My kids' Dad

We are the superior being

Since Blockbuster just raised rates on their programs we switched to Netflix for DVDs. We like the TotalAccess program where we could exchange the DVDs at our local store but we weren't about to spend more on our monthly fees. We discovered the Watch Instantly feature that streams some movies direct to our PC (Vista) and have been enjoying the new Dr. Who series (which airs on Sci-Fi Channel). This led me to track down this video from the KLF (Timelords) which the kids love:

DISCLAIMER: Although we love this video, we DO NOT endorse the indiscriminate extermination of Daleks.

Not dead

Just a quick note to say that, no - I have not died.

My free time has been devoured by work - basically getting our fresh PKI system to integrate with our VPN (remote access) and wireless systems. (Far too many nights up until 3 AM.) As of this evening they are finally working - I'd go into the details but it is hard to imagine any other topic as boring. PKI (digital certificates) as a system is very exciting as a foundation for building systems of trust - but then I have already covered that... as well as the progress I see unfolding for the new model for networks. (I even had the good fortune to meet a fellow who is doing something similar - a large global corporation that is going to put all of its PCs on the Internet and reserve the protection for the data center. This trend is very smart and inevitable - we just sound like heretics right now.)

On the home front we just finished the High Holy Days and started building our Sukkah (photos to follow). I had a great time leading the junior congregation (less than a dozen kids under the age of 10) since they have a sincerity and honestness about them that is refreshing. One of the kids is blind and I called him up for a Torah reading - he said he couldn't read and then my son chimed in (loudly) 'Dad, he's blind!' Nonetheless, he came up and he recited the blessings (since he knew them by heart) and another child read his 'portion'. He really enjoyed it - his mom had to drag him out of there after 2 hours when she needed to leave!

I have started watching the 'Lost' series and find it interesting even if not all that compelling. Friends and family went to 'Sky High' last weekend and found that film to be a lot of fun and appropriate for younger kids.

Don't Miss This

I have typically heard very derogatory statements about the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, about how mean and heartless his policies were. It is eye opening then to hear the man speak about what drove him to these policies. You can catch his talk on C-SPAN 2 this Sunday at 3 PM EDT - streaming video here or buy the DVD here. He tells his audience that one of the most important characteristics of a manager is to be genuine and the most hurtful act to another person is to be dishonest with them. If someone isn't performing then you need to tell them and if failing to improve after given a chance mercifully fire them instead of praising them and then unexpectedly firing them during a 'Reduction In Force' purge. Jack Welch offers real managerial inspiration that defies all of the hearsay.

As someone who has endured several waves of 'RIF's I can tell you that the anxiety and uncertainty of who was going to be fired was destructive to the morale of all of the employees - since the choices could be viewed as arbitrary. I can also tell you that the people that I knew who were fired found new work that always was liberating and an improvement for those concerned.

Covering the Whining

Last week I managed to catch the BookTV - Los Angeles Times Festival of Books round table dealing with "Covering War". We often hear about media bias in particular about proudly left leaning publications such as the Los Angeles Times. (I used to subscribe to the paper and found the entertainment section and the ads to be the most valuable sections.) But it is eye opening to witness their whining at its most blatant forums. The crowd was very sympathetic to the nonsensical charges that Chris Hedges leveled ('the administration is shown to be covering up things as proven by the lack of people in the Pentagon willing to come forward and blow the whistle') with cheers during the most ridiculous accusations. At least Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down) tried to offer some balance which was a bit like throwing a wet towel on things. They seemed to agree to some degree that Fox News is 'pornographic' citing evidence such as FNN always presenting war in a cleansed fashion without the suffering. (I guess they don't watch Fox that much.) Some even admitted that it is not possible to separate journalism from your personal convictions so that it is not a matter of trying to suppress them but to embrace them. I guess that is why it is so important for some to prove their convictions at any cost. It also explains such irrational hatred of those that disagree with them.

Some of these clever people didn't stop at blaming the administration for our current ills the American people are also indicted as co-conspirators.

They have reason to whine - they are becoming less relevant every day. Forecast: increasing shrillness from the mass media and their co-conspirators.

Example: Amnesty International comparing the our camps in Guantanamo Bay to the old Soviet gulag. For a nice piece on this see Richard Bennett's blog.

Co-conspirator? Guilty as charged. Gulag? We should ask Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I am pretty sure what he would say...

A few laughs

Just caught Lynne Koplitz and her stand up comedy act on Comedy Central - very funny (or irreverant depending upon your perspective) almost as hilarious as Foamy the Squirrel (comes with a parental warning - 'Fatkins' is a favorite).

Other Comedy Central past favorites include the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and Lounge Lizards series especially Maryellen Hooper (clips) and 'The Amazing Jonathan'.

A new identity model

This morning on Fox News Channel as they were discussing the Bank of America information loss one of the pundits bluntly declared that we are living in an information society and there just isn't good information security. He is right.

Pete Lindstrom has a great idea on his blog which is to publicly publish social security numbers. At first blush it seems like an insane idea... think of all of the identity theft! But that is the beauty of his idea - social security numbers are not an adequate mechanism to prevent identity theft since they really aren't secret. Neither are credit card numbers nor drivers' licenses nor passport numbers.

Today is was just announced that Bank of America lost backup tapes containing personal information for a million customers. Last week Choice Point sold personal information of 145,000 people to crooks. T-Mobile allowed unauthorized access to its customer databases over the last year (although it wasn't until Paris Hilton was put out that it made the headlines). 

And unless we change our model it is only going to get worse. New strains of spyware are motivated  by profit - expect less obvious and more insidious techniques for obtaining your personal information since it yields financial gain right now.

So we need to get to a place where knowing my personal information such as social security number, credit card numbers, etc. gets a stranger nowhere. How do we do that? First we should consider a national identity system that is designed for authentication. But to overcome the cultural hurdle let's make it optional - let people opt in when they are ready. Let businesses support it at their option - but as we discover that the system reduces identity theft risks their will be a lot of incentive to opt in to this system. I imagine that the system would include a physical token such as a credit card sized smart card that can be used as identity at everything from airports to grocery stores. Embedded on this identity card would be one or several digital certificates issued by various Certificate Authorities of the person's choosing. This might include employers and governments. You would also use these certificates for online transactions without necessarily having to use the card.  For your personal computer you would safely store the certificates, on public systems we might have a smart card reader.

Bottom line - my social security number would only ensure that my taxes go to the right account once I am authenticated. Think of this like my phone number or street address - having them doesn't get you my mail or phone calls. If you don't want to move to the new system... fine... get in line and fill out the paperwork.

Do you want to get a free personal digital certificate right now? Go to Thawte and see if you have some local notaries in your area if you want to have an authenticated certificate. (The biggest flaw in the system right now is the lack of a good US identity card to authenticate to - I always require a driver's license and some other acceptable ID card.)

Of content flows and rodeos

I have been reviewing some of the BookTV pieces I taped while on vacation and was impressed with the Saturday, December 18 3:00 pm airing of "Al Qaeda 2.0: The Future of Militant Islam" featuring Salameh Nematt (Washington Bureau Chief of Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic language newspaper) who describes the fight against democracy by various Arab leaders (from Bin Laden to Mubarak) using Satellite television. While many of our Arab allies say they go along with our quest for achieving democracy in the Middle East they are actually steadfast against the very thing that would remove them from power. Nematt describes Bin Laden when given the option between obtaining all of Saudi Arabia under his control or Al Jeezerah, he chooses Al Jeezerah (as a way to recruit supporters). His point about Satellite television is that these stations are owned or run by governments and have as a mission the preservation of these autocracies. He gives examples of how these stations run a steady diet of bloodshed in order to incite the viewers against the West. And co-speaker Michael Scheuer offers that Arab governments desire to rid themselves of troublesome militants by sending them off on Jihad. These observations are able to temper our understanding of Arab media and how the Arab 'street' develops it opinion.

This afternoon I took my family to a rodeo that is in town. I saw another example of how people are dedicated to their endeavors in what could also be called a 'labor of love' (see my Return of the King post). However I also found myself unable to stop thinking about the connection between the C-SPAN piece above and Thomas Barnett's work.

I find relevance at two layers:

1) The direct layer of content flow - whereas we will use connectivity to send our content toward the Gap (Internet, TV, radio, newspapers, word-of-mouth) there are countermeasures applied:
- Disincentivize connectivity (get the West to abandon interactions with those areas through terror and adopt retreat to the homeland isolationist policies)
- Direct disconnection (cut the 'lines', disrupt transmissions, forbid reception)
- Disinformation (use the force against itself as the Arab satellite stations are using 'free speech' to poison the flow)
- Disinfection (filter out undesirable content as the Chinese try to using technology and agreements with the likes of Google, Cisco and Nortel)
- Deceive (use these tools to gain from dishonesty such as using Internet scams to fund disconnectivity programs [North Korea] or Islamic 'charities' to fund terrorist vehicles)

2) The analogous layer - should the Internet remain 'wide open' or should we adopt Barnett's model?
Barnett emphasizes the role of technologies in fostering the war of connectivity although he concentrates on the geophysical context (the Internet has multiplied the effects of globalization but those effects tend to be geographic thus the Gap and Core are mostly bounded by national boundaries with special position given to those countries on the border - 'seam states'). This makes sense as long as the war is fought along physical lines, but some (including myself) are concerned about the impact of cyberwar - that is what happens when the connectivity war starts 'backflushing' upstream? Examples above are one aspect of this. In the cyberworld (electronic communications) there is very little relationship between the physical (location and infrastructure) and the virtual (the content and flow) so the seams or the frontlines are almost imperceptible. (A Korean may have her Hotmail account with all of it's data reside in Seattle and is handled the same way as if it belonged to a man in Iowa.) Clearly China has tried to alter this architecture - the question is should the architecture take into account analogous geophysical global situations or even try to model the architecture along the thinking Barnett offers (in the virtual world regardless of your physical location are you a Core player, a Gap player or a Seam player -> your behavior determines your status not any other factor[nationality, religion, skin tone, gender])? The first option (China) involves firewalling and content control at the physical borders, the second option requires development of identity architectures and virtual firewalling (ala Jericho Forum).

Both layers need to be addressed it just gets pretty interesting in the overlap between the two.

On the personal side

I am deep into Barnett's Pentagon's New Map after having listened to the brief on C-SPAN and dug deeply into Barnett's blog. This is one of the most engaging works I have ever read since I am constantly writing notes in the back of the book and find myself getting lost in thought after reading so many paragraphs. I will review the book once I finish it. For now something that strikes me is the need to use quantitative measures to identify the Core and Gap and treat them less as either or and more as shades of purple (in reference to the recent election with simple maps depicting the outcome in terms of red or blue states when in fact most states were a closer mix).

On Friday my wife and 6 year old son went to a high school football game which gave me the opportunity to take my 3 year old daughter out on a date. She chose the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) and I was able to enjoy her complete enjoyment of life - her singing and dancing while eating pancakes for dinner.  I decided to rent a couple of films and en route as we pass a pickup truck she lets out a loud 'see you later, sucker!' - I have got to find out how my wife drives with the kids... Disney's 'Aristocats' captured her attention the rest of the evening.

The other DVD I picked up was "Supersize Me". The film squandered a lot of potential in order convince us that McDonald's is evil, too bad but not a complete waste of time. And besides the whole family is thoroughly enjoying the British fireplace we installed in our den/newly created library. It has been getting down to freezing, so we pull the heavy drapes on the heavily windowed little room, brew some tea, crank up the fire and we're all as cozy as can be. My son has also discovered the German board game "Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht", so that has become quite popular with us. I am hoping for a very snowy winter for plenty of this family time.

Last night I was up way too late searching for software to easily take economic and other data and display on a map of the world. I found something that looks like it will work - so now I just need to find lots of free time that doesn't take away from the family... to remember those days when there was so much time you had to worry about getting bored... my wife is very patient with my extended hours of writing, reading and watching C-SPAN.

Today was a typical Sunday, enjoyable, fun, intriguing and exerting. During my getting ready for the day rituals I stumbled across a C-SPAN Washington Journal live call-in piece with Nadia Hijab from The Palestine Center in Washington DC. It was the usual one sided nonsense about the terrible Israelis and poor Palestinians. She ignored the hard questions (such as how Palestinians feel about Suha Arafat's opulent living off the aid money intended for the poor) and dissembled the rest. However it is always difficult to hear the American public call in live and hear how many are justifiably grieved by the suffering but wholly lost as to the actual causes. It struck me that for years the same arguments have always led nowhere and that Barnett provides an understanding which is rarely or never considered (that this is really not a struggle about religion or liberation, but about globalization). I will develop the matter further, stay tuned.

Next I taught my son his in-home weekly Hebrew lesson. We were so disappointed by the local offerings and attitude that we  arrived at 'if you want it done right, do it yourself'. A common attitude is that young children don't have the interest or attention to learn Hebrew. I call it ridiculous and lazy. His progress is amazing and his joy in learning sweet. One of my few fears for our children is the danger of losing that love of learning. You know, it is that same thing that you see when your child thinks he is too old to enjoy Winnie the Pooh, just uncool, too mature... Tammy Bruce spoke on CSPAN-2 discussing the danger of 'group think' and how we give up our selves to be part of the group. He loves 1st grade and his Wednesday night class as well. How will he keep that innocence and still gain maturity?

Next the local Sunday paper, checking e-mail, VPN to work check a few things. I can't resist tinkering with the mapping software - it is called EPI info and distributed by the CDC. It looks like it will be a great first step - gather the data into a spreadsheet, normalize it, then link the results into the maps. There is some very cool stuff on the web, in particular some web based front ends that uses ODBC to keep the maps live - but this is spendy stuff and I first need to validate my idea.

Then while my son is engrossed in GameCube and the ladies are at work I take on the winterizing of the house. We live in a charming house built in 1931 and rather than modernize the house and lose its charms we chose to restore. It would be far easier to install modern windows or storms (not to mention cheaper) but there is something very satisfying about taking the screens down and rehanging the the storm windows once the weather changes. It is a concrete acknowledgment of the change of seasons and a good excuse to slow down and let my mind wander. I take the same approach with mowing our lawn (a little non-powered reel mower that makes the quietest whirrr) or shoveling the snow in the driveway - very physical acts in our knowledge worker world. Barnett is right on about the problem with globalization is the rate of adoption, the need to find our cultural equilibrium as we move forward. We cling nostalgically to our traditions, often ones that we grew up with. But the world is changing and always has, the old house I live in was a modern innovation when my father was young. The America of 200 years ago is nothing like the one we grew up in. Yes there are core principles that haven't changed, this is how you can read the Bible or 2000 year old historic documents and find yourself how surprised at how modern they are. But for all those who hate Walmart because it has destroyed the corner market, you are taking on the wrong enemy. You either need to stop change or change people's values or better yet take on a more important issue. Where was I? Oh... This task also forces me to wash the exterior windows - the house always feels nicer with clean windows.

Next the ladies are back and we promised to take my son bowling (recently discovered at a school party). I have never played with 'bumpers' before - what a nice innovation. We play three sets, two on two lanes. My son gets 123 and I get my best score ever of 159. Funny how when you are really focusing on fun you get some good scores. My daughter sort of walks up to the line and drops the ball - it slowly rolls toward the pins - I wonder if the ball will ever make it to them. My sons also drops the ball with some weird underhand wrist action causing the ball to careen off both sides of the bumpers. It is very strange to see a bowling ball zig zag towards the pins.

We get home to have a typical home cooked meal with old fashioned family conversation (and taunting and laughing and whining and all). I feel so sorry for those people that eat most of their meals away or without their whole family - something that the Supersize Me film brings to mind. We chose to lead a life centered around our family knowing that we would sacrifice to have this. But the gains are infinitely greater for us than the sacrifices.

Finally bed time rituals, some crying, some laughing, then back to the virtual world...