#empogmgmu Part Three: George Mason University and Freedom of Speech

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I haven't told you everything about the National Students for Justice in Palestine conference at George Mason University. In addition to the conference, and the demonstrators at the conference, and the people who wanted everyone to be in a safe space, there were two more people roaming around campus.

One of these people was Oleg Atbashian.

You may have heard of Atbashian without realizing it. Oleg Atbashian came from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and reputedly did some artwork there for the local benevolent government. Atbashian eventually made his way to the United States in 1994, where he eventually exercised his satirical event with groups such as Communists for Kerry. Eventually he devoted his efforts to The People's Cube, where he authored a piece on Snopes' founders in 2015. The piece begins as follows.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Snopes.com owners Barbara and David Mikkelson were detained by police today after an unrelated investigation of a Snopes.com editor lead police onto a paper trail of corruption, bribery, and fraud at the very heart of the fact-checking organization.

Evidence obtained by police has revealed that Snopes.com, which markets itself as "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation," has a history of accepting money and favors from left-leaning and pro-Islamic political groups and individuals for helping them to advance their cause by rigging public discourse with selective fact-finding and deliberate manipulation of public opinion.

Late Monday morning, Brian Williston, a Snopes.com editor, who also doubles as the accountant, found himself at a flea market on the outskirts of Los Angeles. As he was browsing the different tables and tents looking for antiques, an old mechanical piano began playing Dixie's Land, a song that was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and is now considered offensive by some due to its link to the iconography and ideology of the Old South.

The tune sparked an outrage in Williston, who began yelling and cursing those who "would like to bring back slavery and racial separation," and ordering the vendors to "turn off that racist music."

The piece goes on from there, and was enjoyed by many - for various reasons. It turns out that some people who enjoyed the piece don't realize that it's satire.

Snopes CEO was arrested on fraud and corruption charges last year!
BY STLLOYD JUNE 26, 2016

People will continue to rely on Snopes for “the truth”. I’ve been telling people about this bias for years. It needs to be broadcast far and wide.

But Oleg Atbashian didn't see anything funny about the National Students for Justice in Palestine, and he decided to...Fight Back.

Whoops, wrong David Horowitz. There's a David Horowitz that runs the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Atbashian agreed with Horowitz's views about the SJP. Atbashian decided to design a poster for the National SJP Conference.

Source: The Gateway Pundit
So Oleg and someone else went to George Mason to put up the posters. I'll let Oleg tell the story:

This was supposed to be a two-day poster campaign, to counteract the George Mason University hosting an official national conference for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is an anti-Semitic organization with well-documented ties to Hamas - a terrorist group whose stated goal is to exterminate the Jews. The GMU poster campaign was conceived by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

My part in it was to create provocative artwork for the posters and to hang them around the GMU campus, as well as to distribute flyers in order to raise awareness among the students, faculty, and the administration about the true meaning of their support for the SJP conference....

On the second day:

[A]t about 4am, our car was pulled over by a GMU PD cruiser with flashing lights. As we found out later, they already had a description of our rental KIA Optima. Officer M.J. Guston and his female partner, Officer Daniels, requested to see our drivers' licenses, which they took away. Then they inquired if we had any weapons and proceeded with the visual search, noticing our bucket with mixed wheat paste and some rolled posters on the back seat, covered with towels....

They ordered us to give them our car key and to step out of the car. Then we were told to put our hands behind our backs and to spread our legs. Officer Guston then held my thumbs behind my back with his left hand, while his right hand gave me a complete and very thorough pat-down and searched the content of my pockets. He repeated the same procedure with my friend, repeatedly asking us if we had any kind of weapons on us or in the car....

Since they couldn't find any weapons and our message was protected by the First Amendment, the officers decided to charge us with "destruction of property worth of at least $2,500," which was a "class 6 felony."...

They were taken off campus...and straight to jail.

The full, politically correct name of the county jail was Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, but the jailers inside continued to refer to it as "jail." We were put before a magistrate named W. Talavera. Officer Guston repeated his trumped-up charges about the destruction of property, supporting them with a dozen computer printouts....

The magistrate's decision was quick: $8,000 bail for each of us and a mandatory court hearing within several days. As we were led away to be processed into the system, Officer Guston said, somewhat triumphantly, his final words to us: "You can't come to GMU ever again."

Let's pause here for a minute. The First Amendment to the Constitution, the same amendment that discussed George Mason's beloved freedom of the press, also talked about freedom of speech - specifically saying that Congress could not restrict it. As a public university, George Mason University is bound - or should be bound - by that same amendment. Yet Officer Guston believed that a satirist was not protected by that amendment. Some people are concerned by this. Others are not.

14 hours later, the two were out of jail, involved in a hassle with their rental car company, their hotel, and their airline that cost them some money. But now their story is out, and it's being treated differently by various sections of the media.

The mainstream media, to my knowledge, has been silent on the issue. The left-wing Silicon-Valley controlled Washington Post hasn't covered the story, and the right-wing Moonie controlled Washington Times hasn't covered it either, despite the fact that this is a local story.

But there's a lot of coverage from other sources, including a few that I've linked to above. And frankly they're just as bad as the National SJP. Take this Gateway Pundit headline:

Pro-Israel Artist Threatened with 5 Years in Jail for Campus Anti-Terror Posters

Either these people are trying to sell clicks by, um, trumping up the worst-case scenario, or they truly believe that Atbashian will spend five years in a Virginia prison. Either way, it's...um...deplorable.

As deplorable as Chloe Valdary regards the SJP:

The student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. Indeed, as an African-American, I am highly insulted that my people’s legacy is being pilfered for such a repugnant agenda. It is thus high time to expose its agenda and lay bare some of the fallacies they peddle.

• If you seek to promulgate the legacy of early Islamic colonialists who raped and pillaged the Middle East, subjugated the indigenous peoples living in the region, and foisted upon them a life of persecution and degradation—you do not get to claim the title of “Freedom Fighter.”

• If you support a racist doctrine of Arab supremacism and wish (as a corollary of that doctrine) to destroy the Jewish state, you do not get to claim that the prejudices you peddle are forms of legitimate “resistance.”

• If your heroes are clerics who sit in Gaza plotting the genocide of a people; who place their children on rooftops in the hopes they will get blown to bits; who heap praises upon their fellow gang members when they succeed in murdering Jewish school boys and bombing places of activity where Jews congregate—you do not get to claim that you are some Apollonian advocate of human virtue. You are not.

And she continues, claiming that certain freedom fighter of the past would find the SJP to be abhorrent.

Rosa Parks was a real Freedom Fighter. Rosa Parks was a Zionist.

Coretta Scott King was a Zionist.

A. Phillip Randolph was a Zionist.

Bayard Rustin was a Zionist.

Count Basie was a Zionist.

Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. was a Zionist.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Zionist.

Indeed, they and many more men and women signed a letter in 1975 that stated: “We condemn the anti-Jewish blacklist.

I wonder what George Mason would have said, had he lived to see this.

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#empogmgmu Part Two: George Mason University and Freedom of the Press

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In this second post, I'm going to fast forward 225 years or so, to a university in Fairfax, Virginia called George Mason University - named after the George Mason that I previously discussed. This is a public university, part of the Virginia public university system. In the spirit of its namesake, it declares itself to be inclusive and accessible.

Any university that is inclusive is bound to have a very broad range of interests, and the challenge to any university is the need to allow all of those interests to be represented. And this challenge was certainly faced earlier this month, when the George Mason University Students for Justice in Palestine hosted the SJP's National Conference.

IT'S HERE AND IT'S HAPPENING!

Announcing the 2016 National SJP Conference on November 4th-6th, hosted by George Mason University Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) in Fairfax, VA and the DMV! Our theme this year is "Critical Mass: With Our Roots in Resistance, Forging a Just Future."

Let your fellow SJP members know to RSVP on this page and to share! This will be the inaugural NSJP conference following the introduction of the new national structure. The conversations we have will be important and pertinent to the student movement, so we want to see as many faces as possible! Let's keep growing and building together as we strive for a free Palestine. See you soon!

Conference Information: http://www.nationalsjp.org/2016-conference.html

(Drop-down menus below the "2016 Conference" header include the registration form for attendees, travel stipend information, solidarity housing/homestay information, etc.)

In Solidarity,
National Students for Justice in Palestine Steering Committee

Now perhaps this may surprise some people, but not all university students are enthused about the SJP's goals. And some people outside of the university are not enthused either.

What? People outside of George Mason University are weighing in on an event taking place at the university? Well, doesn't that make them - OUTSIDE AGITATORS? You know, those people who don't know their place and stick their noses in other people's business.

If anyone knew the trouble that outside agitators could cause, George Wallace certainly knew about it. First off, a couple of facts about Wallace. First, despite Keith Ellison's misunderstanding, Wallace was a Democrat, not a Republican. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, a Republican couldn't win an election in Wallace's Alabama. Second, Wallace's views bounced back and forth throughout his life. Take the George Wallace of 1958:

In 1958, George Wallace ran against John Patterson in his first gubernatorial race. In that Alabama election, Wallace refused to make race an issue, and he declined the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan. This move won Wallace the support of the NAACP. Patterson, on the other hand, embraced Klan support, and he trounced Wallace in the election.

When Plan A doesn't work, move on to Plan B. While Wallace didn't change parties like Donald Trump did, he changed positions on issues such as segregation, becoming (for a time) the George Wallace that we all know and hate.

And during his initial terms as Governor, Wallace certainly had issues with outside agitators.

Despite growing conflict over race and civil rights, Wallace wrote [a Michigan resident considering her 1964 Presidential primary vote] that “we have never had a problem in the South except in a few very isolated instances and these have been the result of outside agitators.” Wallace asserted that “I personally have done more for the Negroes of the State of Alabama than any other individual,” citing job creation and the salaries of black teachers in Alabama. He rationalized segregation as “best for both races,” writing that “they each prefer their own pattern of society, their own churches and their own schools.” Wallace assured Martin that Alabamans were satisfied with society as it was and that the only “major friction” was created by “outside agitators.”

Some people, however, disagreed with Wallace and thought that outside agitation was just fine. A few of them changed their minds, however, when Martin Luther King Jr. stopped outside agitating in the South and started outside agitating in places like Chicago.

Fast forward to November 2016 and the National SJP Conference. Such a conference would attract attention of the press that George Mason himself so strongly championed, so Jonathan Bronitsky of Tablet sought press credentials.

On a beautiful, cloudless, and unusually warm November morning, I went to the registration desk and asked SJP communications personnel for comment, but I was told that both organizers and attendees would only speak with “registered media.” I explained to a recent graduate from Tufts University, who was in charge of NSJP’s media email account, that I was a freelance journalist. I gave her my business card and pulled up my website on my iPhone to provide her with a sense of my writings. She was genuinely sympathetic, interested, and instructed that I apply for a credential through NSJP’s website. I did, but my application would soon be denied. The Tufts alumna had indeed explained upfront that approval was unlikely because my request was “the day of” and her organization was worried about infiltration and negative press. She specified that a “right-wing publication,” which had tried to link SJP with Hamas, also sought a credential.

So the National SJP was stingy with its press credentials. Or was it?

Through conversation a few paces outside the conference area, I learned that a reporter from The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, applied for a credential two weeks prior to the event yet was turned down. A reporter with Ha’aretz was approved—but he was not permitted to enter the conference. Conversely, a freelance reporter with Mondoweiss, a progressive and anti-Zionist website, received a credential 11 days prior without even asking for it: NSJP had actually taken the initiative of mailing it. Also, a reporter and a cameraperson with Al Jazeera showed up without advance notice and were swiftly given credentials...

OK, not a problem. Bronitsky may not have been able to get inside the event, but he could certainly ask questions outside of the event - right?

I requested comment from 20 attendees and, unfortunately, all of them declined. I even offered to keep everything “on background.” Some, it was clear, were eager to share their thoughts. But after every time I went up an attendee, an NSJP organizer—whom I can only describe as a “spotter”—would sprint from her lookout post at the conference’s entrance and warn that I was, again, “outside media.”

Shut out of the National SJP conference, Bronitsky went across campus and covered another event.

Mid-afternoon, pro-Israel advocates gathered for the Turning Point USA-organized demonstration at the entrance of the NSJP’s conference. For about 20 minutes, they chanted Zionist slogans, mocked the “illiberalism” of SJP’s brand of “social justice,” and sang “Hatikvah.” They also carried signs that read, “Jewish Lives Matter—Say NO to HATE,” “Know the Truth: BDS = HATE MOVEMENT,” “Say NO to Anti-Semitism,” “HATE GROUP: SJP – HATE MOVEMENT: BDS,” “Why Won’t SJP Boycott Syria, Russia, and Iran?” and “SJP Calls Murder of Civilians ‘Resistance.’” SJP activists reacted by locking arms, facing away, and repeatedly directing each other to “not engage.”

Now if you were to conclude that the Jewish organizations on campus were all behind this demonstration, your conclusion would be incorrect.

Lending credibility to a growing sense that the Jewish-American community’s preeminent organizations are allergic to confrontation were the preemptive actions taken by the Hillel at George Mason University Hillel. It launched a website, “Embrace Diversity,” and held a series of alternative events that promised to “provide safe engaging spaces for Jewish and pro-Israel students.”

Now is this truly a freedom of the press issue? As I've noticed previously, Constitutional protections limit what the government can do, but do not limit what private organizations can do. In the same way that private citizen Donald Trump could yank press credentials on a whim, private organization SJP can refuse to grant press credentials on a whim. The fact that the event was held at a public university does not necessarily mean that private organizations using university facilities have to behave like a government.

You know, I wonder if Donald Trump heads the National SJP. There are some parallels between the two that go beyond their attitudes toward the press. Both love Syria, for example.

But I digress.

We've seen a lot of players on campus - the National SJP, the organizations that actively oppose them, and the organizations that want everyone to be happy and play nice together. One of the latter groups, George Mason University Hillel, posted this as things were starting:

We have learned that offensive Islamaphobic signs were posted on campus yesterday by individuals unaffiliated with George Mason Hillel. George Mason Hillel condemns this act and any efforts to demonize any racial or religious group. We are committed to creating a campus climate where all feel safe and secure, where diversity is celebrated, and where political differences are communicated civilly and respectfully.

Because George Mason is, after all, inclusive and accessible.

Now these signs were not posted by the protesters cited above. They were posted by a DIFFERENT outside agitator.

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#empogmgmu Part One: George Mason and Safe Spaces

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I plan to make a series of posts on the #empogmgmu topic, but a few warnings are in order before I begin.

First, if you are a committed Clinton supporter who gets upset when people say mean things that make you cry, you may not want to read the #empogmgmu series of posts.

Second, if you are a committed Trump supporter who gets upset when people say mean things that make you cry, you may not want to read the #empogmgmu posts either.

In fact, perhaps it's best if no one reads the posts at all, and looks at puppy photos instead.

(Pause.)

(Have they all left?)

(Probably not. Reverse psychology and all that.)

Third, this post - or series of posts - is definitely NOT succinct. In part, its longish because it covers a lot of time - over 225 years.

Although it doesn't cover a lot of geography. It begins at a plantation in Fairfax County by the Potomac River, and ends at a jail - I mean detention facility - not too many miles away from that plantation. Although perhaps by the time that I'm done with the #empogmgmu series, I will have gone beyond that detention facility.

But let's go to the beginning, to a man named George Mason. Technically he's one of the Founding Fathers, but he's not a really cool Founding Father like Washington and Franklin and Madison. Why not? Because he ended up opposing the U.S. Constitution.

Backing up a bit, when British North America was a collection of separate colonies, George Mason was a resident of the colony of Virginia. Born in 1725, Mason was a very rich man, and lived in a plantation called Gunston Hall (not too far from where another very rich man, George Washington, ended up living). Mason was active in politics in Fairfax County and in the nearby city of Alexandria, and then was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1759. He was part of the group of Burgesses who objected to the British government's actions in the colonies, and by 1776 he had authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which begins as follows.

I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

If some of those words sound a little familiar, that's because another rich Virginian plantation owner, Thomas Jefferson, referred to the Virginia Declaration of Rights while writing the Declaration of Independence later in 1776.

But that's not the only thing that was cribbed from the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Here's another example:

XII. That the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Basically, if I may use a modern term, Mason wanted Virginia to be a safe space where members of the press could function freely, without running into the issues that bedeviled John Peter Zenger.

We'll get back to the Article XII a little later.

Specifically, a little over a decade later, when Virginia and other former colonies had entered into a Confederation - a Confederation that was beset with all sorts of problems. This led a number of men, including Mason, to convene in Philadelphia in 1787 to come up with a new form of government. (Mason had been invited to the Annapolis meeting in 1786, but didn't attend.)

After a number of discussions and compromises among the delegates, the body came up with a Constitution. And Mason, who had been one of the most active participants in the Constitutional Convention, decided that he could NOT support it.

Why not? To Mason's thinking, the government that was outlined by the Constitution was no better than the government that they had overthrown. From Teaching American History:

Mason's refusal prompts some surprise, especially since his name is so closely linked with constitutionalism. He explained his reasons at length, citing the absence of a declaration of rights as his primary concern. He then discussed the provisions of the Constitution point by point, beginning with the House of Representatives. The House he criticized as not truly representative of the nation, the Senate as too powerful. He also claimed that the power of the federal judiciary would destroy the state judiciaries, render justice unattainable, and enable the rich to oppress and ruin the poor. These fears led Mason to conclude that the new government was destined to either become a monarchy or fall into the hands of a corrupt, oppressive aristocracy.

(Boy, Mason was ridiculous. Who in their right mind today things that our government has fallen into the hands of a corrupt, oppressive aristocracy? It's not like we've had two families running the government for the last 35 years or anything like that.)

It turns out that Mason's objections were shared by others. The other delegates, though, rather than rejecting the Constitution altogether, decided to immediately amend the Constitution with some protections for individuals, many of which were derived from the Virginia Declaration of Rights - including its Article XII about freedom of the press.

Mason died just a few years later, in 1792. Although he isn't necessarily remembered throughout the United States, he is remembered in the Fairfax County area of Virginia. At least two educational institutions were named in honor of Mason - Gunston Middle School (formerly Gunston Junior High School) in Arlington, Virginia, and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

I attended Gunston back when it was a junior high school, but I never attended George Mason University. However, it is to George Mason University that we shall turn.

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Intelligently market yourself for influence beyond your actual numbers - lessons from the Klan, Dan Harper, Tank Man, and Nicole Palmer

A triumph of marketing.

The activities of one group in North Carolina have received attention from all of the media, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Trump people, and all of us.

When the day of the parade comes, protesters and media will swarm to the place to cover the story, and it will be emblazoned all over the news that evening.

But think about it.

A Klan group in California came out to Anaheim earlier this year and got a similar amount of attention - for a protest with only a half dozen Klansmen.

A half dozen.

The North Carolina victory parade will be lucky if it gets more than 100 participants. The media (much less the protesters) will probably outnumber actual Klansmen.

This phenomenon, where a group's influence is disproportionate to their actual numbers, is not limited to the alt-right, the alt-left, or other fringes. Take this protest against Russian bombing in Syria, in which the Telegraph dutifully reported the activities of the protestors - uh, protestor.

In this case, I can't blame rt.com for not finding the incident to be newsworthy.

There are numerous examples of viral reactions to limited civil disobedience - the one man facing a tank in China, various Buddhist monks who were on fire for their cause, and others. Some, such as Rosa Parks, were backed by organizations, while others went out on their own.

But why do these people have such influence?

It's not just the marketing - I could put out a press release loudly proclaiming that Brian Eno is Slim Whitman's secret son, and no one would give a hoot. But when the protest elicits emotional reactions - especially emotional reactions when the Klan, Putin, or other hot-button figures are involved - news of the protest will spread far and wide.

Despite their deplorable image, the Klan are no dummies. They knew very well that a simple announcement of a public rally, even without accompanying details, would get the Klan a lot of free publicity. And as that publicity ricocheted around the world, perhaps that would be enough to motivate a guy somewhere to think, "Hey, the Klan really speaks for me."

In fact, the (remote) possibility exists that my writing about this may persuade someone to join the Klan. And even if I were to rightly interject the message that the Klan is a bad thing, this might not make any difference - some people may be MORE attracted to the Klan because of its enemies, including the President-elect, the major political parties, and Empoprises. In fact, here's a fake interview:

Once I saw that Empoprises opposed the Klan, I knew that the Klan had to have something worthwhile to offer me. I mean, Empoprises writes about Brian Eno - a foreigner. The Redcoats are almost as bad as the Yankees, in my opinion.

Obviously, things are much better if you intelligently market yourself for (in my opinion) positive purposes. Take Nicole Palmer:

If someone had told me two years ago that I would have cared for over 30 children while working and raising a daughter on my own, I wouldn’t have believed them, but that has been my life since becoming a foster carer....

The first child that arrived at my door came for a five week stay while her long term carer was away. It was a wonderful experience for us and helped me understand what was involved. Pretty quickly I asked to follow this up by providing some emergency care. After this I felt ready to provide short term care, which is classified as six months or less....

Foster care does come with its challenges and I’ve learned a lot about myself. In one instance I cared for a little girl that couldn’t speak English, but we worked through it together. It was so satisfying to find a way to communicate with her and make a connection. Sometimes I think the biggest challenges have the biggest rewards.

Don't gloss over this one key word in Kenneth Cole's store closure announcement

At first glance, this sounds like a story for my tymshft blog, since it appears to deal with trends toward online retailing. But read the opening of this Bloomberg story carefully:

Kenneth Cole Productions, a fashion house and shoe company founded more than three decades ago, is closing almost all its stores, effectively ending its run as a U.S. brick-and-mortar chain.

The New York-based retailer will shutter its 63 outlet stores over the next six months, Chief Executive Officer Marc Schneider said in an e-mail Friday.

So Kenneth Cole is closing 63 stores. Perhaps this quote, later in the article, will explain why.

“As we continue on our path of strengthening our global lifestyle brand, we look to expand our online and full-price retail footprint across the globe,” [Schneider] said.

Now it's clear. It isn't that Kenneth Cole is closing 63 stores. It's that Kenneth Cole is closing 63 OUTLET stores.

Big difference.

The Porch, it is a'changing

To some extent, I can write about whatever I want to on my blogs.

But I actually place some limits on what I blog about. (Although it may not appear that way.)

For example, this is the first time that I have written anything about The Porch.

My employer moved to a new building in the fall of 2015. I've written about the building, but haven't specifically written about The Porch - the term that I use to describe the second floor overlook in our building. Normal people would say that this overlook, and the large windows at the front of our building, give you an unobstructed view of our neighbors in the corporate park - not only Wescom, but also Micrometals and Calvary Chapel East Anaheim.

But that's not how I describe it.

As I put it, I can go out and stand on our porch and take a look over yonder and see the stuff across the road - the metal shop, the chapel, and the little old bank by the corner. I can grab me a cup of tea or coffee from the Flavia machine and just gaze out on the world.

Heck, all I need is a rocking chair and I can just sit on The Porch all the time. Unfortunately, my preferred rocking chair vendor don't got no offices round here - I'd have to take the jalopy all the way to Kingman to get a genuine Cracker Barrel rocking chair.

(And no, don't tell me to go to the website. It's not the same. And I'm not sure if the corporate wifi extends to The Porch area anyway.)

Now this would be the ideal time to post a picture of The Porch - perhaps a selfie with me, a cup, and the metal shop et al in the background. Except that The Porch is kinda sorta boarded up at the moment....

You see, my company does not own the building, and only leases a portion of the building. The rest of the building is empty, which is perhaps what is motivating the building owner to renovate the lobby area, including The Porch. Or, as those fancy marketing people put it,

Currently operating at around 55 percent occupancy, Canyon Corporate Center is set to undergo an extensive capital improvement program aimed to boost leasing at the property. The new ownership will focus on turning the property into flexible, high-bay office space with open features such as skylights and large windows that will cater to companies looking for creative space.

There's all sorts of construction now, and my formerly peaceful oasis has all sorts of scaffolding, temporary barriers to keep you from falling off The Porch, and construction workers scurrying around doing important stuff.

I'm not sure how much longer the construction will take, but we'll see what things look like when it's all finished.

And maybe I'll take one of those selfie things and show all of you the view of the metal shop, the chapel, and Liz's money place.

Ignitium and ubiquitous virtual digital marketing

I was searching for information on the unincorporated community of Santa Catarina, Texas and encountered this page.

When I saw this page, I began to wonder, since, according to the Texas State Historical Association, Santa Catarina had an estimated population of fifteen in 2000. Perhaps the community became a huge digital marketing hub in the intervening years, but considering that the last store closed in 1978, where would all of those digital marketing associates get their sushi and latte fixes? (McAllen, Texas, the nearest city with a Starbucks, is about 60 miles away. Kinda hard to get to on a lunch or dinner break.)

I suspect that Ignitium (which is actually based in Spokane, Washington) is engaging in a little search engine optimization by ensuring that any search for a town will eventually hit an Ignitium page.

And I was right - Ignitium has thousands of pages in Texas alone.

And in California, Ignitium has a page for Guasti. As you may know, Guasti is the official home of the Empoprises blogging empire (co-located with the Ontario Vineyard Village Association and KOER Synthetica Radio). So if my blogging empire is based at 1 Empire Way, Suite 2525, is Ignitium's Guasti office in Suite 1700 in the same building?

But even if you're engaged in digital marketing in Santa Catarina, don't worry - Exede provides high-speed Internet to that very city. (And to Guasti.)

And you don't have to worry about radon gas. And if you do die from radon gas, you will be remembered.

Movies - when the World Wide Web isn't so wide

I mentioned this on my Facebook Empoprise-BI page, but there's a slight chance that you didn't see this so I'll mention it again.

As I've previously noted, the introduction of a new technology is often accompanied by grandiose claims by the technology's proponents. For example, when the World Wide Web expanded our worlds beyond the world of CompuServe, people imagined that this would allow us to access EVERYTHING. In such an environment self-styled "founts of all knowledge" (heh) could truly BE founts of all knowledge, since everything was just a mouse click away.

This obviously affected brick and mortar businesses. Why go to the video store, with its limited selection of videos, when you could go online and get EVERYTHING?

Well, guess what? You can't get everything online. And according to Exstreamist and other sources, you're getting less and less.

While the exact number of titles available on Netflix in 2012 is unknown, sources who used to work for the streaming giant have told us it was close to 11,000 movies and TV shows....

We pulled September 2016 title counts from uNoGS in the US, showing that there are currently 5,302 titles available in the US Netflix library including movies and TV shows. What this means is that, over the past four years, the Netflix library has collapsed 50% in total title count since its peak four years ago.

(H/T to the Poke Salad Podcast, by the way.)

So if you're signing up for Netflix under the impression that you can see any movie you want, you're mistaken. But you've probably already noticed this, since there are numerous posts saying "Film [X] will no longer be on Netflix next month."

Netflix has its reasons to do this, because it is developing its own content, and that is preferable to the company rather than negotiating rights with third parties.

But even if Netflix were to change course and go back to hosting 11,000 movies/TV shows again...that STILL would only be a miniscule part of the total content available. According to HTMLGIANT, the total number of movies in 2012 (back when Netflix had about 11,000 movies/shows) was over 268,000. Granted, that's everything - even movies that were never formally released in theaters or on video - but the number still shows that even Netflix has never had more than 5% of the total available content.

And because of rights issues, the actual cost of uploading and hosting movies, and everything else, it's very likely that the World Wide Web - at least the legal part of it - will never contain every single movie.

So no, you can't have EVERYTHING.

Unintended consequences - the opening between the United States and Cuba and its impact on fugitives

For a variety of reasons, relations between the United States and Cuba were dissolved during the early 1960s, presenting certain Americans with an opportunity.

Which Americans?

Those who were guilty of various crimes.

After all, if you were facing prison in the United States, what better place to go than Cuba? It's not like Castro was going to send you back to Kennedy-Nixon land - especially if your crimes could be classified as political in nature.

One of the most famous Cuban exiles was Eldridge Cleaver, who fled to Cuba in 1968. Eventually he left Cuba for Algeria, then for France, then for the United States. By 1984, he was endorsing the same Ronald Reagan who revoked his parole in 1968. Time flies.

And time flies in other ways also. In many portions of Florida, there have been people who dreamed that once Fidel Castro left office, the Cuban exiles in Miami would be welcomed back to Cuba with open arms. In reality, Fidel Castro was replaced by Raul Castro, and the Cubans who remained probably don't want much to do with the "McDonalds breath" Americans who claim they are Cuban. (Well, except for remittances. Everyone, from Mexico to the Philippines, loves remittances from Americans.)

But the Cuban Cubans will see a lot more of the McDonalds breath Americans - and all sorts of other Americans. The decades-old wall between Cuba and the United States is being torn down, and Americans are flocking to Cuba.

But as they flock to Cuba, the New Jersey State Police is asking for a little favor.

Be careful and watch for the following individuals wanted by the FBI for terrorism-related crimes against U.S. citizens...

The State Police then lists five people - Joanne Chesimard, Cheri Laverne Dalton, Charles 'Charlie' Hill, William Guillermo, and Victor Manuel Gerena - all of whom have been accused of violent crimes, and all of whom are assumed to be living in Cuba. Here's Chesimard's story, according to the New Jersey State Police:

Joanne Chesimard

(age 68) was convicted of murdering one New Jersey state trooper and wounding another in 1973. Sentenced to life plus 26-33 years, she escaped from a US prison in 1979 and has been residing in Cuba since the mid 1980s.

REWARD: $2 MILLION

But Chesimard doesn't go by that name any more. She now goes by the name Assata Shakur. And whatever name she goes by, it's unlikely that American tourist identification will send her back to the United States:

Both countries have inherent interests, ethical and not so ethical, in allowing Shakur to die of natural causes in Havana.

The first is practical: If the U.S. makes a serious request for Shakur, Cuba will undoubtedly counter with a request of its own for Luis Posada Carriles. The 86-year-old, who has long ties to the CIA and its covert activities in Latin America, is now living out his old age in Miami....

Bringing Shakur to the U.S. may satisfy a whole lot of folks who are outraged because a convicted cop killer is free, but she has little intelligence value to the American government. Releasing Posada Carriles to the Cubans, however, is a whole different story: The guy has had his hands in everything from the Bay of Pigs to the Contra wars.

Even if there is a post-Castro regime change in Cuba, it's uncertain whether the situation would change enough to warrant extradition. After all, when Cleaver did return to the United States, he only spent a few months incarcerated. (Soul on the fast track.)

But Shakur/Chesimard is not the only person in Cuba who has run afoul of U.S. law. Some number of exiles are still in Cuba, some of whom arrived by plane. Back in the pre-9/11 days of the 1960s and 1970s, a number of aircraft were induced by hijackers to change their assigned route and go to Havana instead.

To live in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Latner says, was to have lived in the heyday of airline hijacking to Cuba. It was so common that one publication carried a photo of a flight attendant with the caption, “Coffee, tea or — Castro?”

(Wikipedia has a list of U.S.-Cuba related hijackings.)

Of course, there are many other unintended consequences that are occurring as a result of the opening between the two countries. One example - all the dumb Americans who do stupid stuff here and elsewhere can now do it in Cuba. Although in at least one case, it was a Canadian (who has been able to travel to Cuba at any time) who did something dumb.

Chris Hughes’ recent trip to Cuba was supposed to be yet another fun travel experience where he could see the local culture and capture some cool drone footage. But thanks to that drone, he instead spent 13 days in solitary confinement in a Cuban jail.

But Canada doesn't have the monopoly on stupid.

A 70-year-old Cuban-American who has lived in the United States for 40 years was arrested in Cuba for mounting a public Christmas display featuring a giant inflatable Santa Claus and other seasonal characters.

His attempt to escape prosecution probably didn't go over so well.

“I asked [the state police] to consider the spiritual benefits of this sort of event for children, but they did not listen and threatened me with police action if I did not comply,” he added.

Uh, sir, an officially atheist state isn't going to rush to offer "spiritual benefits."

(McDonalds breath.)

Silicon Valley is Also Devoid of...this

I recently read an advice rant from Marcy Massura, who has become frustrated by startup vendors who don't pitch effectively. While Massura's advice is valuable, I got something else out of her rant.

What did I get? A statement that rings oh so true.

At the start of a call, you are just another start-up with a missing vowel.

Congressional oversight - or oversights - over the Department of Homeland Security

In an occasional series of blog posts on organizational structure, I find myself often using the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an example. Not because DHS is extremely different from all other organizations, but because DHS easily exhibits things that can be found in many organizations, including your own.

In short, organizations are not unified entities.

Now, as I noted back in 2013, we were all told that DHS would be a single unified entity. In that post, I quoted from a web page (that no longer exists) that reminds of us the history of the DHS:

The National Strategy for Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 called for the formation of the DHS, which was established to provide a unifying agency for the many national organizations that serve to secure the United States.

In that same post, I noted that this dream was just a dream. The post discussed the resignation of DHS' Chief Information Officer Richard Spires, in part because the constituent agencies within DHS didn't want an overall CIO over everybody.

And in June of this year, I chronicled the fight between USCIS and ICE. Syed Farook's friend Enrique Marquez was in a USCIS facility, and ICE wanted to detain Marquez because of his alleged connection to Farook's actions. A Senate committee - or, more accurately, the Republicans on a Senate committee - described what happened:

The DHS OIG report found that USCIS “improperly delayed HSI agents from conducting a lawful and routine law enforcement action.” The HSI agents waited 20 to 30 minutes in accessing the USCIS building because the USCIS field office director incorrectly asserted that she had authority to determine who could and could not enter the building. The report states that the HSI agents should have been allowed to enter the building immediately after they had identified themselves and explained their purpose. The USCIS field office director incorrectly asserted that USCIS policy prohibited making an arrest or detention at a USCIS facility.

Which brings us to the Senate and to the House - or Congress, which created the Department of Homeland Security and has oversight over it. Surely Congress can straighten things out, can't they? Well, a more recent report suggests that Congress is dysfunctional - and I'm NOT talking about the divisions between Republicans and Democrats.

The co-chairs of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense said in a statement that the “current congressional oversight structure is severely fractured, resulting in reactive policymaking that threatens America’s ability to combat biological threats."

In preparation for the organization of the 115th Congress, the co-chairs of the panel wrote Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chair of the House Committee on Rules, asking that special consideration be given to the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Homeland Security regarding biodefense and security.

“The issues facing the safety of our homeland are a priority for Congress and the constituents you serve,” wrote panel co-chairman former Sen. Joe Lieberman and the first Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Tom Ridge. “However, the current congressional oversight structure is severely fractured, diluting focus and often resulting in reactive policymaking.”

The authors noted that two independent, bipartisan review Commissions – the Kean-Hamilton 9/11 Commission and the Graham-Talent WMD Commission – called for a more centralized oversight structure in Congress to provide a greater focus on national security programs.

I'll get back to this in a minute, but first let's see what the biodefense panel said.

“While the House did create the Homeland Security Committee in response to the 9/11 Commission recommendations, jurisdiction of the agencies that were moved to the DHS remains with other committees,” their letter to session said.

“This decentralized framework does a disservice to Congress by diminishing its ability to effectively oversee and implement homeland security policy,” the letter continued. “As chairmen of the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, we have become increasingly concerned that more than 20 congressional committees have biodefense jurisdiction, but only a small handful spend any time actually focusing on biodefense. This selective oversight reflects insufficient congressional engagement related to many of the most significant biodefense challenges America faces.”

On the one hand, the blue ribbon panel has a good point. How can we expect DHS to behave in a unified fashion when its work is being authorized by more than 20 different congressional committees?

But on the other hand, why was the panel itself called the panel on biodefense? Why wasn't it called the panel on homeland security? They pretty much are saying that they care about biodefense and that's it. In the same way, the 9/11 Commission probably didn't give a hoot about the Coast Guard, and the WMD Commission didn't give a hoot about any DHS stuff not having to do with WMDs.

What we're seeing from all sides is a fracturization of purpose - the organization itself is fractured, the Congressional oversight committees are fractured, and the independent panels and commissions are fractured. Rampant fracturization, indeed!

Or perhaps not. Fracturization is probably a Department of Energy issue.

This is only a test

And here is some text to go with the test.

Revisiting realtor Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford - providing the total picture for potential homeowners

Back in 2010, I wrote about a California realtor named Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford. I actually wrote about her in my music blog, for reasons that are apparent when you read the post. But today I'm concentrating on Wilson-Rutherford from a business sense - noting something that she does that smart salespeople do.

As part of what she does, Wilson-Rutherford provides helpful information to potential homeowners. This is a common service provided by realtors and other real estate agents; the realtor who helped me buy my home, Jeannette Ewing, also provides this information (in paper form).

In most cases, neither Wilson-Rutherford nor Ewing actually write the helpful hints that they provide. They get them from companies with which they are associated. But they still have to put their name behind them, and therefore take care regarding what is said on their behalf. Since both of them have been in real estate for decades, this is especially critical.

When you're trying to make a sale, you can take a short-term approach or a long-term approach. Both of these realtors are obviously in it for the long haul. An example from Wilson-Rutherford's blog will suffice. Now if a real estate agent is going for short-term business, you'd expect the agent's blog to be filled with stories such as "Yes, you can buy that house. Just put the down payment on your credit card!" But a recent Wilson-Rutherford post takes a decidedly different approach. Its title? "America's Most Competitive Renters: Why Many Are Choosing To Rent."

That's not the way to get the quick sale.

Across the country, young adults are waiting longer to buy homes, no matter where they fall in the income and credit brackets. They are also delaying marriage and starting families – events that often precipitate a home purchase. In many cases, these renters are also paying off student and credit card debt. Some may have graduated college during the Great Recession and are working their way through lost earning power.

However, some people are choosing to rent, even if they are qualified to purchase a home, as it allows for a flexible lifestyle. They want the option to be able to move for a job or perhaps they are attracted to a hip location full of amenities.

But, even if a renter has the salary, credit and down payment in order, a lack of housing inventory may be the driving factor in continuing to rent over buy. New research found that areas with the most qualified renters also have the fewest homes for sale, which is especially true of areas with strong job markets.

So why would Wilson-Rutherford (or Zillow, who actually wrote the story that Wilson-Rutherford posted) actively promote such a downer for the home-buying crowd?

I can think of at least two reasons.

First, this helps to educate her clientele. If someone is looking to buy a home in the Westside and inventory is low, Wilson-Rutherford can explain that to her clients.

The second reason relates to long-term planning. Maybe these millennial couples aren't looking to buy a home in 2016, but what if they pay their loans off in 2018, have a kid on the way, and are THEN ready to plant roots somewhere? Perhaps they'll remember that helpful realtor who provided good information on her website.

That's why Wilson-Rutherford provides that information on her website.

And that's why Ewing mails that helpful information to me. It's been years since I've seen seen her in person, but if I ever decide to sell this house, she wants to make sure that I remember her.

The causes of flight delays

When traveling, there are places at which I have slept on multiple occasions. For example, I have slept at the Hilton in Costa Mesa many times (I even blogged about my time in the hotel at least once), and I slept at the Westin Ottawa a few times during the early 2000s.

But there's another place where I've slept more than once.

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

The first time was in June, when my family and I were flying from Dulles Airport to Ontario Airport, with a connecting stop in Dallas. Unfortunately for us, a major thunderstorm hit the Washington area while we were on the airplane waiting to take off. After a couple of hours on the plane, we returned to the terminal, and we ended up leaving several hours later than scheduled, missing our connecting flight to California. We arrived at Dallas around midnight, right around the time that the airport was distributing cots to other stranded passengers. After a few hours of restless sleep, we then boarded a flight for Ontario the following morning.

Come September, I was finishing up a business trip in Tampa, Florida, and waiting for my plane to arrive to take me to Dallas. Right before we were supposed to board, those of us with cell phones began receiving notifications of a multi-hour flight delay. Weather was not the culprit this time; a cracked windshield was. (You REALLY don't want to be up in the air with a cracked windshield.) So again I arrived late in Dallas, but by the time I got to my terminal for my connecting flight, the cots had all been distributed. (A helpful airport employee rounded up three blankets for me.)

So last week, when I happened to see a report from the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding flight delays, I was definitely interested. The report only covered August, and not the months of MY delayed flights (June and September), but it was still interesting to see the causes of the delays.

In August, the carriers filing on-time performance data reported that 22.43 percent of their flights were delayed – 6.35 percent of their flights were delayed by aviation system delays, compared to 6.39 percent in July; 7.65 percent by late-arriving aircraft, compared to 8.64 percent in July; 6.04 percent by factors within the airline’s control, such as maintenance or crew problems, compared to 6.68 percent in July; 0.67 percent by extreme weather, compared to 0.86 percent in July; and 0.04 percent for security reasons, equal to 0.04 percent in July. In addition, 1.38 percent of flights were canceled and 0.30 percent were diverted.

So my June delay would be classified as "extreme weather." Not sure how the September delay would be classified - while the cracked windshield was a "maintenance" problem, was that truly within the airline's control?

But the biggest cause of airline delays in August was due to late-arriving aircraft. Unfortunately, the report doesn't dig into the question of WHY the aircraft were late - for example, was it due to extreme weather at the takeoff airport?

Flexing your job muscles

If you don't want to go to an office and work at a set time five days per week, there are other options for work. You can become an independent contractor with Uber or Lyft. Or you can work as a real employee for a real company. FlexJobs has released a list of the top 250 companies for flex work, where flex work is defined as "a professional-level job that has a telecommuting, flexible schedule, part-time or freelance component."

The top five companies on the list are either temporary placement firms (Kelly Services, Robert Half) or tech companies (IBM, Dell, AT&T). As you peruse the list, you can also see healthcare, government, and other industries represented.

Perhaps @humanworkplace should cover THIS company

If you haven't heard of Liz Ryan, she is a regular contributor to Forbes who writes about outmoded human resources practices. Her theme is that there are some practices that not only damage employees or potential employees, but also damage the companies themselves.

There's a story floating around that's right up Ryan's alley.

Someone was applying for a director of engineering position. Actually, he wasn't applying for it; someone sought HIM out. Why? Probably because of his experience.

I started coding 37 years ago (I was 11 years old) and never stopped since then. Beyond having been appointed as R&D Director 24 years ago (I was 24 years old), among (many) other works, I have since then designed and implemented the most demanding parts of TWD's R&D projects* – all of them delivering commercial products...

So presumably the director position is not an entry-level position where the employee is expected to do things by rote.

Or is it?

During a phone interview, things began to go awry around question 5.

5. What is a Linux inode?

Me: a unique file identifier for any given file system.

Recruiter: wrong, it's file metadata.

Me: the inode is an index uniquely identifying a file on a given filesystem, and you can lookup this index to fetch file attributes like size, time, owner and permissions; you can even add your own attributes on some file systems.

Recruiter: wrong, not "attributes", it's "metadata".

I should disclose that I would have bombed out of the test at question 1. But note the tone of the recruiter, and how the recruiter is proceeding with the interview. This becomes extremely obvious by the time the recruiter gets to question 7.

7. what is the name of the KILL signal?

Me: SIGKILL which #define is set to 9.

Recruiter: no, it's "TERMINATE".

Me: SIGTERM (15) is different from the KILL signal (9).

Recruiter: that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper.

I don't know about your experience, but the people that I have seen in a Director position (or even in a Senior Manager or Manager position) have to respond to changing circumstances, sometimes with insufficient data. In other words, the answers to things that a Director faces are not things that you have on a sheet of paper.

Yet the recruiter insisted upon only accepting the official answer in front of him/her. This continued until ten questions had been asked, with the applicant explaining his rationale for the answers he provided, and the recruiter continuing to insist on the "right" answer.

As far as the recruiter was concerned, the applicant was grossly unqualified to work at the recruiter's company because he didn't provide the right answers.

The company?

Google, according to applicant Pierre Gauthier.

It's important to note that this part of the process was a specialized test rather than a general interview. But this particular interviewer apparently wasn't looking for creative solutions. In fact, while we're only getting a second-hand account of the recruiter's responses, it's quite possible that the recruiter didn't know anything about coding at all, and was just looking for the magic words on the all-important sheet of paper.

After the fact, Gauthier commented that even Google itself disagreed with the "right answers" that the recruiter had on the sheet of paper. After noting that the recruiter insisted that Quicksort is the best sorting method, Gauthier noted, "The Linux kernel (that Google relies on) opted for Heapsort rather than Quicksort... for its lower memory usage and more predictable execution time."

But Gauthier saved his best dig for the end of his post. Not the text at the end of the post, but a footnote at the end of the post (before subsequent updates).

(**) Google pagerank: the ultra-secret mathematical formula demonstrating that sponsored search results rank higher than reality can.

P.S. Hopefully the recruiter doesn't work in the Blogger part of Google now. If he/she does, this may be my last post outside of tymshft.

Luckily, you cannot take an OCTA bus to a UK Cabinet meeting

[DISCLOSURE: Read the rather lengthy financial disclosure in my September 12 Empoprise-IE post about the OCTA.]

Most industries realize the benefits of making the purchase process frictionless. (My industry chooses to use a different term, because if you're frictionless, then your fingers don't have friction ridges and an automated fingerprint identification system doesn't work.) Transportation systems are no exception.

If you're an older person who rides the bus, then you probably remember how you were once urged, "don't carry cash." So you buy a bus ticket or a bus pass - but that's a hassle because you have to go to the bus station or the grocery store or wherever to buy the ticket or the pass, and you have to carry cash to the place of purchase, kinda sorta defeating the purpose.

In Orange County, California, there's an app for that:

Beginning October 9, eliminate the hassle of carrying paper passes or exact change by using our new OC Bus Mobile Ticketing app on all fixed-route buses. Buy your bus fare anytime, anywhere from your smartphone, then activate your ticket when you’re ready to ride.

The app is available for both iOS and Android devices, but is presently not available for the Apple Watch. Just as well, since wearing an Apple Watch to take the bus somewhere may render you unable to enter your destination. (Although I doubt any offices in Santa Ana, California are banning Apple Watches just yet.)

Internet of Things that can't be brought into the room

Tech is supposed to connect us, but sometimes people worry that it connects us too well.

Years ago, you couldn't bring a smartphone into the San Bernardino County courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga. Presumably a whole bunch of lawyers had to go out and buy "feature phones" (i.e., dumbphones) so that they could get their work done. Eventually, the courthouse relaxed this restriction.

Years ago, you couldn't wear Google Glass in Shotwell's Bar. (But you could bring smartphones in, which could do the same thing.) Eventually, the market relaxed this restriction when Google Glass went bye-bye.

Now, if you're a tech-weenie who wants to join the Cabinet in the United Kingdom (motto: Europe sucks but please like us Europe), you may have to make a change in your life:

Under David Cameron, several cabinet ministers wore the smart watches, including Michael Gove, the former Justice Secretary.

However, under Theresa May ministers have been barred from wearing them amid concerns that they could be used by hackers as listening devices.

Again, one wonders why the Cabinet is only banning smartwatches. (Actually, it appears that they're only banning APPLE smartwatches.)

By Justin14 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
If they're so concerned about security, what about the possibility of hacking the mic on a smartphone? Or killing someone by hacking a pacemaker?

All of these things are possible, but that does not mean that they're highly probable.

Is the threat of hacking an Apple Watch truly as great as some fear, or is the UK Cabinet being ridiculously overcautious?

Of course, this may depend upon whether or not you work for Apple or benefit from Apple. Somehow I bet that the Irish government isn't going to ban Apple Watches in government meetings any time soon.

#icymi October so far on Empoprise-BI (and tymshft too)

There have been a variety of posts on the Empoprise-BI business blog so far in October. Although Empoprise-IE (my Inland Empire blog), Empoprise-MU (my music blog), and Empoprise-NTN (my NTN Buzztime blog) have been quiet this month, a tymshft post may be of interest to Empoprise-MU readers.






Saturday, October 1
#psl So-called Pumpkin Spice Latte - Butternut Eugenol Latte?

By George Chernilevsky - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21476676

...So pumpkin pie doesn't have pumpkin, and pumpkin spice doesn't have the spices you'd expect. So I guess your pumpkin spice latte is really a butternut eugenol latte.

At least the latte has real milk, doesn't it?...

(link)






Monday, October 3
#louisedelage #instagram #viral #hashtag3 #hashtag4 #hashtag5 #hashtag6 #hashtag7

...20-30 hashtags! For someone like me who initially encountered hashtags on Twitter, the idea is mind-boggling. But Instagram (and Facebook) allow multiple hashtags, so why not make use of them?...

(link)






Tuesday, October 4
Kmart, 1962-2017??? (the October 3 rebuttal)

Eddie Lampert of Sears Holdings takes issue with reports of Kmart's impending demise....

(link)






Wednesday, October 5
Rise and fall, indeed – Madness looks back

In 2011, Kronenbourg shared a two-minute beer advertisement in which some older men sang a song in a pub, then walked out. Well, most of them walked out; the saxophone player kinda sorta drifted away.

For some of the younger viewers of the ad, it was probably an entertaining commercial, though they wouldn’t get mad about it.

(link)






Thursday, October 6
The organizational implications of Yahoo's email scanning

...In essence, one part of Yahoo made a change to Yahoo's internal systems without letting the security group know about it. To its credit, the security group discovered the change on its own (although one could argue that in the ideal world, the change should have been noticed within minutes, not weeks)....

(link)

The organizational implications of Yahoo's email scanning

There are certainly a number of ways that one can go with the recent revelation that Yahoo scanned emails for a certain character string at the request of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), but I want to focus on one aspect of Yahoo's actions.

According to Reuters, Yahoo's actions were known by some affected departments, but not others.

[Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa] Mayer and Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell did not involve the company's security team in the process, instead asking Yahoo's email engineers to write a program to siphon off messages containing the character string the spies sought and store them for remote retrieval, according to the sources.

The sources said the program was discovered by Yahoo's security team in May 2015, within weeks of its installation. The security team initially thought hackers had broken in.

In essence, one part of Yahoo made a change to Yahoo's internal systems without letting the security group know about it. To its credit, the security group discovered the change on its own (although one could argue that in the ideal world, the change should have been noticed within minutes, not weeks).

There were probably political reasons for this. Yahoo's then-Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, was publicly on the record as opposing NSA efforts to obtain information from U.S. Internet companies. In fact, Stamos is now at Facebook - Reuters claims that he resigned after he learned of Yahoo's cooperation with the NSA.

Before assuming that everyone Mayer did was bad, the question should be asked - was there a valid reason for keeping the CISO in the dark about this effort?

One could claim that this was a legal matter and not a security matter. In addition, since the request was from the NSA, the existence of the program should only be revealed on a "need to know" basis - and one could claim that the CISO's job was to keep outsiders out of the system, and not to monitor what was going on in the inside.

As you might discern, I'm having a hard time making this argument. One of the greatest threats to a company is its own employees, and if a Yahoo employee is siphoning off email information - even if it is at the request of the NSA - the CISO should have been informed about it.

Would other Internet companies have behaved in the same way? Or, more importantly, DID they behave in the same way? As of now, the other companies are claiming that they didn't cooperate with the NSA, but you never know.

The important lesson is that when you change a system, ALL of the people affected by the decision should be informed of it.

And now we just have to wait for Julian Assange or a disgruntled ex-Yahoo employee to leak the email exchanges regarding the discovery of the email scans.

Or, maybe we don't have to wait. An unreliable source has just provided me with said email exchange, which you will not find anywhere else. (Hint, hint.)

To: Alex Stamos
From: Jane Jones
Subject: Skimming

Alex,

Attached are the logs that show that an internal program is skimming all Yahoo emails. The skimmer appears to be looking for a character string. To implement the program, the hacker gained privileges reserved to the most senior members of the email programming team. As a precaution, I recommend that we disable the senior privileges effective immediately.

= = =

To: Jane Jones
From: Alex Stamos
Subject: Re: Skimming

Jane, let me check around first. I have a bad feeling that these weren't outside hackers.

= = =

To: Jane Jones
From: Alex Stamos
Subject: Re: Skimming

Jane, hold off on those privileges. This program was authorized by Marissa, and the results are going to the NSA.

= = =

To: Alex Stamos
From: Jane Jones
Subject: Re: Skimming

Wisconsin Tourism Federation?

= = =

To: Jane Jones
From: Alex Stamos
Subject: Re: Skimming

Yeah. Um, don't tell anyone, but I'm driving down to Menlo Park. Gotta talk to someone about something.

Kmart, 1962-2017??? (the October 3 rebuttal)

Eddie Lampert of Sears Holdings takes issue with reports of Kmart's impending demise.

First, Kmart continues to operate over 700 stores. Second, a significant number of these stores are profitable and have been profitable for many years. Third, we have been clear that we are intent on improving the performance of our unprofitable stores and, if we cannot, we will close them. Actions to improve our store productivity, including reducing inventory stored in the stockrooms, are designed to make our stores easier to operate and to eliminate unproductive inventory and processes.

The comments on inventory reduction address previous concerns that I discussed in July, and Lampert also addressed store closures, including the latesr round that I discussed in September.

Let's see what happens after Christmas.

#louisedelage #instagram #viral #hashtag3 #hashtag4 #hashtag5 #hashtag6 #hashtag7

I've been around hashtags for a while, but I sometimes forget that hashtags have spread well beyond Twitter - something that has implications for the ways in which hashtags are used.

AdWeek recently posted an article about the carefully-planned viral sensation Louise Delage, whose Instagram posts erupted over the summer until Addict Aide revealed, "Hey, did you realize that Louise is holding a drink in all of her Instagram pictures? Ever thought about...ADDICTION?"

So how did Louise go viral? By various techniques, including this one:

To ensure the content was found, each post included a mix of 20-30 hashtags related to fashion, food, nature and parties.

20-30 hashtags! For someone like me who initially encountered hashtags on Twitter, the idea is mind-boggling. But Instagram (and Facebook) allow multiple hashtags, so why not make use of them?

I'll confess that I personally don't care for the practice (sorry, Emilie) - it just strikes me as odd when the hashtags are longer than the original message.

But then again, if it helps people to find your content, then I guess it's worth it.

P.S. Also see http://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2016/09/betc-paris-reveals-the-no-fun-at-all-side-of-louise-delage/. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any fanfiction about Louise Delage throwing up in a Paris street, late at night; perhaps it's only available in French. And for another commentary on the difference between one's social media image and one's reality, see this.

#psl So-called Pumpkin Spice Latte - Butternut Eugenol Latte?

I am not one of those who goes hog wild over pumpkin spice latte - or PSL as the kewl kids call it. No, I reserve my adoration for the "real" thing - pumpkin pie.

Except that pumpkin pie is misnamed, since canned pumpkin pie mixes usually contain some other type of winter squash, according to Food and Wine's Emma Crist.

Pumpkin puree: You know, the canned orange stuff that’s lining the supermarket walls right now? The stuff you use to make all your favorite fall desserts that’s labeled “100% pumpkin”?! Yes, well, it’s actually made from 100% not pumpkin. The mix is made from a variety of winter squash (think butternut, Golden Delicious, Hubbard, and more). Libby’s, the brand that produces about 85% of the country’s canned “pumpkin” filling, has actually developed a certain variety of squash that they grow, package, and distribute to supermarkets across the country–all the while fooling innocent, trusting consumers into believing they’re eating a pumpkin.

By George Chernilevsky - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21476676

In a way, that doesn't matter, since the secret to pumpkin pie isn't the pumpkin or squash or whatever, but the spices. Here's what the Satan worshippers at the Old Farmer's Almanac say should be in pumpkin spice:

⅓ cup ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg or mace
1-½ teaspoons ground cloves
1-½ teaspoons ground allspice

So that's what you enjoy when you eat that pumpkin pie - I mean spice pie - and that's what you enjoy when you go to Starbucks and get that Squash Spice Latte (not to be confused with Secure Sockets Layer).

Although that's not true either:

As food scientist Kantha Shelke explains, flavor companies have come up with a simplified recipe that includes just a few of the chemicals that occur naturally in pumpkin and cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg. A small selection of those flavor compounds is enough to make our brain think, "Ah, pumpkin pie!"

Instead of actual nutmeg, for instance, they use a compound called sabinene. Instead of cloves, they use eugenol.

According to Shelke, this simplified recipe actually does a better job of capturing the essence of pumpkin pie flavor than you'd probably achieve with the natural spices from your cupboard. What you'd get, in that case, would resemble India-style spiced tea, or chai.

So pumpkin pie doesn't have pumpkin, and pumpkin spice doesn't have the spices you'd expect. So I guess your pumpkin spice latte is really a butternut eugenol latte.

At least the latte has real milk, doesn't it?
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Well, that's a semantic issue.

Vani Hari, a blogger who writes as the Food Babe, depicted Starbucks lattes as full of “Monsanto Milk” in an article “Wake Up and Smell the Chemicals.” (Hari’s views have been widely debunked as wildly unscientific and sometimes nonsensical.)

And since I didn't entitle this post "Butternut Eugenol Monsanto Milk," you know how I feel about the Food Babe.

By the way, before you freak out about eugenol, it's about as dangerous as dihydrogen monoxide.