Monthly Archives: February 2004

California Polling

This entry was posted in bush on by

Oh, those finicky voters.
Just a month ago bush received a 52% approval rating in California and now it is down to 43%. The director of the Field Poll Mark DiCamillo:

…called those figures “damning,” saying voters’ lack of trust in Bush undermined their views of his performance on a range of issues.

Sure, but these numbers could just as easily swing back the other way next month or in October. bush’s handler’s are certainly quite busy looking for the issue(s) and events to make this happen.

Freeing Human Relationships

This entry was posted in Libertarianism on by

Kevin Drum argues:

PRIVATIZE MARRIAGE?….Libertarians frequently suggest that the state should get out of the marriage business entirely. Just make it a private contractual affair.
This sounds good, but it’s impossible: the state is heavily involved whether we like it or not, and in ways that simply can’t be privatized. Atrios explains.

Atrios doesn’t explain anything at all. He does provide a couple interesting links: 1) 1997 GAO report (PDF) on 1049 federal laws in which marriage is a factor (not a listing of ‘all the rights and benefits of civil marriage’ as Atrios states) and 2) a shorter list from NOLO. He then puts a few of the latter in bold and says they ‘would be difficult or impossible to establish by private contract.’ Some examples:

Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can�t force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
Receiving crime victims’ recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.
Obtaining domestic violence protection orders.
Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

In a society where marriage is a private contract issue there is no reason why any the above items would not be easily dealt with. Your valid contract should give you these benefits just as it does today.
No, Kevin, it is not at all impossible. And, cleaning up the current mess will give federal and state legislatures something useful to do for a year or two.

On Blogging

This entry was posted in Blogging on by

James Landrith points out a couple interesting blogging articles.
First, Dan Farber asks What’s up with blogging, and why should you care?:

Many blogging advocates believe that blogs are the most significant democratizing force since the rise of the Internet itself.

Maybe, maybe not. But blogs do open channels of communications and lead to relationships that would otherwise not exist.
Second, Eric Richardson asks Can Corporations and Blogging Co-exist?:

…. .the fundamental problem with corporate blogging. There is a conflict of interest between the open nature of the blog format and the restraints of corporate image and sponsorship.

I don’t know as this is a real conflict on a clearly branded corporate blog. Readers can see the sponsorship information and appropriately filter what they are reading.
If, on the other hand, a business or political entity pays folks to man a blog that appears to be simply the voices of its author(s) when in fact it is a stealth propaganda effort then Richardson’s conflict holds.

The Mantra, Punters, Givers, Formatters and Mentors

This entry was posted in Capitalism Marketing Technology on by

If you have owned a computer or used one at work chances are you have had a chance to talk to ‘tech support’ and your experience may have been good or bad.
This Salon article is well worth the second or two to click through to the premium content and depending on your past experience with tech support you will either laugh or scream as you relive past experiences.
You will not, though, look forward to your next call. Your support might have been outsourced to a company that gets paid by the call and where technician training might go like this:

Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad’s interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.
The Mantra is simply, “We don’t support that.”……Without The Mantra we’d waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer’s warranty. Beyond that we didn’t have to do anything.

Of course, over some period of time companies who choose to save a penny now by providing this type of service to their customers should find themselves out of business.
Via Dan Gilmour.