Here are some Australian sources that may, or may not, provide the initial reports of the Apocalypse

This is a follow-up to my earlier post.

Do you remember the year 2000?

In my country, the ABC television network aired an all-night/all-day special, hosted by Peter Jennings, that reported 2000 New Year's celebrations as each time zone struck the hour of midnight.

According to Harold Camping, something very similar will happen, beginning in the next few hours:

[W]hen we get to May 21 on the calendar in any city or country in the world, and the clock says about — this is based on other verses in the Bible — when the clock says about 6 p.m., there’s going to be this tremendous earthquake that’s going to make the last earthquake in Japan seem like nothing in comparison. And the whole world will be alerted that Judgment Day has begun. And then it will follow the sun around for 24 hours. As each area of the world gets to that point of 6 p.m. on May 21, then it will happen there, and until it happens, the rest of the world will be standing far off and witnessing the horrible thing that is happening.

Now I (and Harold Camping) live in California, one of the last places that will witness these events. So if Camping is a true prophet, things will start to ... um ... roll much earlier.

Kiribati changed the time zone of Caroline Island so that it could be the first place to celebrate the year 2000. Kiribati is UTC+14, so they would presumably be the first to feel the effects of the earthquake, at a time when Europeans (and even some Americans) will be asleep. (If I did the math right, this would be at 9:00 pm Pacific time Friday night.)

But the Australians will be awake (Brisbane and Melbourne observe UTC+10 at this time of year), and therefore they (and the New Zealanders) may be the first to hear of the end of the world (if, of course, Camping is a true prophet).

So if you're interested in spectating the accuracy (or lack thereof) of Camping's predictions, two Australian news sources are The Inquisitr and Johnny Worthington's personal blog.

I don't know whether Camping will be reading either of those websites, but he has said what he will be doing:

[T]he likelihood is that I'll be doing what everybody else will be doing, which is listening to the radio or watching TV, seeing what is happening as it begins on the other side of the world.

For my beliefs about whether Camping is a true prophet, see my September 2007 post.

And Worthington, if you intentionally change your website so that it presents a 404 error after 6pm Saturday Brisbane time, I'll fly over there and break your ukelele strings...

Harold Camping, revisited

On Sunday, September 23, 2007, my mrontemp blog contained a long post on the religious issues surrounding Harold Camping. Since that time, of course, Camping has forcefully declared that May 21, 2011 is THE DAY.



Inasmuch as this is a business blog, I'm not going to get into the religious issues here, but will instead look at the business of Harold Camping.

CNN took a look at the business end of Family Radio Ministries in an article yesterday, noting that Family Radio Ministries is almost entirely funded by donations, and that the organization received $18 million in contributions in 2009 and has $72 million in assets. However, considering the nature of Camping's organization, that's not outlandish:

"At first glance, it looks like they have a lot of assets, but they actually don't have a lot of cash that they're stockpiling," said Laurie Styron, analyst with the American Institute of Philanthropy.

Most of the group's net worth is tied up in FCC broadcasting licenses, valued at $56 million. Family Radio claimed it held only $1.5 million in cash on its books at the end of 2009.

However, CNN (and the rest of us) only have access to 2009 information. The Contra Costa Times quotes a board member:

As The End nears, donations have spiked, a board member says, enabling Family Radio to spend millions of dollars on more than 5,000 billboards.

However, the spokesperson claims that the incoming funds have not been able to cover all of the expenses incurred over the last few months.

Which, of course, raises the possibility that Family Radio Ministries may go bankrupt in the next few months.

If there is a next few months. Unlike Harold Camping, I don't know.

But if Camping is wrong, what will Robert Patrick do:

A retired worker has spent his whole life saving (20 years retirement income) to advertise Harold Camping’s May 21 2011 End of the world in the Subway. Yes folks, it is Camping's End of the world date not God's.


Robert Patrick worked 20 years for the Transit system and retired with a pretty nice saving. He is convinced Camping is right and has spent his full $100,000 in saving on Subway and Bus ads....

He is 60 years old and has used all his savings. The cost of advertising in the subways is expensive and he will have nothing left as of DOOMS DAY (May21st)

And if you're non-compliant, you're out 380 Swiss francs

I haven't visited the Canadian Standards Association website lately, but I'm still interested in standards - what they are, and what they are not.

There are three types of standards - (1) those that are created out of thin air by standards bodies, (2) those that are created by vendors, and (3) those that are created by vendors and subsequently blessed by standards bodies.

Actually, I assert that there are two types of standards. I don't think that the first one truly exists. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that every standard out there, including the ones blessed by the standards bodies, receive significant input from one or more vendors.

In essence, they have to. Not only is there no point in creating a standard if none of the vendors will adopt it, there is also minimal interest in a standard if the vendors don't participate. After all, vendors have money, and they'll pay people to sit on the standards committees.

Therefore, it's no great surprise that there is an ISO standard for Portable Document Format. The standard has the official designation ISO 32000-1:2008, and can be purchased from ISO for 380 Swiss francs.

And if you purchase the standard, what do you get?

A PDF file.

Perhaps you may download the standard to your computer, or perhaps you may receive a compact disc with the standard, but in either case, the PDF standard is provided in PDF format.

Which means that if you want to know how to develop your own PDF application, you'll need to use someone else's PDF application to find out the test criteria.

But there's a benefit to this. Once you've developed your PDF application, you already have a file to use for testing.

Cloud first, in-house later? The Zynga strategy

In a recent article, InformationWeek discussed the traditional use of the cloud:

The most frequently mentioned case for the hybrid approach of blending private and public clouds is "cloud bursting," where the in-house data center runs the bulk of the load, spots a spike building, and offloads that extra work to the public cloud.

But Zynga does the opposite, using the cloud first and then transitioning to an in-house data center:

Planning data center capacity for ... unpredictability is a slippery exercise. That's why Zynga instead launches games using Amazon's EC2 infrastructure as a service, so it pays only for the capacity it uses and is ready for spikes. But that's not the end of the story. Once a game hits a more predictable level, Zynga brings it in house, onto what it calls Z Cloud, servers it runs using a private cloud architecture similar to what Amazon runs.

And, of course, if a game tanks, Zynga doesn't move the game to Z Cloud. Instead, it cancels the Amazon service for that particular game, thus reducing its exposure.

Of course, this strategy only works if you have a massive in-house computing system in place already.

When will Mike Smrek be given his due?

I saw a post on Lakers Nation regarding Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's comments about the statues at Staples Center. I figured that Lakers Nation wasn't engaging in original reporting, so I sought the original source of the comments. This led me to ESPN, who noted that the comments originally appeared in the Sporting News.

Now the Sporting News chose not to republish the entire piece online, but they did publish a teaser. And the teaser included something that ESPN and Lakers Nation chose to ignore. To wit:

But for all of Abdul-Jabbar's influence, for all of his accomplishments, the man feels "slighted" by the Lakers organization, as he explains in a six-page interview in the magazine.

Why? There are multiple reasons---and we're not going to spoil all the goods here---but one of them has to do with the statues that have been erected outside Staples Center.

There are five of them: of Magic Johnson, Jerry West, Chick Hearn, Wayne Gretzky and Oscar De La Hoya.

Notice who's not on that list?

Yes, the great Lakers center Mike Smrek. And also Abdul-Jabbar....

Now if Kareem feels slighted, then how does Smrek feel? After all, several news organizations, including one devoted to the Lakers, didn't even bother to mention his chances to have a statue at Staples.

For the record, Smrek played for several teams in addition to the Lakers. Drafted by Portland, he ended up playing for Chicago for a year. He then spent two seasons (1986-88) with the Lakers (receiving $200,000 in his second year) before moving on to a number of teams, including the Clippers. Out of the NBA by 1992, he played in Europe and is (as of May 2011) on the faculty of St. Paul Catholic High School in Niagara Falls, Ontario. And the school is definitely Catholic (PDF):

Mike Smrek teacher at St. Paul Catholic High School, Niagara Falls, together with students Mark Giancola and Kyle Wegelin, designed and constructed this 12-foot boat. At the 2007 secondary graduation ceremonies and at the Faith Day for teachers, it was brought forward in sections throughout the prayer service, in conjunction with special petitions for each of the seven ribs and a ceremonial unfurling of the sails upon which were the names of the present and past Catholic schools in the Niagara region.

Then again, I just finished reading the final chapters of Acts, and perhaps if THAT boat had been blessed beforehand, it wouldn't have run into so many problems.

Back to Mr. Smrek. His students like him. Oddly enough, he is NOT one of the coaches for the basketball team.

And Kareem thought that HE had problems getting respect...

It only took a half century to phase out the paper check

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my dad worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. While he helped to implement the computer systems that printed checks for a wide variety of government workers (including, during the summers of 1980-1982, myself - and no, he didn't add extra 0s to my check amounts), he also realized that paper checks were not necessary, and that checks could be deposited into accounts via direct deposit. This began in 1972, and was available nationwide by 1978.

Well, over a quarter century later, the end is near for paper checks:

In a move figured to save U.S. taxpayers an estimated $1 billion over the next decade, the U.S. Department of Treasury is retiring the paper Social Security check in favor of direct deposits....

People who currently receiving their federal benefits by paper check must switch to direct deposit by March 1, 2013.

While I like to get my music in a tangible fashion (I'd rather buy a CD than buy electronic music files), I've long since accepted the reality of direct deposits. We'll see how others feel about this. If they're concerned, they can read the FAQs.

Why Adam Smith Didn't Use Facebook (ETH Zurich and Wisdom of the Crowds)

One of Adam Smith's most famous phrases was originally used in the specific context of domestic vs. foreign trade. Nevertheless, here is the quote:

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

Regardless of whether you use the term "invisible hand" in this specific context, or in the more general context in which it is applied today, no one will argue that the actions of an individual often have ramifications far beyond the individual. What is debatable is whether the independent actions of a number of individuals provide benefits to society as a whole.

Note that the last sentence included the word "independent." This is important in understanding a recent study on the 21st century manifestation of the invisible hand. Today we call it the wisdom of crowds. And Wired notes that there are certain circumstances in which said wisdom can be corrupted:

“Although groups are initially ‘wise,’ knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines” collective wisdom, wrote researchers led by mathematician Jan Lorenz and sociologist Heiko Rahut of Switzerland’s ETH Zurich, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 16. “Even mild social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect.”

Specifically, the test was conducted as follows:

They recruited 144 students from ETH Zurich, sitting them in isolated cubicles and asking them to guess Switzerland’s population density, the length of its border with Italy, the number of new immigrants to Zurich and how many crimes were committed in 2006.

After answering, test subjects were given a small monetary reward based on their answer’s accuracy, then asked again. This proceeded for four more rounds; and while some students didn’t learn what their peers guessed, others were told.

As testing progressed, the average answers of independent test subjects became more accurate, in keeping with the wisdom-of-crowds phenomenon. Socially influenced test subjects, however, actually became less accurate.

Now this finding is not new - one of the four requirements cited in James Surowiecki's 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds was independence.

However, this finding is often forgotten. The mere fact that a large crowd of people is saying something is not equivalent to "the wisdom of crowds" in the Surowiecki/Lorenz/Rahut sense.

So what if Adam Smith's domestic producer DID have an 18th century version of Facebook? Then perhaps some spammer would convince the entire English populace that the Dutch tulip craze was going to return Real Soon Now - or, better still, that a second South Sea Company would emerge. After all, many of these market crashes have a social component, as people tell their family, friends, and neighbors about this wonderful opportunity - an opportunity that the person would not necessarily pursue based on independent data.

Of course it can work the other way - social connections can lead a mass of people into making a good investment also - but if Lorenz and Rahut's study can be extrapolated, more often than not these collaborative efforts fail.

What does this mean for the way we do work? Is it better to get everyone in a room to solve a problem, or is it better for everyone to stay in their own rooms and look at the variety (or non-variety) of solutions that emerge?

Assessment and analysis aren't just the backside of business

Often we place great emphasis on doing. If we're doing, then we're productive. If we're not doing, then we're not productive.

Or are we?

A family friend, Tommi Huovinen, is one of the principals of Smarp Oy, a Finnish social media consulting firm. (English site here; Finnish site here.) When Smarp engages a client, they take an important first step:

Tarjoamamme viiden portaan prosessi alkaa kokonaisvaltaisella tilannekatsauksella asiakkaan sen hetkisestä sosiaalisen median läsnäolosta ja aktiivisuudesta. Vaiheessa kaksi analysoimme asiakkaan erityistarpeet ja kerromme, mitä sosiaalisen median kanavia yrityksen olisi järkevintä, luontevinta ja tuottoisinta hyödyntää. Vaikutuskanavia on rajattomasti, mutta on ehdottoman tärkeää, että asiakas ei yritä levittäytyä kaikkiin mahdollisiin medioihin vaan valitsee juuri heidän tarpeisiinsa sopivat vaihtoehdot.

Whoops...let's try that again:

The five-step process starts with an overall assessment of the client’s social media presence. In our second step we analyze our client’s specific needs and figure out which social media channels are the most effective and the best fit for them. The possibilities are endless, but it is impeccably important to choose the correct channels and not try to enter them all.

Before Smarp can actually get around to doing anything - in this case, implementing a social media strategy - they have to start by assessing where the client already is. After this first step, Smarp analyzes what they've learned from the assessment. Next, they share some examples with the customer while accounting for the client's "specific wishes, needs, and goals." Only after these three steps are completed does Smarp actually implement anything.

It was the same when I was in product management - other than concepts, no code was committed to paper until after I had written the marketing requirements, and the systems engineers had written the technical requirements.

In the proposals world, I do a number of things before I actually start writing the proposal. One of the biggest steps, of course, is to read the Request for Proposal that the customer has provided to the vendors. If I were to start writing a proposal without reading the RFP, I can absolutely guarantee that I will not win the award.

Now I don't know the Finnish for the words "assessment" and "analysis," but in English both words begin with references to a person's backside. This is fitting, since both assessment and analysis are truly back-office operations, sometimes denigrated by those who do "real work." (Yeah, work boot company whose name I didn't catch when your radio commercial aired, I'm talking to you now.)

But if you don't do the prepatory work, then you're going to get kicked in the backside by your competitors.

If it's Earl Grey tea, why is it in a purple and green packet?

If you're interested in the origins of Earl Grey tea, read this account (partially granslated from Hebrew). Everyone agrees that the tea goes back to the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. Although the whole thing about the Indian raja and the tiger may be spurious (if you can trust a coffee company to talk about tea).

Was it something I said?

I don't know if Blogger's outage last week caused this, or whether it's something else. But if your feeds haven't told you about my Viral Lack of a Target post, you can find it at the link.

The Viral Lack of a Target - or, who should I contact to find out about Electrolux products?

I was reading an old mrontemp post recently, and I ended up surfing to a 2005 Steve Rubel post called Target's Got a Fan Blog. Back in 2005, Rubel wrote the following:

Lesley [Weiner] says “Essentially this would be any company’s dream, right!?” Well, you would think so, but often this isn't the case. The reason is, corporations are afraid of an uncontrolled message.

Things hadn't gotten to much better by the time I wrote my post in 2008. The main focus of my post was a message sent from Target to Amy Jussel (printed as a comment in her post about Target's notorious spread-eagled ads).

“Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.”

Anyway, I checked for an update to status. While I couldn't find a definitve new statement about Target's 2011 attitude toward bloggers, I did discover a couple of things.

First, the fan blog in question, Slave to Target, hasn't been updated since 2009.

Second, Amy Jussel is still blogging.

Third, I checked Target's investor Media Contacts page to see how to contact them. It began with the following words:

Members of the media are invited to call the Target Media Hotline at (612) 696-3400 or email Press@target.com. The Hotline is generally staffed between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Central Monday through Friday. Media may leave a message during other times. The Hotline voicemail system is checked periodically.

Now more often than not, when I see the phrase "Members of the media," it usually doesn't apply to me. Perhaps it might apply to Michael Arrington, but that's only because he's been mentioned in the so-called "real media."

Now contrast this with Electrolux:

If you are a journalist or blogger covering a certain part of the world, we have local Press Officers who can assist you.

Find the Press Officer for your region by using the contact information presented here. Please select country below.

Now I happen to live in the United States, and as of today, my Electrolux contact is Caryn Klebba. I now have Caryn's e-mail address, as well as Caryn's phone number.

So the next time that I'm stuck for blogging ideas, and I have a choice between writing about Electrolux and writing about Target, which will I choose?

Anger...and luck

Conventional wisdom teaches us that it's best to control our temper. If we lose our temper, conventional wisdom tells us that our emotional state makes us unable to reach our goals.

But sometimes a bad temper works out for the best.

In 1982, a former military officer named John McCain, a recent arrival to Arizona, was running for Congress. His opponents dwelled on the "recent" part of McCain's biography, and carpetbagger charges were swirling about him when, during a debate, he snapped.

Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things.

Then he made this statement:

As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.

He won that primary, and then won election to the House of Representatives, and then to the Senate. In fact, the 2008 Presidential election was the first major election that he lost.

Not too bad for a statement made in a fit of anger.

(empo-tuulwey) Why search technology is substandard, May 10 edition

I read Outside the Beltway via Google Reader, and saw the feed version of the blog's recent article, entitled "Babies 'R' Us Sells Defective Cribs, Won't Give Refunds." You can find the online, non-feed version of the post here.

The feed for Outside the Beltway contains Google Ads (as does the feed for this blog, by the way). Now Google is the reputed leader in search technology, so one would expect that its search results are better than others.

I'll give you three guesses regarding the ad that Google placed on the feed for the Outside the Beltway article. And the first two guesses don't count.



Somehow I don't think that Babies "R" Us will get a lot of sales from that ad placement.

And to top it off, while writing this post I opened up my blog in another tab to locate previous discussions of search technology. A Babies R Us ad appeared there, too - this was before this article was posted, so it was relying on information from the other tabs, including the tab in which this post was being composed, as well as a tab that included the Outside the Beltway post. (Interesting ramifications.)

Incidentally, I wrote a similar post on search technology issues in February 2011.

And I still ask - when will search become more intelligent?

Conflicting conflicts of interest

I missed this story initially until Michael Arrington posted a follow-up, which led me to read the original story, which described Arrington's policy on reporting on items in which he has a financial interest.

Unlike Louis Gray, whose blog has a staff of one (at least until Matthew and Sarah learn their ABCs), Arrington also has to worry about anyone working for him who might write about one of his investments. Hence, this tale:

There’s a period of time with any investment when I know an investment is possible or likely but it can’t be announced yet. During that time I don’t write about the startup at all, because I can’t disclose the investment. When another writer wants to break a story we may have to hold that story, or it becomes a forcing function in announcing sooner. That’s what happened with Yo. MG [Siegler] had the story independently and wanted to run with it. I can’t reasonably ask him to hold the story (THAT would be a conflict of interest in itself), but he can’t publish it here without the disclosure that I’m investing. Which led to the interesting situation where I was the only investor who confirmed on the record.

I find this fascinating. If Arrington had prevented Siegler from running the story, that would have been a conflict of interest (since Arrington was killing a story that Siegler discovered independently). But if Arrington had allowed Siegler to run the story, that would have been a conflict of interest (since Arrington was promoting his own investment).

So how exactly did Siegler (and Arrington) handle the situation? Here are the appropriate excerpts of Siegler's story:

We previously broke the news that Fanning had raised a small amount of money last year for the project....Since then, other details have become more clear. That includes some big potential funding — and one of the investors is someone we know very well: Michael Arrington. More on that below....

In digging into this story, we heard that a man by the name of “Arrington” is involved. Yes, that one. When confronted, he squirmed for a bit but eventually acknowledged his involvement. In fact, he’s the only one willing to confirm involvement at this point, but even he won’t spill more juicy details yet.

Arrington and Gray aren't the only ones who disclose. There's Christine Young and a slew of others.

And myself.

But there are times when I might not necessarily disclose things.

I'll give you an example - or, to be more precise, I won't. You may have noticed that, although I've been writing proposals for over a year now, I haven't discussed any of those proposals in particular. The reason for that is because the results of the proposals that I have written have not been publicly announced. A portion of my proposals resulted in wins. A portion resulted in losses. And a portion have not yet been determined. However, for the blogging record, I am remaining silent on those at this time.

Two recent MorphoTrak wins, the North Carolina driver's license win and the FBI NGI win, did not include my involvement. Oh, and I didn't write anything for the India project either.

Now one of the proposals which was a win has already been delivered and accepted by the customer. So why keep silent? Because my company has not formally announced the win, and the customer has not formally announced the win. And in many cases (although I honestly can't remember if it applies for this customer), the contract includes very specific provisions that govern any announcement that the vendor may make about the customer win. I'd be willing to bet that breaking the news of a customer win in the Empoprise-BI business blog isn't necessarily what the customer had in mind.

In a sense it's pretty silly, because if you wander around in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in August of this year, and if you happen to be at the Frontier Airlines Center, you'll run into a bunch of people that could probably tell you more about that particular customer than even I know. So people already know about this win. Yet those hallway conversations are verbal and not blasted out on the Internet.

And that particular proposal happens to be one of the first five proposals that I wrote. So, needless to say, I won't be telling you what I'm working on today.

Although I'm still happy to explain how someone could be either a male, or a female, or both.

Yes, it's a crazy industry. And as long as criminals keep on forgetting to wear gloves, I'll still have a job.

Issues of corporate succession in the purple and gold

Any business has to deal with issues of corporate succession. When do you kick the old guard out, and when do you let the new guard run the show? This is a prime concern at a number of companies, Apple being one of them.

And it is also a concern with sports teams, such as the Los Angeles Lakers.

In the case of the Lakers, I'm not talking about the ownership, or about the front office, or about the coaching staff - and yes, there is a coaching issue that the Lakers must address.

In this case, I'm talking about the players.

You'll recall that the Lakers went through this issue a few years ago, when things neatly boiled down to the question of whether the Lakers should keep Shaquille O'Neal or Kobe Bryant. The Lakers chose to move away from experience and chose the younger player, the immature player who had just fought off a rape allegation. Initially, it appeared that the Lakers had made the wrong decision, as O'Neal helped a team (interestingly, the Miami Heat) win a title, while the Lakers were mired in mediocrity. But in the long term, the situation changed. O'Neal left the Heat, and then left the Phoenix Suns, and then he left the Cleveland Cavaliers and took his talents to Boston. Meanwhile, the Lakers racked up two titles and were challenging for a third.

Today, Kobe is the experienced old guard player, and the young guard is represented by Andrew Bynum, who was recently ejected for a flagrant foul - on the Minnesota Timberwolves' Michael Beasley. Stop me if you've heard this one after:

Los Angeles Lakers center Andrew Bynum was assessed a flagrant foul 2 on Friday for striking Minnesota Timberwolves forward Michael Beasley in the chest with his right elbow and bringing Beasley to the floor.

The foul came with 6:16 remaining in the fourth quarter....

That was in March. Of course, today everyone is talking about another flagrant foul:

[W]e know Bynum will be wearing street clothes to start next season after he was ejected for knocking J.J. Barea to the ground during yet another drive to the hoop by the guard, shortly after Lamar Odom was ejected for cracking Dirk Nowitzki to begin the Lakers meltdown. Bynum said he was frustrated that Barea kept coming down the lane. That's no excuse. It's a suspendable offense, and a lesson he hasn't learned from the time he had to sit for a similar hit on Michael Beasley.

And the reaction has been mostly negative. Some more negative than others. Chris Richardson quotes the messages that have been placed on Bynum's Facebook page, including one from a clueless person who proposes an inappropriate response to Bynum's violent act:

Bynum your the definition of a ghetto loser!! Why don’t you back to the hood where you belong, you no class loser!!! I would gladly spit in your face you ain’t nothing but a CHUMP!!!

I found a classic one myself. Keep Kobe Bryant's recent league fine in mind while reading:

Melvin Pagan Del Monte

Hi Andrew. Just passed to say you are the biggest crap and loser on the earth. Grow balls and learn to lose. You are a faggot. Yes, a faggot. I liked the Lakers but after that shit attitude by you, [Intercourse] them. If they don't trade you away, Lakers are dead for me. JJ Barea killed you and the Lakers. The smallest guy on the court show heart, passion and desire for the game. Something that you will never have. Bye Injury Prone and I Hope next season, you turn your ACL and get a Season ending injury. Sincerely. [Intercourse] You Bynum! Piece of crap.

However, it should be noted that both commenters knew how to spell "loser" correctly. Sadly, many of the commenters don't.

In such an environment, Monday morning quarterbacks (if I may mix my sports terms) are all calling for Andrew Bynum to be jettisoned. These fouls, plus his tendency toward injury, are causing people to call for Bynum's removal and for the Lakers to bring in someone else. (Incidentally, it's interesting when people argue that player X is damaged goods, but then naturally assume that some other team would love to take the player, while you'd get some other player for a song. I'm sorry, but Pau Gasol-type deals only happen once in a lifetime, and even that trade is being re-examined - and will definitely be re-examined if Marc Gasol heads to the NBA Western Conference Finals and Pau doesn't.)

But what if the Lakers went the other way? Here's what I tweeted Sunday night:

@VivianVivisect I'll grant that I didn't see the game (or the ejection), but I believe Bynum should be the nucleus of the new Lakers.

What if history repeated itself and the Lakers kept young player Andrew Bynum and got rid of the old player Kobe Bryant?

The same article that criticized Bynum's play against the Mavericks noted that Bryant is past his prime:

[Potential future coach Brian] Shaw is a familiar and respected voice for Kobe Bryant, and that's a big factor, especially since the next coach will have to say "no" to Bryant with increasing frequency. These were the first playoffs in more than a decade in which Bryant wasn't able to take over or close out games. He was 12-for-37 in the playoff fourth quarters that mattered; we won't include the two shots he missed in 4 ½ minutes of the fourth quarter Sunday, when the Lakers were hopelessly behind on their way to a shameful 122-86 sweeptastic loss to the Mavericks.

The truth is that while Bryant remains the Lakers' best and most consistent player, the team's fortunes aren't directly tied only to him anymore. The Lakers were at their best at the beginning of the season when Pau Gasol was playing like an MVP, and immediately after the All-Star break when Andrew Bynum became a defensive monster.

And Bryant may have been disruptive in some areas:

[Pau Gasol's] sudden and odd postseason disappearance was the most obvious reason for the Lakers' troubles, his fall completed Sunday when he scored 10 points while being pushed around by everyone but his coach, who thankfully refrained from hitting him for a second consecutive game.

"I have to learn from this," Gasol said. ''I have to learn that when something happens off the court, you have to keep it off the court."

He was referring to the report that he stopped talking to Bryant during the postseason because Bryant's wife, Vanessa, had contributed to the breakup of Gasol and his longtime girlfriend. Lakers fans will remember that Karl Malone once publicly accused Vanessa of interfering with his personal life in a similar fashion.

Whatever was happening, Bryant and Gasol haven't connected on the court in a month, and the Lakers have been lost without the strength of their fusion.

Now the Lakers players aren't publicly going through the same level of acrimony that they did the last time Phil Jackson left, but what if the Lakers were rebuilt around Andrew Bynum? Now admittedly teams wouldn't trade for the likes of a well-paid Luke Walton, but perhaps someone would be willing to pay for a Kobe Bryant.

Well, we'll see what Mitch Kupchak will do next. A few year ago, he was a goat. Then he suddenly became a genius. Now he's not a genius any more, but we'll see what happens (although we should give his moves a couple of years before we evaluate them.)

Presumably the decision on a new head coash will come first, and there's this whole work stoppage looming, but Kupchak will be the center of attention in the near future. Let's see what he does with his corporation.

A concentration of talent

For whatever reason - chance, environment, or the mysterious dealings of the Illuminati - it often seems that famous people tend to know other famous people before any of them become famous. While it sometimes appears that someone emerges out of the blue, more often people emerge in groups.

Los Angeles residents are well aware that Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda knew Mike Piazza at a young age. However, when Lasorda was an unknown minor leaguer, he came in contact with another legendary sports figure. The legendary sports figure was three years old at the time:

Lasorda had that fatherhood gene kicking all the way back when he was playing for the Schenectady Blue Jays under manager Lee Riley. Riley's 3-year-old son, Pat, found a consistent dugout playmate in Lasorda (and eventually found himself the co-owner and head coach of the NBA's Miami Heat). "I used to hold Pat in my lap," Lasorda has said. "Every time I see him now, I think of his father. He looked just like Pat does now. He combed his hair straight back, too. He didn't dress like Pat, of course, because he couldn't afford to."

Since the article that I quoted was written back in 2000, there was no reference to Riley leaving New York and "taking his talents to South Beach."

Now some of these concentrations of talent can be explained. For example, the chance of a half dozen movie stars attending the same high school can be explained if it's noted that the high school in question was in the Los Angeles area. Specifically, Santa Monica High School, with a student body that included Rob Lowe, Martin Sheen's sons Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, Sean Penn, the late Chris Penn, Robert Downey Jr., and Holly Robinson Peete.

It remains to be seen whether the current Santa Monica High theatre students will achieve similar levels of artistic success. After all, some of the Brat Pack kids got to hang out at Martin Sheen's house, which certainly didn't hurt their future employment prospects. Including Martin's employment prospects.

But the Brat Pack isn't the only set of celebrities who knew each other in high school. Cameron Diaz bought weed from classmate Snoop Dogg. The Convent of the Sacred Heart numbers Lady Gaga and Paris Hilton as alumnae. And this page lists a number of these schoolmates, including Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, who both sang in the choir. (But did he bring her flowers?)

And no, Barbra didn't attend school with Slim Whitman.

What if Keynes didn't have to become Keynesian?

I'll be talking more about Keynes vs. Hayek on Monday in my music blog - yes, my music blog. But I happened to run across this comparison of Keynes and Hayek in the Daily Kos. Written by VA Classical Liberal, who confesses being in the Hayek camp, the post concludes with a defense of Keynes - and an interesting point:

Keynes was a vocal critic of the Treaty of Versailles. He understood that the economic costs reparations would impose on Germany would destabilize Western Europe. During WW II, he advocated financing the war through savings, not borrowing. Worrying about inflation, he sounds almost like a monetarist. If politicians had followed his advice, we would have been spared much of the pain of the Great Depression and possibly even WW II.

Imagine that. If people had listened to Keynes in the 1920s, he may not have had the opportunity to become popular in the 1930s...and 1940s...and 1950s...and 1960s...and 1970s...and 1990s...and 2000s...and 2010s...

In a related note, it's interesting to see how the U.S. Holocaust Museum characterizes the Treaty of Versailles:

The war guilt clause, its incumbent reparation payments, and the limitations on the German military were particularly onerous in the minds of most Germans, and revision of the Versailles Treaty represented one of the platforms that gave radical right wing parties in Germany, including Hitler's Nazi Party, such credibility to mainstream voters in the 1920s and early 1930s. Promises to rearm, to reclaim German territory, particularly in the East, to remilitarize the Rhineland, and to regain prominence again among the European and world powers after such a humiliating defeat and peace, stoked ultranationalist sentiment and helped average voters to overlook the more radical tenets of Nazi ideology.

I guess I'm the number one Symbian champion now

That's kind of embarrassing.

In July, 2010, I wrote a post that noted that the leading smartphone operating system in the world was not iOS, and not Android, and not Windows, but Symbian.

I guess my sharing of this fact made me the number two Symbian fanboi, after Nokia itself.

Well, times change, Nokia moved to Windows, and now I'm the number one fanboi, since Nokia has outsourced Symbian development.

Nokia said [on April 27] it will outsource Symbian development to Accenture, transferring 3,000 employees who worked on the development of the platform. It also announced its largest jobs cuts in history, with plans to shed another 4,000 jobs by the end of 2012, mostly in the U.K., Denmark and Finland, where 1,400 jobs will be cut.

As I previously noted, this does not necessarily mean the end of Nokia. The mobile phone industry is very cyclical, and Nokia could be the dominant player two years from now.

And Symbian itself is about as dead as FriendFeed. In other words, it's still alive and kicking. Symbian-Freak still gets traffic, and Nokia is still pushing its newest Symbian phone, the E6.

But, like FriendFeed, people wonder when the end will come:

Dispelling the fears of app developers, a Nokia spokesperson in an emailed response to Deccan Herald said “We have not specified a date when the last Symbian device will ship, but will (continue to) release more products on Symbian and modernise it,” she said.

There are 200 million Symbian customers and Nokia plans to ship 150 million more devices, she informed. She also added that Nokia will continue to support products based on Symbian platforms for years to come. But many developers feel that Nokia is getting ready to bury Symbian quietly. Murugan said there was no long-term future for Symbian beyond existing devices and planned launches. “Nokia may not say it, but Symbian wont last beyond three years,” he said. “Symbian will die and that is the bottom line,” said Sharma.

So, who's the Symbian equivalent of Benjamin Golub? Or, who's the t-shirt that reports to Marty Cole?

Grenada and Pakistan - a striking difference

In a comment to the Doug Mataconis post that I previously cited, I mentioned an episode that I read about in Tip O'Neill's autobiography. Here's the episode, from the chapter of Man of the House that talks about the invasion of Grenada:

One of the points I raised turned out to be rather embarrassing.

"Grenada is part of the British Commonwealth," I said. "What does Mrs. Thatcher think about all this?"

"She doesn't know about it," said the president.

That didn't sound right to me. Mrs. Thatcher was our closest ally, so how could we go into Grenada without informing her? Clearly, in all their excitement about the invasion, the White House had overlooked the British connection.

Sure enough, as we left the meeting, Bob Michel, the House Republican leader, told me that the president was already on the phone with Margaret Thatcher. We could hear Reagan's side of the conversation, and from his fumbling and his apologies it was obvious that she was enraged.

What was the issue here? While the United States has its Monroe Doctrine in which we take a protective stance on behalf of the Americas, the United Kingdom also takes a protective stance on behalf of former members of its empire.

Foreign Affairs described the episode in this manner:

The British government's surprise and anger at the intervention was unconcealed. The foreign secretary opined that "no such action was called for" and regarded the involvement of the United States as "a matter of regret." Even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan's political soul mate, publicly broadcast her view that Western democracies should not use force to "walk into other people's countries."

What lay behind London's annoyance was the sure knowledge -- and not merely the suspicion -- that the British government had been deliberately kept in the dark about Washington's intention to invade Grenada, a small state that was regarded at the time as within the United Kingdom's sphere of influence.

So why is this relevant today?

Because it appears that in its operation to capture and kill Osama bin Laden, the United States sent forces into Pakistan, possibly without the knowledge of Pakistan.

And Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Granted that there are differences between Grenada and the politically incorrect Geronimo operation. We did not invade Pakistan. Pakistan, unlike Grenada, is a powerful country that does not need British protection. The United Kingdom is on record as opposing bin Laden's organization, and was not officially opposed to the reign of Grenada's Revolutionary Military Council. And Pakistan has been in and out of the Commonwealth of Nations numerous times.

However, at the moment Pakistan is in the club; we trespassed within the country; and the United Kingdom didn't object.

The next meeting of the Commonwealth of Nations heads of government is going to be very interesting.

What is war?

One of the questions that's been floating around over the last few days is as follows: did the United States have the authority to kill Osama bin Laden?

One...um...shot at an answer was taken by Doug Mataconis. Not to give away his conclusion, but his post was entitled Yes, The Operation To Kill Osama Bin Laden Was Legal And Constitutional. Specifically, Mataconis cites the "Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Terrorists," which includes the following text:

...the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

The authorization cites selected provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was designed

...to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicate by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.

But to some, the War Powers Resolution itself dodges a major Constitutional question - namely, that it is the U.S. Congress that has the power to declare war (see Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. As I've noted, no Congress has declared war since 1941. If you look for a Constitutional declaration of war for the War on Terror, you won't find it.

But is the war on terror really a war? Back in 2009 (in the context of discussing President Obama's eligibility for a Nobel Peace Prize), Alex Scoble argued that it wasn't:

To be at war, you have to 1) declare war 2) be fighting against a sovereign country 3) that has an actual army

Scoble (who subsequently modified his thinking) is not the first person to argue that a particular war is not a war - Korea, you'll recall, was a "police action." Even President Obama himself shies away from using the phrase "war on terror."

Perhaps this is a semantic discussion, but it goes well beyond the discussion of the legality of dumping a six foot-plus man into the sea. The word "war" has particular legal and business ramifications, and certain contractual provisions either take effect or do not take effect in time of war. And there's also a different attitude in peacetime vs. wartime - and to some, this is peacetime:

What really burned my butt, tho, was coming home and realizing that the civilian population - that is, 99% of Americans - were going about their daily business as if it's peacetime.

The reason for that goes back to the actions of our administration between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion: There was no effort to expand or military, and GWB's idea of "contributing to the war effort" was, "Go Shopping!" or "Put a magnet on your car!"

And even the writer, IrritatedVet, dared to denigrate his then-Commander in Chief by his comments.

Which raises the question - how can we logically argue that Osama bin Laden was shot in wartime when Congress has not declared war, the President doesn't refer to military activities as a war, and the nation itself doesn't act like it's at war? Yes, travelers go through porn scanners, but that's not exactly the same as changing the material used to make pennies from copper to steel.

Of course, it doesn't help when the same people who claim that the killing of Osama bin Laden was illegal are the same people who claim that Obama is soft on terrorism.

So will the Republicans quote that neocon George O'Dowd?