Making better predictions

I was sure iPad 2 wouldn't need a computer companion.

...  the 2010 iPad is more than $500 - but by 2011 the device will sell for under $500 with 3G-equivalent capabilities. An additional $15 a month will provide basic VOIP phone services ....

... By 2011 the combination of a $400 iPad (and iTouch for less) and $15/month VOIP access will start to replace a number of devices that are costly to own and acquire, while providing basic net services ...

Wrong. [1]

I figured no moving part netbooks would be selling for under $100 by 2011, finally following the trajectory of calculators [2].

Wrong again.

Maybe I shouldn't take this so hard. After all, even the pros have a hard time predicting the near future. On the other hand, honesty compels me to review how a few of my past non-obvious expectations turned out ...

1970s [4]

• Eight track tape would go away. [3]
• Information technology would lead to mass middle class unemployment. Maybe, but it's taking a long time.

1980s

• Email would replace the fax machine. It's still not dead yet. I think I will die before the #$@#$ fax.
• The net would kill the post office. True, it's dying now. But it won't die completely for decades. See fax.
• CD ROM would revolutionize worldwide knowledge access. Well, maybe it would have. It did cut the cost of sharing knowledge dramatically. Except a few years later we had the net ...

1990s

• Palm type devices would show up in cereal boxes. Again, I was fooled by the calculator. I mean, these things were cheap to make...
• IBM's OS/2 would crush Microsoft's crummy Windows 3. Pathetic. I liked GeoWorks too.
• The web would destroy most universities. Instead tuition skyrocketed. How wrong can you be?
• American health care would collapse within a decade. It survived long enough to be saved by ObamaCare.
• Modems would be gone by 2000, fiber to the desktop. We really believed that. Vast businesses were based on this premise. It's 2011, and there are still a few modems around.
• Phone calls would be too cheap to meter. My voice services still cost a fortune.
• Free WiFi would be city wide everywhere: Technology issues and business issues killed this one.
• Credit card security failures would force industry reform: Twenty years later credit card fraud is institutionalized.

2000s

• Fuel cells for laptops. Nope
• The falling cost of havoc [7] is an existential threat. Actually, this was one of my less exciteable post 9/11 predictions. Honesty isn't enough to compel me to tell the rest. We're still around in any case.
• Anthrax would kill the post office. The PO is very tough.
• Security and fuel costs would kill air travel: This one might be right.
• iPad and ChromeBook: see above
• Gas in America would hit $5 in 2011: It won't happen this year, unless Saudi Arabia goes down hard. Maybe by 2013.
• DRM will win out in the end: This might be true.
• Skynet is more than 70 years away: I hope so.

2011

• China's bubble is going to burst before 2012. Given my track record, this is probably wrong.

That's a pretty long list for a few minutes of thought. I hope I'm mostly remembering when I was wrong, and of course I'm not including obviously correct predictions like "Gopher will change the world forever" [5].

I'm not going to give up predicting of course. That would be boring. Going forward though, I'll try to keep these lessons in mind ...

1. Choose your models carefully. No technology has seen the price crash of the calculator [6]. Several of my mistakes came because of my early experience with calculators; that was probably a major anomaly.
2. In period of rapid innovation "winners" (CD ROM, Gopher) can have very short lifespans. The shape of the winner is more predictable than the details.
3. Big, integrated enterprises take a very long time to die. Years ago I called this Canopy Economics.
4. We are embedded in a complex adaptive system with gobs of inertia. Our world has a strong tendency to return to its historic trend; and to delay big disruptions by hook or by crook.

I'm not bad, I think, at predicting the future. I'm just bad at predicting when the future will arrive ...

- fn -

[1] Charlie Stross says I was almost right, but the death of a talented data center architect set back Apple's MobileMe plans. It's also true that 2011 isn't over yet. But I'll take the hit anyway.
[2] My first four function calculator was a lot bigger than a modern laptop, required a plug, and cost more than $400 in today's money [8]. I am old. Before that I had a slide rule. Really old.

[3] Ok, so that was a gimme. I include it only because I wanted an example to show that "tools never die" ain't true.
[4] I'm sure I had a lot more, but that was a long time ago. 
[5] Gopher was revolutionary. It would have changed the world, but a few years later we had Mosaic ...
[6] Perhaps because IP enforcement was weaker then?
[7] A post 9/11 meme of mine. My premise was that technological progress was making it possible for small organizations to purchase large amounts of havoc. Bioweapons, dirty bombs and so on. The cost of anonymous attack was falling quickly, but the cost of defense was falling more slowly.
[8] I originally wrote $200. I later read that a 1974 $1 was the equivalent of about $4.30 in 2010. So I adjusted the number.

See also

• Canopy Economics (5/2004)
• In 1994 we expected these things to disappear ... (5/2009)
• The limits of disaster predictions: complex adaptive systems (2/2007)
• Civilization is stronger than we think: Structural deficits and complex adaptive systems
• Welcome to the wild times... (5/2010) (Charlie Stross on the failures of prediction.)
• Why did medical progress slow after 1984? (12/2010)
• Whitewater age: Nashville edition (5/2010)

I did not expect this ...

Al Franken, heir to Paul Wellstone, is one MN's two very fine Dem senators ... and a legendary enemy of Rush Limbaugh.

So this I did not expect ...

Star Tribune: Franken hosts first mentor meeting with Rand Paul | Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota

... Sen. Al Franken kicked off his mentorship of freshman Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday as the pair met for their first official mentoring session.

While Franken and Paul may not have much political common ground, they have struck up one of the more unlikely bonds of the 112th Congress...

Franken and Rand Paul?

On the bright side, Limbaugh must be having kittens. On the other hand, this is weird.

Median male earnings - declining since 1969?

(via DeLong and Leonhardt)

Interesting results when one looks at median (not mean) inflation adjusted wages for men aged 25-64 over the past 45 years ...

Have Earnings Actually Declined? - Up Front Blog - Brookings Institution

The red line looks only at employed men. The blue line includes men who are not working [1], so there are more people with 0 wages.

The post-industrial age has not been kind to most men. This is why I call our time the age of mass disability.

PS. Man, the late 90s were good times.

[1] Some will be be earning money they don't want to admit of course.

See also:

• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes (1/2011)
• Mass disability and Great Depression 2.0 (3/2008)
• Employment in the Great Stagnation (8/2010)

Teachers in the crab bucket

There's a lot of hating on teachers lately ...

Must Watch | Talking Points Memo

... This is the best Jon Stewart segment in a long while: Fox's double standard on compensation for Wall Street CEOs and public school teachers. Watch....

and

Proposed Cuts Strike Teachers as Attacks on Their Value to Society

... The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage...

I figure it's boomer demographics. Lifelong teachers can retire in their mid-50s, while my generation is looking at a decade long slog towards a Walmart job. We can't get at Goldman Sachs, but teachers we can reach. Pratchett said it best ...

Crab Bucket « The Practical Dilettante

“Oh, you can keep crabs in an open container, because as soon as one starts to climb out, the others all drag them back in.”

iPad 2 - why I'm disappointed

iPad 2 is out. It's a wonderful bit of tech. I have no problems with the device hardware and software decisions.

I'm still disappointed. Maybe because I was wrong.

I was confident than iPad 2 would not require a companion computer. I expected full Cloud integration, including device backup. I expected the base device would provide 3G access and come with affordable (capped) data plans that would allow basic email and net use (but not media consumption).

A year ago I expected that iPad 2 would be (net) "computing for the rest of us". I thought it would return to the lost promise of the original Mac vision, updated for the net world. I thought I'd buy one for my sister, and connect her to a world she's increasingly divorced from.

That didn't happen.

I'm disappointed.

Shame of the Smithsonian

Shame on us ...

The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama : The New Yorker

... The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is a multimedia exploration of the theory that mankind evolved in response to climate change. At the main entrance, viewers are confronted with a giant graph charting the Earth’s temperature over the past ten million years, which notes that it is far cooler now than it was ten thousand years ago. Overhead, the text reads, ‘HUMANS EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO A CHANGING WORLD.’ The message, as amplified by the exhibit’s Web site, is that ‘key human adaptations evolved in response to environmental instability.’ Only at the end of the exhibit, under the headline ‘OUR SURVIVAL CHALLENGE,’ is it noted that levels of carbon dioxide are higher now than they have ever been, and that they are projected to increase dramatically in the next century. No cause is given for this development; no mention is made of any possible role played by fossil fuels. The exhibit makes it seem part of a natural continuum. The accompanying text says, ‘During the period in which humans evolved, Earth’s temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated together.’ An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build ‘underground cities,’ developing ‘short, compact bodies’ or ‘curved spines,’ so that ‘moving around in tight spaces will be no problem.’

The Koch brothers are immensely wealthy bankers of the Republican War on Reason. In addition to funding attacks on health care reform, government of all forms, and environmental regulations, they fund a variety of organizations designed to block CO2 regulation.

That's a bad, but the behavior of the Smithsonian is much worse. Omissions speak loudly.

UnReason: The Republican War on Reason

Gay marriage is a done deal. That culture battle is done. We lost the gun wars, but we won on Gay rights.

So now peace has broken out across the land, and all Americans are respectfully negotiating to a common end, recognizing that we do have fundamentally different thoughts on what the strong owe the weak.

Cough. No, of course not. The latest battle in the Culture Wars is the Republican War On Reason. This time it's not merely a War on Science, it's a War on Reason in all forms. The GOP has become the UnReason party, where agnatology is a shibboleth (emphases mine) ...

... agnotology, the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt. Agnotology is not, primarily, the study of ignorance in the ordinary sense of the term. So, for example, someone who shares the beliefs of their community, unaware that those beliefs might be subject to challenge, might be ignorant as a result of their cultural situation, but they are not subject to culturally-induced ignorance in the agnotological sense.

But this kind of ignorance is not at issue in the case of birtherism...

Rather, birtherism is a shibboleth, that is, an affirmation that marks the speaker as a member of their community or tribe...

This worship of UnReason was strong in the Bush years, when a "senior Bush advisor" (Cheney? Rumsfeld?) disparaged the "reality based community" ...

... guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

Obama brought us back in into the world of the rational, but the UnReasoners didn't go away. They are the core of the Tea Party, and they are back with bells on ... (via Capital Gains and Games)

The Rise of the Budget Fundamentalists -- Daily Intel

... There’s a growing consensus that the government could be forced to shut down next month as emboldened Republicans demand spending cuts that Democrats can’t stomach, and that even some conservative experts say aren’t feasible...

... “What you’ve got to understand is this is an emotional issue, not a rational issue," says budget guru Stan Collender, a veteran of both House and Senate budget committees who puts the likelihood of a shutdown at 90 percent. “As far I can tell it has no theoretical economic underpinnings, which is why it’s so difficult for the budget these days to be discussed, because statistics don’t mean anything, equations don’t convince anybody. It is almost a religious belief.”

Perhaps more than “almost.” The tea party has a reputation for secularism, but in fact it’s deeply rooted in the religious right. The GOP’s tea party freshmen made their leanings clear by going after insurance coverage for abortion and funding for Planned Parenthood, but their faith informs their economic stance as well. “It's no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice versa,” Senator Jim DeMint, one of the Tea Party’s major Senate supporters, told the Christian Broadcasting Network last year ...

From Climate Science to economics, the GOP has been the party of UnReason since the age of Reagan.

So will the GOP indeed destroy the US economy in the next few months? My prediction is that they won't, because while individuals can be both powerful and irrational, Corporate entities are more predictable. I think the Tea Party House will heed their true master's voices.

See also

• America 2011: exploring the boundaries of democracy and capitalism (Jan 2011)
• Is the GOP truly a pawn of corporations and the wealthy? We'll find out soon. (Jan 2011)
• Why you should vote for the Tea Party’s coven in the century of the fruitbat (Oct 2010)  There are limits to reason. Maybe the unReasoners will do better.
• We're crazy now. We were crazier forty years ago (Sept 2010) This isn't a new problem
• Civilization is stronger than we think: Structural deficits and complex adaptive systems (May 2010)
• Birthers, Deathers and Truthers - the reason behind the madness (9/2009)
• George Bush, American Calvinist. It's as bad as Susskind said. (4/2010)
• Bush - American Calvinist -- more quotes from the NYT Magazine Suskind article (Oct 2004 - Hell, Bush was Bad)

Health insurance - Americans are sheep

Health reform discussions are boring. I wish could resist health care reform posts. It's a compulsion, but at least I only do them every few months.

We've known for decades where will end up. We will guarantee every American good enough health care. Good enough care means 21st century American versions of "barefoot doctors" using relatively cheap technologies that have been fully depreciated. People with money will still buy more luxurious care; sometimes it will be genuinely better care.

Good enough care will use more physician assistants, not because they're wonderful people [2], but because they're paid like teachers instead of like radiologists [1]. It will outsource pathology and imaging to New Zealand and Israel. It will negotiate cut-throat prices with manufacturers of off-patent drugs, and it will fight patent law dodges. Good enough care will have simple contracts and pricing, reducing the overhead of care provision.

ObamaCare is a significant first step to good enough care [4], and, unlike ClintonCare, it leaves lots of room for the concierge-care end of the luxury health market.

Darn, this isn't quantum mechanics. It's not even relativity. It's arithmetic. So it's agonizing that we Americans are such sheep. We elected a House of loonies dedicated to preserving this status quo (emphases mine) ...

Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance - Donna Dubinksy [3] - NYTimes.com

... Unlike many others, my family can afford medical care, with or without insurance.

Instead, this is a story about how broken the market for health insurance is, even for those who are healthy and who are willing and able to pay for it.

Most employees assume that if they lose their job and the health coverage that comes along with it, they’ll be able to purchase insurance somewhere. The members of Congress who want to repeal the provision of last year’s health insurance law that makes it easier for individuals to buy coverage must assume that uninsured people do not want to buy it, or are just too cheap or too poor to do so.

The truth is that individual health insurance is not easy to get...

... An insurance broker helped me sort through the options. I settled on a high-deductible plan, and filled out the long application. I diligently listed the various minor complaints for which we had been seen over the years, knowing that these might turn up later and be a basis for revoking coverage if they were not disclosed.

Then the first letter arrived — denied. It never occurred to me that we would be denied! Yes, we had listed a bunch of minor ailments, but nothing serious. No cancer, no chronic diseases like asthma or diabetes, no hospital stays.

Why were we denied? What were these pre-existing conditions that put us into high-risk categories? For me, it was a corn on my toe for which my podiatrist had recommended an in-office procedure. My daughter was denied because she takes regular medication for a common teenage issue. My husband was denied because his ophthalmologist had identified a slow-growing cataract. Basically, if there is any possible procedure in your future, insurers will deny you.

... As I filled out more applications, I discovered a critical error in my strategy. The first question was “Have you ever been denied health insurance”? Now my answer was yes, giving the new companies reason to be wary of my application. I learned too late that the best tactic is to apply simultaneously to as many companies as possible, so that you don’t have to admit to a denial.

I completed four applications for each of the three of us, using reams of paper. ... I was accepted by exactly one insurance company. So was my daughter, although at a 50 percent premium over the standard charge for a girl her age. My husband was also accepted by one insurer but was denied by the company that approved me.

Our premiums, which were reasonable at first, have increased substantially over the last six years; the average annual increase has been 20 percent. I now am paying premiums that are more than double what they were initially. And because these are high-deductible policies, we still are paying most of the medical bills ourselves...

... If members of Congress feel so strongly about undoing this important legislation, perhaps we should stop providing them with health insurance. Let’s credit their pay for the amount that has been paid by the taxpayers, and let them try to buy health insurance in the individual market. My bet is that they all would be denied. Health insurance reform might suddenly not seem to them like such a bad idea.

Americans tolerate this. We have tolerated a broken system for a decade.

It's worse than mere tolerance though. Against enormous resistance, with zero help from the Opposition, the Obama administration manages to get some form of health insurance reform done. So what do Americans do? We elect bozos who can do nothing but strive to preserve the status quo that feeds them.

We are such sheep. We deserve the GOP.

[1] Many family physicians are closer to teachers than to radiologists than teachers, however. Also there should be a way for PAs to train up to a medical degree, but that's a different story.
[2] The ones I've personally known were pretty fine people. 
[3] This Donna Dubinsky. A legend in the Palm days.  She is wealthy and can self-insure if she prefers.
[4] It only lays the groundwork. Politics and economics will do the rest.

A taxonomy of American politics

The weak are inescapable. Live long enough? Probably weak. Child? Weak. Wrong genes? Not so strong. Blacksmith post-horses? Tribe out of power? Parents not wealthy? Don't own a Senator? Organic in the machine age? Ok, so you get it.

In America weakness and poverty trend together. and, to a first approximation, American political tribes can be classified by their attitudes to the weak...

Branch I The strong should help the weak because ...

• I need help -> Weak person, not in denial
• My religious tradition tells me I will be rewarded for compassion -> Theist
• Seeing suffering makes me feel bad -> Normal human
• I choose to assume this obligation because ...
  • I am perverse [3] ->  liberal secular humanist
  • Some of those I love are weak -> Social interest
  • I may be weak some day -> Rational self-interest
  • I favor civilization and prosperity -> Rational social interest
  • My tribe is defined by its service -> Noblesse obliges

Branch II The strong should not help the the weak because ...

• I am strong because I am of the strong tribe, non-tribe is non-person -> Weak person, in denial
• Misfortune is the will of God/The Market which I must support -> neo-Calvinist [1], Marketarian
• I am strong, and the weak serve me -> Authoritarian
• I don't care about the suffering of others -> Sociopath
• I like seeing others suffer -> Psychopath
• Obligation is an infringement on my liberty ->  Libertarian
• The health of the tribe requires the sacrifice of the weak -> Social Darwinist [2]
• Charity makes people weak, for weak must win or fall on their own -> Tough Lover

I guesstimate that about 70% of Americans belong in Branch I and 70%of them vote Democrat. Of the 30% of Americans in Branch II about 95% of them vote GOP. Branch II defines the heart of the GOP, though Branch II alone can't win elections.

Of all the twigs of this tree there are three that are in play during elections.

• non-Calvinist theists can vote Democrat or Republican. They are why we can have a Black President, but never an atheist President.
• GOP voters who are weak,  but yearn to be of the strong tribe. They may realize they are dupes, that they are sheep funding wolves. They can then change sides. (Today many of these are Beckians.)
• The Tough Lovers

The last are the most interesting. From my secular humanist perspective, they have a point.

Sure, some TLs are just sociopaths in denial, but most of us are capable of more than we, or others, imagine. Sometimes hunger or homelessness helps someone overcome a social phobia and accept an unpleasant public facing job. Sometimes loss of child care benefits leads to rational choices about contraception. Parents in particular know that children love to win by their own ends against the odds (although we rig the game in the child's favor).

Tough love has its limits though. Sometimes people break. They become homeless. Their dependents suffer. This is why Food Stamps are usually a very good thing. Even the core GOP voters of Branch II often support some sort of publicly funded education, thought they want it to be locally funded and thus favor the strong [5].

The trick for those of us who want to help the weak be stronger, but also recognize that humans are not not rational actors, is to fake "Tough Love". We need systems and solutions that allow the weak to seem "win on their own" , perhaps by rigging the game in a way that seems 'fair'. So instead of doing affirmative action on the basis of ethnicity, we achieve similar ends to by providing affirmative action on the basis of poverty. Instead of directly subsidizing employment, we make it easier to create a viable startup company.

Political systems are good at finding solutions like these, which is why politics is the worse form of governance save for all the alternatives. We'll need to get very good at this form of kindness, because the 21st century will soon be seen as the age of mass disability, when fewer skills are needed, and more skills are as redundant as blacksmithing in the age of the automobile ...

[1] Calvinism is the best "Christian" example I know of, but this is common to many traditions. It is perhaps the only rational answer to the "problem of evil" in a religious tradition.
[2] Apologies to Darwin, who was a remarkably compassionate human being.
[3] It's a "worker Bee thing". Some are programmed this way. It isn't perverse if you think as humans as bipedal naked mole rats.
[4] It's been a long time since I'd given this much thought. I'm indebted to a substantially younger person for refreshing topics I'd internally settled long ago. 
[5] Note to foreigners. Americans typically fund education through local property taxes. Shocking, isn't it? The most shocking thing is that Americans think of this as a good idea.

Where now for the iOS Borders eBook reader?

Borders is in bankruptcy. Its future is quite uncertain.

Of course the books we bought there are still good. The paper ones that is ...

Borders launches eBook reader for iPhone

... Borders has entered the battle for dominance of the iPhone eBook market. Well sort of. Today Borders launched an official eBook app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. But it’s basically just a rebranded version of the Kobo app which has been available since last week.

Kobo and Borders are partners in the eBook space, with Kobo powering the Borders eBook store. Kobo also sells a physical eBook reader with an E Ink display that competes with the Amazon Kindle, and which has access to the Borders eBook store...

I've read elsewhere that Kobo is still in business, though I suspect Borders was their primary partner. This is probably not a good time to buy a Kobo reader.

The average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company is 40-50 years. I think we can assume that the lifespan of file formats in general, and Digital Rights Management standards is significantly less than that. Make your purchases accordingly.

How a small company acquisition works

I've been around enough acquisition pieces to recognize that this is an excellent summary of a business acquisition.  M&A Case Studies: WhatCounts Sale Process. Keep a copy handy just in case you need it some day.

8 banks with low fees - per CNN

CNN Money's list of the 8 least evil banks. They seem largely next-generation banks; they're least good at what we use a bank for - managing and depositing checks.

• Ally Bank
• ING Direct (2)
• USAA (3) (mostly military)
• Capital One (4)
• Alliant Credit Union (5)
• PNC (6)
• The Incredible Bank (7)
• Charles Schwab (8)

The problem with "Everyday Mathematics"

We've lived with Everyday Mathematics through the last six years of my son's primary school education.

It's a lousy way to teach arithmetic and basic symbol manipulation to the non-mathematically gifted. This means it's a lousy way to teach, since the mathematically gifted would be better off playing with Mathematica.

The interesting question is what makes it lousy. I've wondered about that intermittently, and I think I've got the answer.

The problem with Everyday Math is that it asks too much of the math teacher. Most math teachers are just a bit about average (yes, I'm mathematically gifted); Everyday Math requires a 75th percentile teacher to really work. So it fails.

Egypt

I haven't had anything novel to say about the Egyptian Revolution of 2011...

The 2011 Egyptian revolution was a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes that began in Egypt on 25 January 2011, a day selected to coincide with the National Police Day. The protests were largest in Cairo and Alexandria, with significant activities in other cities of Egypt ... On 11 February, Mubarak resigned from office as a result of determined popular protest...

My one connection to this revolution is I've been reading the Facebook posts of a high school friend. She's been visiting Tahrir square. I hope she stays safe. Egypt has surprised the world, but of course their journey is far from over. They need many more miracles to follow Turkey's path. It is possible; the Berlin Wall proved that humans can exceed expectations.

Surprisingly, I have a remote connection to another Egyptian Revolution -- one from 1919 and the Russian-Ottoman war [1] ...

The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 was a countrywide revolution against the British occupation of Egypt and Sudan. It was carried out by Egyptians and Sudanese from different walks of life in the wake of the British-ordered exile of revolutionary leader Saad Zaghlul and other members of the Wafd Party in 1919. The event led to Britain's unilateral grant of independence to Egypt in 1922, and the implementation of a new constitution in 1923...

... Although the Ottoman Empire retained nominal sovereignty over Egypt, the political connection between the two countries was severed by the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. From 1883 to 1914, actual power in Egypt was exercised by the British Consul-General through the Khedive and his council of ministers. When war broke out between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, Britain declared martial law in Egypt and announced that it would shoulder the entire burden of the war. On December 14, 1914, Egypt became a separate sultanate and was declared a British protectorate, thus completely detaching the country from the Ottoman Empire ..

... Over the course of the war ... dissatisfaction with British rule spread amongst all classes of the population. This was the result of Egypt’s increasing involvement in the war, despite Britain's promise to shoulder the entire burden of the war. During the war, the British poured masses of foreign troops into Egypt, conscripted over one and a half million Egyptians into the Labour Corps, and requisitioned buildings, crops, and animals for the use of the army...

I learned of my connection when discussing Mubarak's fall with my 80 yo mother. She referred to my "Egyptian relatives". Her maternal grandmother's sister, Catherine (Kitty) Maxfield of Manchester England, married an Egyptian around 1909 and moved first to Cairo and then to Alexandria.

I thought I'd never learn more, but when I shared this story on Facebook Emily's sister, Martha, provided some context ...

In those days it was not uncommon yet still very controversial, for Egyptian men to take English brides. It led to a trumped-up "marriage crisis" because the state was worried about how to take care of unmarried Egyptian women ... [and] ....  worried about men not setting up "proper" Egyptian families ...

Basically it was a Nationalism problem.

This is detailed in a journal article "Stolen Husbands, Foreign Wives: Mixed Marriage, Identity Formation, and Gender in Colonial Egypt, 1909-1923" by Hanan Kholoussy. There is also a book by the same author, "For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt" (Stanford U Press, 2010). [Google Preview]

Kitty may have lived through the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. She had two children, so it's possible that their grandchildren were in Tahrir square.

It's a complicated world.

[1] No, I'd never heard of this either. I added a link from the 1919 article to the Caucasus Campaign article.

North Korea

Netflix streaming to the Wii attached to our ancient CRT used to require a physical disk. It has recently switched to using Wii internal storage [1]. I did the update today and looked for a documentary to test with [3]. I hoped for the BBC, but had to settle for National Geographic [2]. Since I have some Korea connections, I chose Inside North Korea (2007, 52 min).

It's a remarkable video. There was nothing there I haven't read, but video communicates a rich awfulness even photographs can't manage. In a history full of astounding cruelty and evil, Kim Jong Il's North Korea stands tall with Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao's China, Hitler's Germany and the Congo's Congo.

On the other hand, Nat Geog is no BBC. There's room for a more complex documentary about what they omitted. The family members of the team's minders, in particular, have probably spent the last four years dying in an NK concentration camp for their failure to stop covert filming. It's never explained why the remarkable team of Nepalese surgeons agreed to the undercover journalism. They may exaggerate the isolation and control of NK.

I was reminded of the Maoist era documentaries of China I saw as a child. The control of the party seemed complete, the population genuinely brainwashed. This was a time when millions were dying of Mao's famine, but that was not well known at the time. The brainwashing turned out to be mostly illusions born of fear and terror, and, for most, readily reversible.

There's a good chance that NK's government will collapse sometime in the next ten years. I hope then that someone will then be able to safely interview some of the people from this documentary, and ask them what they were really thinking when they wept tears in praise of one of humanity's great bastards.

[1] The install required a firmware update and is mildly geeky, but the streaming works remarkably well. Even with our feeble DSL service, and an AirPort router 2 floors above the Wii, the video quality was excellent. Of course our low res TV isn't very demanding ...
[2] BBC licensing discussions must be hellish.
[3] The Netflix-Wii UI is atrocious. I recommend locating streamable movies on computer, then searching them on the Wii.