaller cars, urban condominiums, etc with shorter commutes or access to transit. Terrorism or social unrest could counteract a trend to urbanism though, so probably the most reliable marker of changed behavior would be the obvious and dull one -- smaller cars.

Origami: Microsoft lays another brick egg

Origami is now the "Ultra Mobile PC". You can buy one (Pogue, via Follow Me Here), but I recommend CARE.ORG as a better way to dispose of money.

I'd feel sorry for Microsoft, if Microsoft weren't an immensely powerful monopoly that escaped justice by "legal" bribery. Ironically, if Gore had won in 2000 Microsoft would have been split into two companies -- and the children would likely be far more effective today.

How can a corporation with so many brilliant and industrious employees be so dysfunctional? Theories abound. I've read that they have a lot of misdirected middle and upper managers. I suspect Balmer is a poor choice for a leader -- too ruthless and amoral for a monitored monopoly. I wonder about the hangover of their glory days, when so many became rich and either left -- or remain now as an odd aristocracy. Ultimately, thought, I think there's something fundamentally disheartening about earning billions irregardless of effort or result. It's the same disease that afflicts so many oil-rich nations.

The psychopathology of the CEO

This was news a few years back, but I only recently came across reasonable essay on the topic. A Canadian psych professor, known for this research on psychopaths, claimed that many CEOs met his diagnostic criteria.

It's an interesting thesis. The people he's describing are not sociopaths; they don't hurt people for pleasure, but rather it doesn't hurt them to hurt someone else. (The Brits define sociopath and pyschopath differently by the way.) ...

Hare began his work by studying men in prison. Granted, that's still an unusually good place to look for the conscience-impaired. The average Psychopathy Checklist score for incarcerated male offenders in North America is 23.3, out of a possible 40. A score of around 20 qualifies as "moderately psychopathic." Only 1% of the general population would score 30 or above, which is "highly psychopathic," the range for the most violent offenders. Hare has said that the typical citizen would score a 3 or 4, while anything below that is "sliding into sainthood."

On the broad continuum between the ethical everyman and the predatory killer, there's plenty of room for people who are ruthless but not violent. This is where you're likely to find such people as Ebbers, Fastow, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, and hotelier Leona Helmsley. We put several big-name CEOs through the checklist, and they scored as "moderately psychopathic"; our quiz on page 48 lets you try a similar exercise with your favorite boss.

I have yet to try the quiz. If you don't see my score in an update you won't know whether I didn't have time to do the quiz ... or whether I'm psychopath.

The ideas are interesting, but they're subtle and complex. This article really doesn't explore them well enough, and I suspect Hare's model will be found to be quite incomplete. I don't see why thrill seeking is necessarily correlated with lack of a conscience. I knew, through my brother, a number of thrill seeking mountaineers with impeccable moral character, deep compassion, and powerful conscience. The more interesting feature is the variability of conscience. This fits with game theory influenced models of human evolution -- there's a genetic advantage to lacking a conscience if you're smart and able to hide from retribution. It's easy to see how too much conscience could also be disadvantageous, even in a small society.

That said, I've known a few bright and charming people who seemed not to be much bothered by conscience. They are a lot of fun, they're not CEOs, they are definitely positive contributors to society, and they really can't be trusted. I've had a historic weakness for this type, but I've learned they make poor friends. Now I prefer to enjoy them from a distance. I think their lack of conscience is somehow part of their appeal (again, these are not nasty people, they're just charmingly ruthless) -- they float free of the burdens that most of us bear.

PS. The average citizen scores a 3 or 4 out of 40 on this instrument? Hmm. I thought humanity was nastier than that. I think some people are cheating ...

Dept of Homeland Security doesn't do background checks

Talking Points underscores an amusing and disturbing aspect of the Cunningham/GOP/Bribery/Prostitution/DOD/CIA/Goss/Foggo/Wilkes mega-scandal -- the Department of Homeland Security doesn't run background checks on their transportation services. They also don't run checks against the terrorist watchlist (presumably they know the watchlist is complete garbage, so at least that makes sense).

That's how a large federal contract went to the brothel/limo service that's added new juice to a historic scandal.

Terrorists take note. You too can get a job driving DHS leadership around.

BTW, The Wall Street Journal's news page is the source much of this story. The wingnuts who write the editorial pages must be heaving hairballs. Has any newspaper ever had such a gulf between their news operations and their editorial functions? (Maybe the Christian Science Monitor?)

The new Iraq debate: how to retreat

This is a topic I don't have a strong opinion on. Do we cut and run (per Lt. Gen. Odom) or withdraw and engage? What's the least bad way to deal with the outcome of strategic incompetence and astoundingly poor leadership? What will cause the lesser ongoing pain to the Iraqi people? What will least help the many enemies of the US? What will best stabilize our alliances?

This is where the interesting debates are.

Porter Goss resigns: Hookers, spies and the GOP

When I metablogged on an Obsidian Wings post, I was too delicate to mention that the slander blogs were implicating Porter Goss, CIA director, in the Duke Cunningham/GOP Hookergate scandal.

I did not imagine he would resign a few days later.

Bush and the GOP have converted mad ravings into mundane speculation. There is now no rumor so outrageous and incredible that it can be immediately dismissed. What an astounding accomplishment.

What else will we find in this can of worms? I am fairly sure the NYT won't uncover any of it, I think the WSJ might, I'm sure the bloggers will not rest. Let loose the dogs ...

Update 5/4: Obsidian Wings has more.

Dell has jumped the shark: Spyware pre-installs

SONY jumped the shark when they covertly installed DRM software through their music CDs. The software could not be removed and caused technical problems to SONY's victims.

Now Dell has joined SONY in the inner circle of Heck. Whatever their financials may say, they must be desperate to have included funded spyware in their pre-install packages. This fits with Dell's deteriorating client services.

What went wrong with Dell? They invested in process innovation, but not in product innovation. As long as they could leach from IBM and Compaq they had a good strategy, but a parasite that kills its hosts is in trouble. They crushed IBM and Compaq on price, but they then had no-one to copy. Their organization discouraged innovators, so now they don't have them. Their primary hope now is that Apple's Intel transition will give them something to copy.

I don't buy SONY products. I don't buy Dell products. There are better choices out there.

Coming to terms with failure: Iraq and the US government

There's an old cliche, partly true, about how people react to learning that they will die much sooner than expected. Disbelief, Denial, Anger, Struggle, Resignation, Acceptance is one way to put it (I don't remember the supposed stages and they're pretty varied anyway). With acceptance comes planning on how to make the best of a bad thing.

I think the right wingnuts are in the anger stage, but it sounds like the rulers are moving towards Resignation ...

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

... The government is in a strange and prolonged state of paralysis. Many officials in the Administration now admit, privately, and after years of willful blindness, that the war, in which almost twenty-four hundred Americans have died, and whose cumulative cost will reach $320 billion this year, is going badly and shows no prospect of a quick turnaround. Asked why the President doesn’t take this or that step to try to salvage what will become his legacy—fire his Secretary of Defense, for example—they drop their heads, as if to say: We know, he should, but it’s not going to happen. At the same time, they can’t quite bring themselves to abandon hope for a miracle.

Why have the New Yorker, Salon, The Atlantic and even The (non-editorial page) Wall Street Journal risen, even as The New York Times and The Economist have fallen?

The latest right wing war meme: we need to be more like Stalin

Obsidian wings identifies a meme worth tracking. The right wingnuts have now abandoned any pretense of "noble mission", "enabling democracy" and such-like and have returned to the old chestnut -- we have been weak and too merciful, we must become brutality unchained.

The sub-meme is that "we gave them their chance" (at democracy, presumably) but they were "undeserving". We have been "merciful", but they do not deserve our "mercy". Now we shall show our full power ... ("bwaa-ha-ha-haaaa ...")

Really, there is something to be said for all those comic books I read in the 1970s. Dr. Doom was particularly fond of this line of reasoning. Where's Reed Richards when we need him?

Pten and autism: a mouse study strengthens the connection

A mouse study strengthens the connection between a subtype of "autism" and the Pten gene: Be the Best You can Be: Pten gene knockout and "autistic" mice.

The first Arabic Internet and the virtues of selective taxation: The Abassid Caliphs

In Our Times was in peak form with their show on the Abassid Caliphs. When the Vikings were asail, Baghdad was new, and Basra was buzzing the Abassids ruled Iraq's empire. They created the first "western" revolution in communication -- paper from China and a well maintained system of transporting and routing paper-based documents.

Wealth from the rich fertile lands of irrigated Iraq. Communication technologies that allowed government to scale, and education to be expanded. A system of taxation that turned Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians from annoying unbelievers to a steady stream of revenue; in essence non-Muslims paid for tolerance and thus incented tolerance. Economics, technology, surplus, education, tolerance, good governance -- that's how a Golden Age is made.

Or unmade.

This is good listening, particularly if one uses Audio Hijack Pro and RealAudio client to capture the audio stream for iPod replay on the morning commute. IOT does podcast their new shows, but to put the archives on an iPod one has to capture the stream and digitize it. I need to put a page together on how to do that, but for now the AHP manual does a decent job.

I was wrong: we are not pathetic

I wrote:

Gordon's Notes: A conspiracy for fantasy: Moussaoui

...Richard Reid, that sad retarded schizophrenic, was to have been the copilot with Moussaoui. It's the perfect note of mocking hilarity for the musical that will be written about the trial and execution.

Our national state is now passing pathetic.

Today a jury proved me wrong. We are not pathetic.

Seven days of deliberation, and they decided this evil, mentally ill and deluded man (is he lying if he believes his delusions?) did not meet the legal standard for execution. This jury deserves a medal for restoring some honor to America.

Update 5/4/06: Hmm. From what I read of the jury deliberations so far we may not be pathetic, but we are seriously confused. They believed that he was to fly with Richard Reid? My impression has been that no-one of significance in our security forces actually believes that the old al Qaeda would have been stupid enough to try something with Reid and Moussaoui. Now is a different story, al Qaeda seems to be scraping up anything they can find. Ahh, one should not trust initialreports! The BBC says the decision was not unamimous, and in particular ...

Three jurors felt his knowledge of the 9/11 plot was limited and three jurors said that if he was involved in the attacks, his role was a minor one.

Ahh, yes. That's more like it. Among the jury, there were three rationalists, and that was more than enough. Praise be.

Update 5/4/06: Or not. I give up.

Come on. Try to say this isn't great stuff ...

I really do need to watch television:

Stephen Colbert's Correspondents' Dinner routine. By Troy Patterson

... Colbert spoke of interviewing Jesse Jackson: 'You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants, at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.'

Ouch!

I laughed ...

I can't believe the press corp didn't think this was funny:

After Press Dinner, the Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter - New York Times

... many others were met with near silence. In one such instance, he criticized reporters for likening Mr. Bush's recent staff changes to 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.' 'This administration is not sinking,' Mr. Colbert said; 'this administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.'

I never get to watch TV, but if I could I'd be Tivoing Colbert from now on.

Dogs enabled human civilization?

A NYT science writer suggests that dogs domesticated a notoriously viscious primate:

Nicholas Wade's book "Before the Dawn" - From Genghis Khan To Donor 401:

... Maybe the best news in the book is the finding that dogs were essential to the creation of modern civilization. If human beings were to cease being nomads, they had to be secure when they settled down. (After all, enemies would always know where to find them.) Dogs became trusty sentinels, which is why they, and not the wolves from which they descended, bark. It was a trait early man valued and probably selected for. The question remains, though: Did man domesticate the dog or did dogs figure out what man wanted and do the job themselves? Anyone who has ever owned a dog instinctively knows the answer.

Hmmph. I wrote previously:

Sometime I must write about my not- entirely-in-fun theory that dogs created civilization by allowing women and geeks to defend themselves against the alpha male.

My theory, heretofore passed on verbally only to my spouse and long suffering friends, was that civilization required geeks and women to ally against the muscle-bound alpha males. Problem is, how do you go up against someone that can rip you apart? One technique is to ally with a sharp toothed friend. Why do you think single women walk with furry partners?