Moving people cures problems

The local NPR station is currently being sponsored by AstraZeneca so, of course, they occasionally name drop the sponsor with a short sentence or two of professionally crafted sloganizing or fluff. In this case the message (and I'm paraphrasing) is something along the line of: "Two-thirds of all diabetics live in cities. AstraZeneca is dedicated to changing this statistic." Unfortunately for them, I tend to think about the things people say and, as someone who studied communication, I tend to hold professional communicators to some semblance of a standard. (See my previous post about "talking turkey".) So I have to ask what AstraZeneca thinks it is saying here. Firstly, what is the percentage of the overall population found in cities? If it is also around two-thirds, having two-thirds of all diabetics be in the city does not seem problematic to me. And even if the statistic is somehow off, I am unclear what AstraZeneca proposes to do about it. Seriously, they can't be suggesting that somehow urban diabetics deserve more of a cure or that rural diabetics need to somehow bear a greater part of the burden in the name of fairness. Or are they saying they want to encourage diabetic people to relocate? Are they implying that cities cause diabetes (and thus that the solution might be to remove cities)? Why not simply say they are dedicated to curing diabetes and leave it at that? Why focus the comment on an urban-rural divide ratio like the ratio rather than the disease is somehow the problem? Heck, you could solve a ratio problem by increasing the number of diabetics in the under-represented population. I have no doubt that AstraZeneca is working hard to find (profitable) treatments for diabetes, and that their message is intended to show how dedicated they are to fighting the disease. I also do not think that is what their professional communicators said. It's simply sloppy and lazy, and I'm calling them on it just like I called FedEx when they had trucks running around identifying the brand as being "An FedEx Company."

Patent, Antitrust, the New York Times, and the Supreme Court

Recently (June 17th), the New York Times said this in an article on a recent Supreme Court case: “The case pitted a company’s constitutional right to protect its intellectual property — through reliance on a patent that excludes competitors — against antitrust law, which holds that a company cannot unfairly exclude others from legitimately entering a business with a rival product.” This has been bothering me because the basis for U.S. patent and copyright law in the U.S. Constitution says this: “[Congress has the power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” The latter is a far cry from being a “constitutional right to protect its intellectual property.” In fact, the U.S. copyright laws specifically reject the concept of any natural right or moral right in a work (whereas France for example does have such a doctrine). Instead, as the Constitution says, we allow the protection of copyrights and patents only to promote progress and, even then, only for a limited time. This is because any such exclusive right is viewed as being against the greater good of the society as represented by the First Amendment, free trade, a competitive marketplace, etc. It is quite simply NOT A RIGHT. It is a privilege extended by the government in order to entice people to invent. By contrast, antitrust law is (theoretically) all about enabling competition, free trade, etc. It is forever, not a limited time and is always viewed as being in the public good. This is not a new tension in the law – antitrust and patent have always been at odds. Aside from the “limited time” of the exclusivity, antitrust should win.

Change

This post was triggered, like so many of my others, by an NPR story. In this case the story was how young people have become so much more mistrustful of politicians and government. It triggered several thoughts. One reason given by a student was that they had voted for Obama and then nothing changed. They seem surprised by this. First, maybe their high school civics class failed them if they think that changing the President will change the government. Or maybe they did not allow for the fact that ours is a society with multiple views and that any "change" must necessarily accommodate those views, at least if they want to keep a democracy. And when did "change" get defined to mean good. It's idiotic to believe that all change, any change must be good, yet that seems to be the simplistic view of youth if NPR is correct. I suspect youth is a bit more nuanced than NPR gave them credit for. Still, if you think about it, "change" has become the sort of meaningless god-term for the left that "family values" has for the right. The respective sides just know it's the end-all be-all of goodness, but may well discover that they don't all have the same idea of what that term encompasses. Also, many things have been "changed" in ways to leave the left wringing its hands - several Supreme Court decisions come to mind. Finally, it seems odd to me that all these change-seekers who have become so distrustful of government and politics, seek a change wherein the government is used as the implement of the policy de jour. This seems... irreconcilable. Perhaps what we need is a better class of politician or the removal of term limits or maybe we need to stop deciding that the solution to extreme partisan politics is to elect even more extreme politicians to drown out the voices on the other side. Those, however, are topics for other posts.

Shopping with Credit Cards

So, I ran by the grocery store today and got a bag of apples and a bag of bagels. At checkout the lady asked to signature verify my credit card. I have to dig it back out so she can take the card, glance at the back of it, and give it back to me. She did not ask for a photo ID. I got to thinking which is always my mistake and realized just how dumb this process is. First, the electronic signature devices produce signatures that look nothing like the one on the back of the card. In fact, the e-signatures often look nothing like writing. Second, last I checked, the people working the grocery store check-out lanes are not handwriting experts and would not know a forged signature if it came over and bit them. She is not qualified to verify anything. Third, and this is the kicker, for purchases under a certain dollar amount (which this one was), the grocery store does not require the purchaser to sign. So... what was she verifying against? The only thing this process verifies is that there is actually *some* signature on the back of the card. Of course, if there isn't, I can always sign it right then and there to make it valid. They can't really say anything about that, though granted it might then cause an ID check. Still, I think that if I were going to use a stolen card, I would look it over and if the back was unsigned, then I'd sign it before I tried using it. And if the back was signed, I'd practice that signature a few times.

Political stunts

Republicans may filabuster but Democrats flee the state.

Illinois - Genius with a "J"

So our governor, realizing that state needs to reduce its spending, and not wanting to go after any entitlements or anything like that, seems to have proposed the following cuts to education:

1) We must consolidate school districts because we have too many and having fewer will reduce costs. This will mean closing schools, of course.

2) We will cut funding to the districts for their transportation budgets. They will have to pay for that themselves.

MY ISSUE: Having grown up rural, I know that if you close schools, you will necessarily force MORE and LONGER bus routes to get the kids to schools. Thus, consolidating school districts means you will see your bus costs go up, and buses already are a huge MANDATORY expense for rural districts. This strikes me as an unfunded mandate or at least an increased mandate coupled with decreased funding. Double wammie. The school districts will have to cut program and teaching to accommodate these new costs; that or ask for tax levies.

Democratic assumptions

With all the protests in Egypt right now and the talk of democracy, I feel obliged to point out a couple of things:

We ASSUME that a democracy will provide fair, just, human right conscious government. We assume it is better than an autocracy. We assume that democracies are more friendly to the Western democracies than other governments. This is not necessarily so. A democracy with no protection for the minorities can be a terrible thing. A democracy in a place that is majority anti-West is not in our interest.

Sarah Palin

It's two years since we elected Obama and I'm still reading headlines about Sarah Palin.

Query: Why is Sarah Palin even relevant to anything anymore? She was the governor of Alaska and basically a political nobody when McCain (McCane?) picked her as his VP candidate. (My opinions on that are documents elsewhere in this blog, I believe.) Together, they went down in one of the worst Republican presidential defeats in recent memory. As a political commentator, she says nothing new, unique, or even particularly insightful. Indeed, as far as I can tell, all she has done is make periodic statements and endorse various candidates. In Alaska, where they know her best, the candidate she endorsed lost to a WRITE-IN. In two other states, Nevada and Delaware, she and the Tea Party cost their party the elections and probably control of the Senate. Who the hell cares what she thinks, says, or does? Why is she even relevant to any political discussion in America?

My own stupidity...

Just to prove I'm an equal opportunity critic, here's a bit of my own stupidity. Sometime you just don't realize how bad you sound until you read it in print.

Q (by me): Were you aware that XXXX and her husband were having marital problems?

A: Yes.

Q: Was that after he died?

A: Yes.

This just in....

Basic Civil Liberties Threaten People's Security. Details at 11. (This parody of an actual insipid headline brought to you by Common Sense.)