To quote the WSJ article:

If the FCC does force U.S. wireless carriers to open their networks to data-heavy applications like streaming video, it could push them beyond the limited capacity they have. Already, in areas like New York and San Francisco, a high concentration of iPhones has caused many AT&T customers to complain about degrading service.

Its a wonderful thing to have additional content on a wireless carriers network. I would suggest that this is one part of the service offering from a carrier that a consumer looks at when deciding on which carrier to use (although phone model offerings, and plans are likely more important). Although I’m no expert in the wireless industry, I just don’t see the market failure here. Why is it necessary for the government to step in and force an industry to do something that it doesn’t want to do, that it hasn’t done, and for which there are competitive pressures for them to be doing?

On the competitive pressure point. I imagine that one carrier would like to provide access to more websites and online content than their rivals. It provides more value to their customers making them more happy. I am fairly sure that they would want to properly balance this with network reliability and consistent access. I trust that they are doing a good job at balancing these issues or else someone else would do a better job and the company doing a bad job would go out of business (or at least loss market share). That’s competitive pressure, their is pressure within the industry to do this correctly. And I don’t see much evidence of the contrary.

One cited reasons for these new rules is that wireless providers are now in the content generation market, and they favor their own content and sites by slowing or speeding up certain sites. If their content is not good content and they favor their sites too much compared to their competition then customers would switch service providers, or at least bitch to their current service provider.

My point is basically, if consumers found this to be a problem such that they were not being served properly, then some company would realize this and offer a service which fulfilled that consumers needs. Or at the minimum you would here complaints from consumers rather than other businesses.

The Obama administration is taking the side of Google, Amazon.com Inc. and an array of smaller businesses that want to profit from offering consumers streaming video, graphics-rich games, movie and music downloads and other services.

WSJ article

- Stolen someone else’s’ keycard
- Left a door ajar
- Electronically manipulated the system (I’m sure some 16 year old Yale student with an IQ of 150 could do so)
- Made an illegal copy of a key card
- Followed someone else into the building/basement
- Let someone else into the building/basement

Don’t get me wrong I would definitely check out those people who had access, but it’s possible someone without access gained access.

Some CNN media quotes:

“Only Yalies had access to that basement, and that seems to point to someone in our community being involved in this,” Kaplan said. “That’s what is so frightening.”

Yale professor Gary Rudnick, who interviewed Le when she applied for admission to the graduate program in pharmacology, told CNN that the building where Le’s body was found had good security, and only certain people could enter, let alone access specific areas. He said the circumstances suggested there could be a “murderer among us.”

I have previously been involved with Toastmasters, which has helped me with speaking in public and presenting information. One of the most rewarding aspects of the toastmasters meetings was table topics. This is where someone randomly asks a member a question and that member has to speak extemporaneously for 1-2 minutes on the subject. This was a great exercise to learn how to speak off the cuff, an important asset in communicating effectively, as most communication is not formalized.

I think “Random Karaoke slide show” would provide similar benefits.

I first came across the SlideShare Karaoke Randomizer via this post.

The program can be accessed via this link.

I also came across this write-up on how to run your own powerpoint karaoke.

A screenshot of the SlideShare Karaoke Randomizer is below:

The video was created by Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and an independent lecturer who paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned.

Apparently the video quickly spread among teachers who,

recommended it to one another as a brief, provocative way of drawing students into a dialogue about how buying a cellphone or jeans could contribute to environmental devastation.

Here is a quote from the short 20-minute video.

We’ll start with extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet. What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.

I think it is good to express some of the negatives about negative externalities associated with consumption , but to con a small child into believing that having stuff makes them bad isn’t helpful for the long term health of our environment. Further the political, moral, and economic knowledge needed to fully understand this issue takes more than 20 minutes to digest. I spent a few years studying and thinking about it all.

Feeling that we are inherently unable to take care of ourselves, that what we do and how we consume is wrong creates a fundamental doubt in humans. This doubt may result in development of a person who thinks that humans are bad, that their actions are wrong, which may at best create self-loathing problems, and at the worst create a person who doesn’t think humans can do good things. Its essential for survival to consume, so if its bad, then me pursuing what is in my interest, surviving, is bad. That’s a bit mixed up.

Short videos used as propaganda, propagates a reactionary mind, which isn’t beneficial to the conversation of taking care of our environment. Jerk-knee reactions, like “plastics are bad because they are from oil” is determinant. What about plastics that save lives like IV bags?

Find out more about the video at http://www.storyofstuff.com/.

I came across this via an email chain and thought it worth sharing. I had to travel over the last few days and was surprised at how many places now have a huge bottle of hand sanitizer on their counter. In fact I visited a perspective client and the security guard rubbed Purrell all over our badges before handing them to me. I understand precaution, but the badge attaches to my suit, and I tend not to chew on it, at least when it is a perspective client.

I am currently reading “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” by Adam Smith and listening to a series of Podcasts via EconTalk with Russ Roberts and Daniel Klien at George Mason University.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments provides a background on the moral foundations further elaborated within “The Wealth of Nations.”

In Episode II of this set of Podcasts Klein and Roberts discussed two types of virtues Smith elaborates on (1) the amiable (gentle, indulgent, and compassionate) and the (2) the respectable (self-denial, self-government, dignity, and honor).

Klein thought of this as a spiral where there is the disintegration of the self (need for compassion compassion, internal multiplicities, and conflict) and then the bottom of the spiral there is a re-integration where the different feelings and conflicts are integrated into a person.

To elaborate further, this isn’t a one-way street, there is a movement down the spiral while you feel more conflict and multiplicity and then back up the spiral as you are either forced to change or need become sick of being so controlled (so stable and fully integrated).

I found this very interesting as I think most people feel different pulls and then integrate and then feel different pulls and then integrate again. Klein and Roberts then go into how this dance of the two virtues outlined by Smith increase our ability to be socially connected with each other.

Good Stuff.

Klein on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Episode 2–A Discussion of Part I | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty.

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