Let Them Eat Watermelon! Congress and the Many Crises

Oil crisis! Food crisis! Mortgage crisis! Healthcare crisis! Watch Nightly News these days and it's Nothing But Crisis. And what are our elected officials in Washington doing about it? A whole lot of nothing. A lot of talk, precious few results. Today, the American people are struggling with tough decisions, like whether to spend their shrinking earnings on the mortgage or health insurance or food. Meanwhile Congress is hunkered down under a nice dry roof, on full stomachs, with full medical and dental, and apparently unable to make tough decisions. Instead it's going for the easy options, the low-hanging legislative fruit as it were, like declaring Watermelon Month.

That's right, all these crises to deal with and their message seems to be: Let them eat watermelon! For many Americans aged 50 to 65 the cost of health insurance now exceeds the median monthly mortgage payment and its time to promote fruit? I mean, no offense to farmers who grow them, or the lovely Watermelon Queen, but is the following really the kind of stuff we want to pay our politicians for?

"Whereas watermelon has been a nutritious summer favorite from generation to generation; Whereas it is important to educate citizens of the United States regarding the health benefits of watermelon and other fruits and vegetables; and Whereas July would be an appropriate month to establish as National Watermelon Month: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that there should be established a National Watermelon Month to recognize the health benefits of watermelon and the importance of watermelon to the agriculture industry of the United States."

At least we know at whom we should be spitting the seeds come Summer recess (and it won't be the Watermelon Queen).

The Price of Voting Rights

The fact that you need money to vote has always been democracy's dirty little secret, from the early experiments in England to the great experiment in these United States.

Over the centuries people with few means have had to pry concessions from those with many; the vote was extended from male landowners of a certain class, with a certain size of landholding, to all landowners, to all males regardless of wealth, to all men and women of a certain race, and so on.

Until yesterday's Supreme Court decision on Indiana's photo ID requirement, the direction was pretty much all one way, to encompass more and more members of society. Now it seems the tide is turning. Now you must be able to get your hands on enough money to obtain a photo ID or you can't vote.

The state of Indiana is providing free photo ID cards you say? But they are not making house calls. Read the Secretary of State's web site and you will see it is no easy matter to get one of these cards if you have no car and no phone (let alone access to the web site). There are people in every state for whom getting to the Bureau of Motor Vehicle is a major challenge. After all, why have neighborhood polling places if a precondition of voting is the ability to get out of the neighborhood? Any politician or Supreme Court judge who thinks getting a photo ID is no burden is out of touch.

Roseboom Antique Power Days

Not all traction technology is new. We can always learn from past technological achievements. That's why I'm looking forward already to the Tenth Annual Roseboom Antique Power Days. August 16-17, 2008.

This gathering of old tractors and other antique machinery has become quite the event in the Cherry Valley and Cooperstown area. If you can make it, expect to see over 100 antique tractors and farm machines as well as a bunch of parallel activities, like eating pancakes. Click here for the general location.

The Roseboom Antique Power Days are a great complement to your trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown. I will post more details as they become available.

Early Word: Roseboom Antique Power Days

Not all cool technology is new. We can always learn from past technological achievements. That's why I'm looking forward already to the Tenth Annual Roseboom Antique Power Days. August 16-17, 2008.

This gathering of old tractors and other antique machinery has become quite the event in the Cherry Valley and Cooperstown area. If you can make it, expect to see dozens of antique tractors and farm machines as well as a bunch of parallel activities, like eating pancakes. Click here for the general location.

The Roseboom Antique Power Days are a great complement to your trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown. I will post more details as they become available.

Wachovia Gets Fined: Yikes or no yikes?

News of a big fine levied against Wachovia may, or may not, satisfy those who lost money thanks to the bank turning a blind eye to activity other banks said was clearly fraudulent (as blogged here a while back).

The word 'Yikes' is in play here because of its use in a Wachovia email that came to light. Here's how the NYT reported it:

“YIKES!!!!” wrote one Wachovia executive in 2005, warning colleagues that an account used by telemarketers had drawn 4,500 complaints. “DOUBLE YIKES!!!!” But Wachovia continued processing fraudulent transactions for that account and others."

Why? Because the fraudsters paid, presumably with money stolen from victims, huge fees to Wachovia so that the money would keep flowing. And you thought the sub-prime mortgage market was the only thing your bank's cupidity was screwing up.

Dare Not Walk Alone Opens in LA

Couldn't resist some shameless cross-posting to boost the civil rights doc I've been involved with. Check out the show times here. We open April 25. Wish us luck!

Navy Needs Information Security Staff: But HR web site is down

If the world economy is headed downhill as fast as some pundits claim, a job with the US federal government might be a safer option than trusting one's future to free enterprise. Or so I was musing this morning when I decided to peruse usajobs.gov.

I found numerous Department of the Navy openings for something labeled "Information Technology Specialist (Security)." These openings were spread across the country so there was bound to be one nearby. And the listing suggest some urgency: "This notice is issued under the direct-hire authority to recruit new talent to occupations for which Department of the Navy has a severe shortage of candidates or a critical hiring need. As such, this notice is targeted to qualified United States citizens who are not current permanent Federal employees."

Bingo! I'm a citizen. There's a critical hiring need OR severe shortage of candidates, let's check it out. I was told to visit https://chart.donhr.navy.mil/. I boldly clicked and, well, nothing. Turns out that server has been off the grid for the past three hours and counting.

Okay, it's a Saturday and these are government jobs. Maybe Information Technology Specialists don't work weekends. I can dig that. So I decided to do a little more digging. What could I expect to earn in one of these jobs? Oh let's say, roughly, something between about $28,862 and oh, how about in the region of around $152,670 per year. That's about as useful as a prospective employer answering "Money" when a job applicant asks "What does the job pay?"

In the private sector a good IT security specialist can earn $150K. But it is hard to imagine a n IT security job starting at $29K (that's less than $14 an hour). So the government has an employment web site that urgently seeks information security specialists who could start at a pay level most people with the necessary skills would rate as "not worth it," rising to an upper pay level that is a whopping 5X the low end, applications for which cannot be accepted right now because the server is down.

People used to ask themselves "Who's running this country?" The question now seems to be "Is anyone running this country?"

Several Posts in Relation to Dr. King

The Dare Not Walk Alone Blog has several posts relating to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose tragic death 40 years ago is being commemorated today.

April DVD Releases

Some interesting fare this month. I am keen to see how Juno treats the subject of teen pregnancy compared to Slam, the excellent book by Nick Hornby that I blogged about last year.

I am also keen to see if There Will Be Blood captures the spirit of Upton Sinclair's Oil, which I read many years ago when I was, briefly, at least on paper, an oil man myself. We all know Daniel Day Lewis can act, but what material has the filmmaker given him to work with.

As for Sweeney Todd, I am not a big fan of musicals, but I enjoyed Hairspray, so I will give it a whirl, if only to see Johnny Depp in action. Of greater import, probably, is Charlie Wilson's War and I am a big fan of Philip Seymour Hoffman who looks very impressive in the trailers.

So, if there are a lot of April showers, there are some good reasons to stay inside and watch movies.

Color Blind Web Sites: And other design decisions

I've been doing some thinking about color blindness recently (I posted about the perception aspects of this over on my arts blog). As a color blind person I have often thought about this question: Should product designers cater to the color blind?

FYI, the cube on the left shows "normal" vision while the one on the right simulates what the same colors look like to someone with color deficiency.

By some estimates as many as 1 in 12 people have some form of color deficiency (although total color blindness is quite rare). Is that too small a minority to care about? After all, 1 in 12 people are left-handed and very few designers adjust their designs to accommodate lefties. But consider this, if you are designing technology for men, the incidence of color defectiveness is higher in men (as is, coincidentally, left-handedness--I'm not sure of the incidence of left-handed color blind men, but I am one).

What does it mean to design for color deficiency? I recently found an article in Dr. Dobb's that gives some good ideas for web designers looking to adjust designs for color deficiency. I have not yet found anything about "color-adjusting" products like electronics. One design choice that irks me, as a color deficient user of electronics, is the two-color LEDs like the ones that switch from red to green to show different states, for example, to show connected and not connected. Given that the most common form of color deficiency is referred to as "red/green deficiency" this might not be a smart design choice. You run the risk that as many as 1 in 8 of your customers a. won't be able to figure out that LED, and b. will get frustrated and disgruntled. You don't want to be the customer service person who asks "Is the LED red or green?" when the person on the other end says "I have no idea, I'm color blind."

How much more would it cost to have two LEDs? That arrangement gives you location and On/Off states to work with, which color blind people can handle (when the top traffic light is brightest it means stop, when the bottom one is brightest it means go, and so on). Then you can ask "Is the LED on the left on?" and get an accurate answer.

To be honest, and speaking as a businessperson, I don't know if catering to the color blind is a profitable path to take. But product designers might want to try it. You might be surprised how many people appreciate it.

P.S. If you are wondering about your own vision there is a site where you can do some basic tests of your color perceptions.