Something you never see

A reporter in Georgia published a column describing his distaste for Sen. Obama based on an event that that occurred two years ago. Obama had mistaken the young reporter for a student, saying that, "I thought you were a college student. You have such a baby face." Apparently, this statement got in the way of the man's pursuit of a young female reporter. In his column, the reporter said that Obama owed him an apology. And Obama did something completely out of character for a politician. The same day the column was published, he called the reporter and apologized to him for "messing up his game".

That's something you just don't see in Washington these days, and its really classy. It is a refreshing change to see someone who is willing to apologize for his mistakes (however minor), and not weasel out of them.

Playing With Pictures

The weather was absolutely beautiful today, with warm weather and clear blue skies. I took some time to walk around and take some photographs. This first picture is the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington:



The next picture doesn't look like anything significant in a small format, but represents some fun experimenting with photopgrahic panoramas. I've been playing around tonight with stiching photos together using Photoshop. Photoshop has a useful photo merging utility to create a panorama from several photos. It is great at fixing perspective problems, but it is not very tolerant of exposure differences. However, Photoshop layers can be used to manually merge photos, which is what I did with this one:



Something that I discovered is that water scenes do not lend themselves well to merging, because the water is too dynamic. Supposedly gradients used with layer masks in Photoshop CS can help with this problem. Unfortunately, Photoshop Elements doesn't have this capability, so I'm left with manually blurring seams in the photo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving!

Taser-happy Police

Many college campuses have their own deputized police forces. One of the arguments used for them is that dedicated college police officers are better equipped to work with the college community. Based on recent events at UCLA, this may not necessarily be true. The UCLA police demanded identification from a student in the library (can you say "papers, please?"), and when he didn't comply, they forcibly started to remove him. When he didn't make their life easy (no violence, just not getting up), they Tasered him. And when he was on the ground in pain, they picked him up and repeatedly Tasered him, yelling at him to "stand up". Hmmm ... if I was in the ground because I had just been shocked with 50,000 volts, I doubt I would be getting up to go anywhere either.

The video of the incident is disturbing (warning - it's not for the squeamish). You can hear students pleading with the police to stop hurting the student on the ground. UCLA students are holding protests over the behavior of the police. Good for them. It's one thing for police to arrest a student for trespassing. It's another for them to torture him if he's not a physical threat, and just because he's making their lives inconvienent.

Updated 11/21/2006

This comment on Slashdot is from someone who claims to be a law-enforcement officer, and it describes what the UCLA police did wrong from an LEO point of view.

A Fitting End to This Week

I have had a completely miserable week, and just when I thought it was getting better, it got worse. I was excited about going home to Ann Arbor this weekend, so that I can leave urban nightmare of Washington DC behind. I went to check in for my flight, and was suprised when it couldn't check me in. The system told me that the name attached to my reservation wasn't mine. So I pulled up my reservation e-mail, and sure enough ... the system was right. When I booked my ticket through Northwest Airlines' computer system, it automatically filled in the name of the last person I had previously purchased a ticket for, which was a friend of mine. I didn't notice this "feature". So now I have a reservation that is completely and utterly useless, and have lost $138.

I would say, "at least I have my health". Unfortunately, I now have a cold, so it puts the icing on the cake for the week.

The Perils of Comcast

It appears that I have found a company that rivals the former SBC/Ameritech for lousy customer service. Comcast has now joined the list of my most-loathed companies. Last Friday night, my company's Comcast business Internet connection went down. I didn't think too much about it, since it frequently goes down on Friday nights. (It's Comcast, after all.) But when the connection wasn't back up on Saturday, I realized something was wrong. I reported the problem to technical support, and the 24x7 "business-class technical support" informs me that they can't look into the problem until Monday. So perhaps Comcast's definition of 24x7 support is what most companies call "8x5 next business day".

My problem then descended into technical support misery. Comcast replaced my cable modem on Monday, but has been unable to provision it. All of the technical support staff say that somebody in their data center needs to fix the problem, because their data center equipment isn't using the right DOCSIS specification. I've been assured that it will happen right away (by some people), or sometime (by others), but nobody knows how to fix or escalate the problem. And in the meantime, my company's servers have been without Internet access for almost a week.

I have discovered that Comcast doesn't have real 24x7 support, despite their claims to the contrary. After about 6pm, the staff turns into a glorified answering service. I was told (by technical support) that they don't have technicans that work outside of normal business hours. I even had the joy of talking to one Tier 2 support person who was extremely upset that the Tier 1 support had sent him a phone call -- and let me know about it. I must have disturbed his World of Warcraft game or whatever he was doing.

There is one minor advantage to having a business service agreement though. I have a written contract agreement, and under the contract, written notice needs to be sent to the "Director of Business Customer Operations" and the "Senior Vice President & General Counsel". So if service isn't back up tomorrow, I will have the pleasure of sending a formal notice of default to these individuals. I don't have much faith that it will change anything, but it starts a thirty day countdown so that I can terminate the contract with cause. (Yes, Comcast thinks that 30 days is a reasonable time period to not provide service under the contract).

In the meantime, I'm back to using Internet cafes, borrowing friends' systems, etc. It's quite frustrating. I'm also looking at co-location options so that I can move my servers, so that I won't need to rely on Comcast's services.

So if you ever thought about getting Comcast Business Internet, I would recommend against it. It's the same as their lousy residential service, but you just pay a lot more for it.

Ms. Coleman Looks to Undermine the Law

On Tuesday, Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, which bans affirmative action programs at a state level. Yesterday, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman gave this address in response. The following statement sums up Ms. Coleman's attitude in her speech:

I believe there are serious questions as to whether this initiative is lawful, particularly as it pertains to higher education. I have asked our attorneys for their full and undivided support in defending diversity at the University of Michigan. I will immediately begin exploring legal action concerning this initiative. But we will not limit our drive for diversity to the courts, because our conviction extends well beyond the legal landscape.

In case Ms. Coleman has forgotten, she is an employee of the state government of Michigan. It the role of state government employees to implement the state constitution (of which Proposal 2 is now part) and state laws. Ms. Coleman is clearly looking for a loophole around the law, and that is not appropriate behavior for her as a public official. She is entitled to her personal opinions, but she is expressing, as official University policy, statements contrary to the law.

I hope that the Regents of the University of Michigan remind Ms. Coleman that she is a public servant, and that she is welcome to go work somewhere else.

The Overt and Covert Politicians

There is an interesting exchange going on between former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and Focus on the Family leader James Dobson. Dick Armey's original statement can be found here, and James Dobson's response can be found here. It's interesting to see each side spin the facts.

It's clear that James Dobson has become a very accomplished and shrewd politician. He's definitely better at wordsmithing than Armey is. I recommend reading his essay just to see what an amazing job he does being precisely accurate, and yet spinning it. I certainly wouldn't want to be a politician opposing him.

While I have no fondness for Mr. Armey, his essay leads me to an observation. Most people tend to view 1990's Republican conservatives (at least the strict constructionist ones) and Christian advocacy groups as having the same belief set. But the two groups have one very significant distinction. Many Republican conservatives believed that issues should be decided at the state level whenever possible. Christian advocacy groups (FotF, FRC, NRLC) believe that Federal law is necessary to achieve their goals whenever they fail at the state and local levels. This means that the two sides will have very different views on what constitutes a limited Federal government.

As an example, consider the gay marriage issue. On this issue, both sides would agree that Federal intervention is needed. The Republicans would say that it is necessary because of the "full faith and credit" clause. The Christian advocacy groups would say that it is necessary because it is a moral issue.

For the second example, consider the Terry Schiavo case. The Republicans would say that this was strictly a state issue, and it would thus be inappropriate for the Federal government to intervene. But the Christian advocacy groups argued that Federal action was necessary because of morality. The two sides would disagree in this case. The Republicans would argue that the Christian advocacy groups were advocating big government, and the advocacy groups would argue that Republicans were being immoral.

To highlight this discrepancy, here's an interesting philisophical question. If you could become dictator in the US and outlaw abortion, would that be moral?