Tell.

About damn time.

The Data-Centric Modus Operandi: Part 2

Cross-posting from my RTI blog:

When you tell your infrastructure what you’re trying to do, it can help you do it better. [I've] used the word “model,” which might sound frightening and esoteric. But everyone does this anyway! They just don’t call it that. When people design a system in a message-centric way, they write long documents (aka “models”) describing who has to send messages to whom, in what format, at what times. Then they email these documents to each other and implement the various components based on what the documents say. In the process, they write a lot of code to encode and decode data, validate it, monitor and respond to the system’s status, manage application state, and so on. And once they’ve done all of this work, they plug their components in and find out whether the documents had any ambiguities in them and whether everyone has correctly implemented all of those infrastructure pieces I enumerated.

The truth is, from the point of view of the real business logic, “the middleware” isn’t just a messaging or data-distribution component purchased off the shelf. It also includes all of the stuff your in-house infrastructure developers had to build on top of that to make the applications work right.

Read the rest here.

This post is a follow-up to a previous post, aka Part 1.

A Bad Compromise on Taxes

Democrats wanted to extend unemployment benefits. They didn't feel they needed to pay for this extension, because it would boost the economy. But they didn't want to extend Bush-era tax cuts; that would be too expensive.

Republicans felt the opposite: tax cuts should be continued and need not be payed for, but extending unemployment benefits would be too expensive.

So what's the compromise Congress has reached? They'll extend unemployment benefit and tax cuts without paying for either of them. That's like if I want to buy a Civic, because the Lexus is too expensive, but my wife really wants the Lexus, so we compromise and buy two cars. How is this a good deal for our country? Why are so many people singing the praises of compromise and reconciliation so loudly?

This issue shines a spotlight on a fundamental problem with legislatures, independent of political party: people send their neighbors to Congress to do things for them, not to sit on their hands and say "government oughtn't to do things like that." (Why are we paying you if your theory of government says you shouldn't have a job in the first place? Quit!) Furthermore, for a legislator -- as opposed to an executive -- "doing" really means "spending." Translation: if someone says to you "vote to send me to Congress, because I will be fiscally responsible," they are lying to you -- or they are so politically naive that you ought to question their qualifications on other grounds.

Enhanced Screening

I was just subjected to my first government-sponsored sexual molestation. I can still feel the screener's hands on my body. I feel dirty.

I'd never seen the new back-scatter x-ray machines before, so I didn't notice them at first -- they're not obtrusive. They look like two large blue boxes with an aisle between them. But I saw the sign in time and opted out. Despite the discomfort, I intend to keep doing so. I have the choice to be felt up or filmed naked. Either one is coercive, embarrassing, and offensive. One of them keeps the person coercing me minimally accountable; the other does not.

Here's what happened:

I had already removed my shoes and placed my items on the conveyor belt when I spotted the x-ray machine. I informed the agent that I opted out of the x-ray and was immediately redirected through the metal detector. Thereafter the agent immediately called for a "male assist," which arrived promptly. The whole process was very efficient in fact. I'm tempted to say "professional" -- in a Godfather "it's not personal; it's business" kind of way.

Has this man done anything suspicious or illegal? Probably not.
(Photo courtesy of Salon.com.)

The agent carried my things to a table and informed  me that because I had opted out of the x-ray, he would be giving me a pat-down. I could request a private room for this. I replied that I would prefer if it happened out in the open. He told me to take off my belt, raise my arms, and keep an eye on my things as he proceeded.

Before each phase of the pat-down, he told me what he would be doing next and whether he would do so with the fronts or backs of his hands. "I'm going to run the back of my hand down the line of your zipper, OK?" He kept saying "OK?". I kept silent when I could; when it seemed he was waiting for consent, I replied, "I understand." Because it's not OK.

I steeled myself to speak when he began going around the inside of the waistband of my jeans.

"Does it bother you," I asked, "that you might do this to literally thousands of innocent people without ever finding anyone who was doing something wrong?"

He stopped the pat-down and stood up, red in the face with embarrassment. "We're doing this for your protection," he said. I told him that from what I had read, the risk from the x-ray was about the same as the risk of getting blown up by a terrorist, so I didn't feel particularly protected. "Do you want to stop the screening?" he asked. "What's my alternative?" I replied, "I have to get home." "You can go back through the x-ray machine." Alternatively, I could move my pat-down to a private area. I repeated that I preferred the pat-down and that it should be public.

He continued his work. When he had finished, he informed me that he would run my wallet, boarding pass, and other pocket contents through the x-ray and that I could gather my things while I waited. I pulled up my pants, put my shoes back on, and reassembled my baggage.

When he returned, he said, "Just for your information, the radiation from the machine is about what you're exposed to in two minutes on the plane because you're closer to the sun." He was still red in the face but trying to be serious and polite. What I should have said, except that I didn't think of it in time, was "...and how many people will look at naked pictures of me on the plane?"

I am ashamed to say that I am sometimes a jerk by accident. I run my mouth without thinking and I say something hurtful that I quickly regret. I am rarely if ever a jerk on purpose. I hate having to become one. But someone running their hands under my clothes and over my groin as a condition of traveling is something that  cannot be borne with good humor.

I am not in a position to give up flying, and I am too cowardly to contemplate a larger act of civil disobedience. I am able and prepared, however, to do my part to wear down the morale of any molesters I come in contact with. So far the TSA has appeased pilots and flight attendants by letting them off the hook. These groups are apparently willing to sell the rest of us out as long as they don't have to be insulted and humiliated themselves. The screeners don't have this choice.

Here is what I learned for the future:

• Keep the process out in the open. The screener wants to be shielded from prying eyes as much as you do. Don't let them avoid thinking about what they are doing. Don't let the other people in line avoid thinking about what they are a party to.
• Don't bother mentioning the risk from radiation. It's not large (except relative to what it's trying to protect you from, ironically), and such statements allow the screener to disregard you as a kook and avoid the issue of the violence he is inflicting on you. Next time, I won't say, "I opt out of the x-ray." I will be explicit: "No naked pictures."
• Keep the focus on what the screener is doing; don't resort to personal insults. I was quite tempted to share alternative derogatory meanings of "T-S-A," but the simple question I asked was surprisingly effective. Getting personal once again gives them the excuse to think about you instead of about their own actions.
• Even if the screener pauses in response to something you say, keep your arms in the air in the posture they told you to assume. You are not engaged in pleasant conversation; you are being exploited. All parties should remain aware of this fact.
• Keep your wallet and other valuables in your carry-on while going through security. Otherwise, the screener may carry them out of your sight after your pat-down.
• Consider the clothes you wear to the airport. The jeans I'm wearing today are pretty loose. This means that they slip down when I take my belt off, and I didn't particularly like the feeling of "getting dressed" after my experience. But maybe that's the point. On the other hand, loose pants also allowed the screener to imagine that running his hands inside my waistband was something less than it was. Women have another problem, as actress Donna D'Errico discovered: "You caught my eye," said a male screener before directing her to the x-ray machine.

Above all, stand up straight, speak clearly, and keep your head up.

God, I hate thinking like this at Christmas time.

Catholic League vs. American Culture

The Smithsonian Institution displayed some artwork critical of Christianity. The Catholic League didn't like that so much and petitioned the museum to remove the exhibit. It did so. This act of self-censorship is shocking and shameful -- artists have a right to be critical of Christianity generally or of the Catholic Church specifically. Americans who are interested in this criticism should not be prevented from viewing their work just as those who are not interested are free to stay away.

But Catholic League president Bill Donohue has gone further, asking Congress to eliminate all funding for the Smithsonian:

Why should the working class pay for the leisure of the elite when in fact one of the things the working class likes to do for leisure is to go to professional wrestling? And if I suggested we should have federal funds for professional wrestling to lower the cost of the ticket, people would think I'm insane. I don't go to museums any more than any Americans do.

Mr. Donohue, how very unfortunate that you do not go to museums. If you had visited the Smithsonian, you might have met some of the 30 million of your countrymen and -women who do visit it each year. They might have shared with you a different point of view.

They might have pointed out to you, for example, that the capsule that landed on the Moon is part of the patrimony of the human species, and that the Smithsonian allows them to see this treasure for free, whether they are elite or not. WWE Smackdown is just entertainment for a Saturday night.

Mr. Donohue, for the leader of a "civil rights" organization, you certainly seem to have a low opinion of those whom you claim to protect and of their rights. The interests of your fellows are not so parochial as you think, and we are quite capable of deciding on our own what does and does not offend us. In the future, please consider keeping your opinions to yourself. Then consider turning off the TV and visiting a museum instead -- you might learn something.

"In storytelling there is always an ethical component"

From Susan Sontag's essay "At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning":

In storytelling as practiced by the novelist, there is always – as I have argued – an ethical component. This ethical component is not the truth, as opposed to the falsity of the chronicle. It is the model of completeness, of felt intensity, of enlightenment supplied by the story, and its resolution – which is the opposite of the model of obtuseness, of non-understanding, of passive dismay, and the consequent numbing of feeling, offered by our mediadisseminated glut of unending stories.

Television gives us, in an extremely debased and un-truthful form, a truth that the novelist is obliged to suppress in the interest of the ethical model of understanding peculiar to the enterprise of fiction: namely, that the characteristic feature of our universe is that many things are happening at the same time. (“Time exists in order that it doesn’t happen all at once … space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”)

To tell a story is to say: this is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path.

To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention.

When we make moral judgments, we are not just saying that this is better than that. Even more fundamentally, we are saying that this is more important than that. It is to order the overwhelming spread and simultaneity of everything, at the price of ignoring or turning our backs on most of what is happening in the world.

(I was directed to this essay by Alexander Chee and to Alexander Chee by John Gruber. Thanks, Alexander. Thanks, John. And thanks, Susan.)

Protecting Marriage

The legislature of the state of Illinois has taken the first step in approving civil unions for the state's gay citizens -- and for its straight citizens. (California has a similar system: civil unions for everyone; marriage for straight couples only.) For gay couples, this is a welcome incremental step towards marriage equality. But in creating such two-tiered systems, states undermine the very "sanctity of marriage" they seek to protect.

By neither modifying the state's existing civil marriage institution nor allowing gays to enter into it, Illinois placates conservatives: it's clear that civil unions are not quite marriage. And by allowing straight couples as well as gay ones access to civil union protections, they placate some liberals who might otherwise have pointed out that distinct "straight version" and "gay version" institutions would have "separate but equal" written all over them.

The problem is that the availability of a "marriage lite" option for straight couples dilutes the social prestige surrounding marriage that we all want to protect. Want a tax break for living with your girlfriend, but the implied commitment and just plain old-fashioned sound of the word "marriage" is giving you the heebie jeebies? Why not try a refreshing civil union?

So what can states do to protect marriage? Encourage those who have made the commitments that marriage requires to get married, regardless of sexual orientation. Encourage those who haven't not to. And grant to all those committed married couples what the constitution guarantees them: equal protection under the law.