Blayne Sucks

Last month, Jim Harper started an interesting discussion on regulation around the holidays. Although I was hiding from my computer in an attempt to take a vacation at the time I have finally caught up with the discussion. If you happen to have missed this as well, I think it’s well worth reading.

Jim started the discussion with an excellent blog post over on Cato@Liberty about ‘real’ regulation. If you haven’t read it, here’s a juicy tidbit:

What Burnett meant when she called for a “real” regulator, of course, was “the regulator I can imagine.” The regulators people imagine are foresighted, interested only in the public good, they’re resistant to lobbying, and they run efficient organizations. But these characteristics are simply imaginary.

Tim Lee followed this up with a post on the Technology Liberation Front extending the discussion to regulation of technology. Again, if you haven’t read it, here’s a juicy tidbit:

Too many advocates of regulation seem to have never considered the possibility that the FCC bureaucrats in charge of making these decisions at any point in time might be lazy, incompetent, technically confused, or biased in favor of industry incumbents. That’s often what “real regulators” are like, and it’s important that when policy makers are crafting regulatory scheme, they assume that some of the people administering the law will have these kinds of flaws, rather than imagining that the rules they right will be applied by infallible philosopher-kings.

The FCC is designed to ensure (theoretically) that these bureaucrats are independent, but if you take a look at what is actually happening, then it becomes clear that independence is in many ways imaginary. The FCC’s website describes the organization of the Commissioners as follows:

The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business.

News today that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will resign on Inauguration Day makes the FCC an even more interesting topic for discussion. With this resignation, Obama will have nominated all five of the serving FCC Commissioners by this summer. Also, it goes without saying that the FCC will be regulating some important aspects of our society, including the Digital TV transition that’s slated for February.

Obama’s choice for FCC Chairman is Julius Genachowski. Wikipedia describes him as “an American business executive with experience in telecommunication and technology issues.” This ideal of not having a financial interest in Commission-related business isn’t starting off well. Of course, that’s Wikipedia, so maybe it’s not trustworthy. Let’s look at Reuters’ description:

Genachowski was chief counsel for Reed Hundt, an FCC chairman under former President Bill Clinton. He also held various positions at Internet search and media company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O) and several firms investing in technology, including Rock Creek Ventures and LaunchBox Digital.

Again, it sorta feels like this is a man with financial interests in technology. Business Week even lauds his “business sense” as a key benefit that he brings to the table. But let’s take a step back from this individual appointment. I really don’t know much about Genachowski other than what’s been reported in the news, and I certainly don’t want to pick on him as an individual that’s emblematic of the larger problem with “real” regulation.

My point is simply to consider this: Is it really possible to find anyone who has the knowledge needed to help run a regulatory organization like the FCC that doesn’t have a financial interest in Commission-related business? If it isn’t outright provably impossible, then at the very least I think there’s a strong argument to be made that it is impossible. Sure we may wish that it weren’t so, but if wishes were fishes, we’d all be casting our nets. Of course, I’m open to your thoughts in the comments.

Before we get too far into 2009, I wanted to post something that I probably should have posted before 2008 came to a close. I chose not to write about the passing of Randy Pausch when it happened (He died on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47.) because I felt that I needed time to reflect on everything that I’ve learned from him. I was never a student of his in any class that he taught, but I certainly learned a lot from him.

Long time readers of this blog know that I’ve covered Randy Pausch’s work several times. I wrote about his now-famous “Last Lecture” back before the video deservedly became a huge sensation. I wrote about his excellent Time Management talk twice to cover both versions. I wrote about his growing press coverage and the book version of his Last Lecture when it came out.

Despite all of that, I wasn’t really sure what to write about his passing when it happened. Time Magazine covered his passing rather well at the time. Although it has been half a year since, I’m still not entirely sure what to say. Certainly, there’s a lot that could be said of him. Carnegie Mellon has a memorial site up with excellent coverage of his work. ABC News considers his story to be one of the best stories of 2008. He was named the “Most Inspiring Person of 2008” by the online Beliefnet community. His Last Lecture book is one of Amazon.com’s best books of the year.

Of course, all of these things strike me as things that Dr. Pausch wouldn’t have said himself. He continually credited those around him because he realized that we – none of us – aren’t capable of this sort of success alone. Everything worth accomplishing in life requires teamwork. When he got tenure, he rewarded his entire research lab with a trip to Disney World. When his Alice Project received well-deserved praise, he deflected all of the credit to those around him.

There are times in life that I wish I were a poet. I would love to be able to write a proper requiem for this teacher. But I am not a poet. I barely know the first thing about poetry. I am a dreamer. Sure it sounds silly or corny, but there’s nothing wrong with being silly or corny from time to time. I thought I knew a lot about dreaming before I heard Dr. Pausch’s lecture. I thought it was something people did for fun, or something that had little bearing on reality. I was wrong. It doesn’t have to be that way. Our dreams and aspirations can affect the way we live, and as a result they can affect reality for everyone.

Maybe the best tribute is to continue to dream big every day and not worry about sounding silly. It sounds simple enough, but doing anything consistently every single day is extremely hard. It’s hard because most days are pretty bland. We get caught up in one mundane thing after another, and pretty soon the day’s over. One day bleeds into the next and it turns into a lifetime.

If you’re already feeling bogged down by a return to normal life after the enervation of the New Year, I would encourage you not to forget whatever audacious New Year’s resolution you may have made, regardless of how far behind you may already be. Take some time to watch the lecture again. And get back on that horse. You don’t have wait another 11.5 months to try that resolution again.

Although I haven’t blogged much about sports on this site recently, I feel I compelled to post my thoughts on Tony Dungy’s retirement as Head Coach of the Indianapolis Colts. You can read the text of his retirement speech here.

Coach Dungy’s record speaks for itself. Tony Dungy retires with an overall record of 92-33 at Indianapolis, including the playoffs, which makes him the winningest head coach in Colts franchise history. The Colts made the playoffs every year under Dungy, and the Colts have won 12 games each of the last six years, which is an NFL record. In the seven years that he’s been there, the Colts have won 85 regular season games, which is just 1 game short of New England over that same time period.

Tony Dungy is also the winningest head coach in Tampa Bay franchise history with 54 wins. Starting from his position as head coach in Tampa Bay, he is the only coach since the AFL / NFL merger to take a team to the post season 10 straight years. He is the first head coach to defeat all 32 teams in the NFL, the first African American head coach to win a Superbowl, and only the third person to win Superbowls both as a player and as a head coach.

Those are just some of his football accomplishments, but anyone who has followed the Colts knows there’s much more to him than football. Coach Dungy has never been afraid to talk about his faith as a Christian. He has been active in prison ministries and in working with troubled youths. Dungy is well-known for having written Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life, which was a New York Times Best Seller. Quiet Strength describes how he became an elite head coach in a cutthroat league without compromising his ethics. It also dealt with his perseverance in the face of grief over his son James’ suicide in the fall of 2005.

In fact, the success of Quiet Strength may have contributed to his decision to retire at the age of 53. A big part of his reason for stepping down is his desire to make more of an impact off the field, much of which will likely be documented on his website. He has another book, titled Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance set to be released in February of this year. In his retirement speech, he eluded to his desire to spend more time with his family, which certainly also contributed to his decision. His son Eric is a junior in high school and will be visiting college campuses this fall, which has been postulated as another reason for his decision to retire.

Of course, for the Colts, the question remains: what next? The simple answer is that Jim Caldwell, who was announced as the next in line after the season last year, will be the new head coach. Bob Kravitz, who coves the Colts for the Indianapolis Star, believes that it was time for Dungy to go. I’m not sure I can quite get on board with that. I certainly support Dungy in his decision because it really is just that: his decision, but I simply can’t say that I would say the Colts are better off without him.

Kravitz’s argument boils down to two basic points: poor playoff performance and a “coddling, enabling, everything-is-all-right culture,” fostered by the Colts from top to bottom. To the first, I say that any winning record in the playoffs is a good record. Under Dungy, the Colts are 7 and 6 in the playoffs with one Superbowl. There are about 27 other teams in the league that would love to have a record like that. To the second, I say that Kravitz just doesn’t get it. The Colts culture isn’t a coddling or enabling culture at all. It’s just not the insane, thoughtless, cutthroat culture that can be found virtually everywhere else in the NFL. The Colts aren’t just about winning; they are about winning the right way.

Malcom Gladwell’s recent New Yorker article compares “the quarterback problem” to the challenge of finding a good teacher. It’s an interesting article, but it is, perhaps, too narrow in its focus.

For those who don’t know, the quarterback problem is defined as the extremely difficult task of selecting a quarterback to play in the NFL from the pool of college football quarterbacks. It’s deceptively challenging to do this because there’s so much data available and so many ways to rank college football quarterbacks. However, the college football game is so different from the NFL game that success at the college level seems to have very little correlation, or perhaps no correlation, to success at the professional level.

One of the best examples of this is the comparison of Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf, who were both extremely successful college quarterbacks drafted first and second in the 1998 NFL draft. Most experts thought it was a toss-up as to which of these two would have a better career. Of course, it’s clear to everyone now that Peyton Manning is a lock for the Hall of Fame while Ryan Leaf is famous for being a complete bust in the NFL.

The key element of the quarterback problem is that past results simply aren’t useful in predicting future success. Gladwell argues that this is also true of selecting good teachers. He claims that the usual metrics used to measure hiring and promotions for teachers, such as master’s degrees, teaching certifications, and other cognitive standards, are just as useless in attempting to determine a good teacher as college football statistics are in trying to determine a successful NFL quarterback.

Another important element of the quarterback problem is that the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is extremely large, potentially several orders of magnitude. There are very few ‘good’ quarterbacks in the NFL. There aren’t even very many quarterbacks decent enough to serve as an emergency backup. The quarterback position in the NFL may be the single toughest position to play in all of professional sports. Gladwell argues that the same is true of teachers:

Suppose that Mrs. Brown and Mr. Smith both teach a classroom of third graders who score at the fiftieth percentile on math and reading tests on the first day of school, in September. When the students are retested, in June, Mrs. Brown’s class scores at the seventieth percentile, while Mr. Smith’s students have fallen to the fortieth percentile. That change in the students’ rankings, value-added theory says, is a meaningful indicator of how much more effective Mrs. Brown is as a teacher than Mr. Smith.

It’s only a crude measure, of course. A teacher is not solely responsible for how much is learned in a classroom, and not everything of value that a teacher imparts to his or her students can be captured on a standardized test. Nonetheless, if you follow Brown and Smith for three or four years, their effect on their students’ test scores starts to become predictable: with enough data, it is possible to identify who the very good teachers are and who the very poor teachers are. What’s more—and this is the finding that has galvanized the educational world—the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast.

It follows that if you want a school system filled with good teachers, then you have to be willing to identify the poor teachers and get rid of them. This is the only solution to the quarterback problem. It’s a brutal process for both the teachers and the administration. Time Magazine recently had a cover story on Michelle Rhee’s unusual approach to improving schools in the nation’s capital, which is attempting to implement this brutal process.

Rhee wants to solve the quarterback problem the only way possible: by mitigating its effects. Simply put, if you can’t identify good teachers without seeing how they perform in the classroom, then you have to hire a bunch of teachers, watch their classroom performance, identify those that are succeeding, and reward them. Similarly, you have to identify teachers that are failing and eliminate them. Time’s article does a good job explaining why doing these two things is extraordinarily complicated in the teaching industry.

Of course, this is exactly how they solve the quarterback problem in the NFL. On-field performance is everything. Many of the best quarterbacks were identified as such by their play in real NFL games as backups for injured quarterbacks. Matt Cassel is a great example. In college, he never started a game and served as a backup for Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart. He was drafted into the NFL and played as a backup for Tom Brady, who suffered a season-ending injury in the first game of the 2008 season. Brady’s injury made Matt Cassel a starting quarterback for the first time since high school, which would undoubtedly determine his future in the NFL. If he played well, he would likely be rewarded with a starting role for another team during the off season. If he played poorly, he would fall into the nameless abyss of all the other failed NFL quarterbacks.

After reading Gladwell’s article, I had to wonder, how many other professions are like that? Surely the quarterback problem isn’t just limited to teachers and NFL quarterbacks. The first thing that came to my mind was a Paul Graham essay about great programmers, which is really a must-read for anyone in the software industry. In it, Graham talks about the nature of great programmers, and summarizes the problem of identifying them by saying, “The problem is, if you’re not a hacker, you can’t tell who the good hackers are.” Fred Brooks also talks about the vast difference between a great programmer and an average programmer in The Mytical Man-Month. Here’s Fred Brooks on great software designers:

The differences are not minor – it is rather like Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

Clearly, selecting a software engineers fits the definition of the quarterback problem. It would be very interesting to study how the extreme challenge of creating a start-up company performs as a system for identifying great programmers.

Apparently, some people believe there’s a quarterback problem in selecting good lawyers. Although, I have no particular experience with this, I think the environment in which lawyers at big law firms operate is strikingly similar to the ideal solution to the quarterback problem. There’s an incredibly small percentages of lawyers who end up making partner at a big law firm, which indicates to me that there’s a quarterback problem in trying to hire a big law firm partner.

I’ve also seen the suggestion that selecting a mate is a version of the quarterback problem, but I personally think that’s taking things too far. I don’t think that people really have an objective idea of what a good mate is, let alone what metrics to use in measuring potential mates. Furthermore, the role of being a “mate” really isn’t the same thing as having a job.

I believe the quarterback problem is potentially much more prevalent than people currently recognize. I also think that the solution to the quarterback problem is clearly defined. The two important lessons to learn and apply from the quarterback problem:

• Don’t be afraid to give people a chance. They might surprise you.
• Don’t be afraid to make a change when things aren’t working out.

These two steps are the best known solution to the quarterback problem. What other fields could benefit from implementing them? If you have any suggestions for other areas where this problem seems to occur, please mention them in the comments.

If one were to take a national poll on the most important year in United States history, 1776 would easily be a top contender. Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January. Although not an American, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, which had (and continues to have) extraordinary influence on American financial history. The Continental Congress signed the The Declaration of Independence that summer. Perhaps most importantly, George Washington held together the young and inexperienced “rabble” that was the Continental Army throughout the course of that entire year and eventually through the conclusion of the war in 1783. This is the story told by David McCullough’s novel 1776.

Although 1776 is the first book by David McCullough that I have ventured to read, I had most certainly heard of the author before I began reading it. McCullough is one of the most decorated living historians in America, and I would be astonished if more than a few American readers haven’t heard of him. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and twice won the National Book Award. He has also received the highest honor bestowed to American civilians: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As a result of the author’s fame and previous success, I had extremely high expectations for 1776 in several areas. First, McCullough is known as a fastidious researcher, so I was expecting the book to provide details on the inner workings of the fledgling American Revolution. Second, McCullough is often praised as an exemplary story teller, and with the material he has to work with in the American revolution, I was expecting something amazing. Third, McCullough used many of his notes originally compiled in writing his biography of John Adams, so I was expecting much of the book to deal with the political relationship Washington maintained with the Continental Congress.

In regard to my first expectation, I was quite pleased with the details found throughout the novel. If anything, these details were the most redeeming aspect of the book to those who already know the story quite well. McCullough goes out of his way to drop some now-famous names of people who were at the time merely rising stars, including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Aaron Burr. I was also quite pleased to see many misconceptions dispelled. For example, I grew up learning that the Hessians in the Battle of Trenton were drunk or hungover at the time of the attack. Of course, this has been dispelled in many accounts, as McCullough dispels it here, but it was through this book that I learned the truth of the matter stated plainly.

As to my second expectation, McCullough is certainly a master story teller. Even knowing this beforehand did not prepare me for the fluidity of the book. I was truly surprised at how easy to read it is. It flows so quickly and effortlessly that I found my self reading it in large chunks. One of the primary reasons that I even picked the book up was to find some respite from the large amount of technical reading I have been doing recently, and I am pleased to say that it did not disappoint in the least, even though I was already quite familiar with the major events of the year.

Lastly, I was expecting a focus on Washington’s political discourse with the Continental Congress over the course of the year. This expectation was simply not met. Although there is some discussion of this important relationship, it was certainly not a highlight of the book. Each discussion of the relationship feels unbalanced because the book does not introduce or develop most of the important characters in the Continental Congress. I was left wondering if that is due to the coverage it received in his biography of John Adams, which I will endeavor to read.

My one major disappointment with the book was the artificial framing of the subject. Although 1776 was an extremely important year, it was just one of eight years (1775-1783) that comprised the American Revolution. Quite a few important events are not covered by this book including the winter in Valley Forge, enlisting the aid of France, signing the Treaty of Paris, and George Washington stepping back into the role of a civilian. Perhaps feeling a bit cheated at the missing events was somewhat inevitable. The entirety of the American Revolution itself has been the subject of many books, so I can understand why McCullough would not want to plow the same field all over again. However, I have no doubt that his talents would have made the remaining years and events of the Revolution exceedingly enjoyable stories to read.

On the whole, I can heartily recommend 1776. Owing to its easily accessible nature, it is perhaps best geared towards the average American, but there are certainly details that may interest those more deeply involved in studying history.

ABC News has an article on the eavesdropping of Americans that answers any remaining questions regarding the FISA Amendments passed this past summer. Essentially, the article details the use of surveillance systems to spy on ordinary Americans. Here’s a quote from the article:

“These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA’s Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

The article goes on to describe the nature of some of the phone call as pillow talk or phone sex. Some of the individuals involved were from the US Military, the International Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders. Naturally, the Senate is investigating. The article further states that some especially juicy clips were saved by employees of the NSA.

Unfortunately, abuse of surveillance systems by insiders is nothing new. Bruce Schneier has shown us that surveillance cameras are abused and ineffective. Six well-known security and privacy researchers have warned about this sort of abuse with telephone surveillance as well (pdf).

The only thing that is remotely surprising about this is that we have specific details from whistleblowers, who are risking their careers and livelihood to tell us about this abuse. In this case, it is even more surprising that not one, but two independent whistleblowers came forward simply because the agency involved was the notoriously secretive NSA.

The GCHQ, which is the British equivalent of the NSA, recently dealt with its own whistleblower: Katherine Gun. In this case, Gun was a translator asked to favorably translate documents as evidence to garner support for the Iraq war. Her case was dropped at trial almost immediately. Speculatively, the decision to drop the case was due to the calculated decision that producing the evidence required to prosecute her would have been more embarrassing for the GCHQ than simply letting her go.

Many whistleblowers find the ethics of betraying their employer for the greater good an excruciating ethical dilemma. Check out this BBC News interview of Katherine Gun if you are interested in how she weighed the decision. (There’s a book about her if you are more ambitious.) For these reasons and many more, whistleblowers like Mark Klein in the AT&T case that prompted the FISA Amendments and now David Murfee Faulk and Adrienne Kinne in this more recent case with the NSA shouldn’t be our last line of defense.

Essentially, lesson from this ABC News article is simple: surveillance tools will be abused. It is human nature for power to corrupt. The Founding Fathers of the United States recognized this and tried to limit the power of the government explictly for this reason. They built checks and balances into our government because they knew that hoping for whistleblowers to highlight problems was not reliable. Why does the current US government not seem to comprehend this?  How many more whistleblowers and ABC News stories will it take for our government to catch on?

Once is an anomaly.  Twice is a coincidence.  Three times is a trend.  The US Government has not once, not twice, but three times bailed out a financial company that was facing the consequences of their risky business decisions.  The most recent incarnation of this is AIG, the world’s largest insurance company.  ABC has a great quote in their piece on the AIG bailout that pretty much sums up the core problem in all three of these bailouts:

“They called it insurance, but they were gambling,” said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. “In a market economy, there has to be a sense of accountability. You can’t come running to the government every time you have a problem.”

This is pretty simple cause and effect.  In fitness, this is summarized by the catch phrase “No Pain, No Gain.”  In sports, there’s a common saying that “most games are won or lost before they are played.”  Another common saying, though I have had difficulty finding its origin, is this:

“Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”

— Frank Borman

I have seen this modified to “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin” as well.

The point is that these bailouts are the most fundamental of errors.  Capitalism depends heavily on fair risk and rewards.  If someone takes a business risk that pays out, then those who didn’t take the risk shouldn’t be granted the benefit of regulations limiting the entrepeneurs who did.  If someone takes a business risk that crumples underneath them, then those who didn’t take the risk should be rewarded by not seeing the government swoop in and “save” the now-failing company that did.  The rules of the game shouldn’t change while it is being played.

Now having said that, there may be some circumstances where letting everything go would be worse than some government intervention.  The problem is identifying those circumstances is incredibly hard.  We were told that the Bear Stearns bailout was the mother of all bailouts.  We were told that the $29 bn we spent there would prevent a domino effect.  (Pretty effective, eh?)  Then we were told that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed the world’s largest bailout.  They said that the $200 bn we spent there essential to our economy.  Now we are being told that AIG is too big to fail.  They are saying that the $85 bn we spend there will save a cornerstone of our economy.  How is this fair to “small” businesses like Lehman Brothers?  What key characteristics were missing in those circumstances?  These arbitrary interventions in the market are bad for all businesses.

Now I’m not an economist.  I don’t claim to be an expert in this area.  I do find it interesting that many of the companies that are failing now are doing so because of prior government intervention in the market.  Fannie and Freddie were a government sponsored duopoly in the market.  AIG was exercising a massive loophole created by the government.  Why aren’t politicians trying to solve these root causes?  Why are they so busy trying to wash away the effects?

Instead, the Bush administration wants to spend another $700 bn on bad debt in an effort to “save” our economy.  Add this to the $314 bn we’ve already spent on bailouts this year and we would break the $1,000,000,000,000 mark.  You can see the trend continuing.  It’s great to know that my tax dollars are violating the most basic principle of economics by purchasing a product known to be bad.  I want my money back.

Edited to add: Looks like the $700 bn deal could be even worse than I originally thought:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Hat tip: Tim Lee.

I decided to read Franz Kafka’s The Trial after seeing it used by Dan Solove to describe the no-fly list. I knew very little about the book before reading it.  I knew that it was about a man named Joseph K. who was arrested and then, despite his best efforts, completely unable to understand or control the resulting course of events. I also knew that it was one of the books that has motivated the term “Kafkaesque.” What I didn’t know was that it does all of these things in a “meta” sense as well, which has made the the book extraordinarily rich and entertaining to read.

What do I meant by my use of the word “meta” to describe The Trial? Anyone who has read Gödel, Escher, and Bach would probably understand what I mean if I re-phrased it by saying that The Trial is a Strange Loop. However, for those who haven’t read GEB, I will try to explain in more detail, particularly since this is the most delicious part of the book. The Trial was originally written in German, with which I have some experience, but I am not capable of reading a book at this level in German. Thus, it had to be translated. Every time I read a translated book I feel it tug at me a little: Am I really reading this as it was intended? This tugging adds a level of disorientation, which is really the entire point of The Trial.

Of course, Kafka wasn’t intending that everyone read a translated version of the book. In fact, Kafka may have never intended anyone to read the book. It was published posthumously and perhaps against his wishes. Now, there is perhaps some debate over whether or not there was a moral obligation to publish, but that debate is still going today. Thus, it is, in some sense, a book over which not even the author could exercise complete control.

Since it was published posthumously, it was never finished. There is an obviously incomplete chapter that simply ends. There are unfinished chapter fragments and deleted sections published as appendices in the printed version of the book that I read. In fact, literary scholars aren’t entirely sure about the order the chapters should appear. All of this only adds to the confusion and disorder that is depicted throughout the book.

If you haven’t read any of Kafka’s books, but you’re interested in learning a little bit about why Kafka is such an important author, then I would recommend The Trial as a good starting point. I enjoyed the “meta” aspects of the book, but there are certainly a lot of other themes that are enjoyable, including the role of women in the book, which was the biggest surprise for me. I won’t talk about it here though. You’ll have to discover it for yourself.

Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning is a book on Nazi Germany’s Reserve Police Battalion 101, which participated in the Holocaust. The primary discussion in the book is on how a group of ordinary, middle-aged Germans became mass murderers. He attempts to understand how this transformation took place, and he uses insights from the Milgram experiments and the Stanford Prison experiments. However, he is quick to point out in the forward of the book that “explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving.”

The book was recommended to me by Lucas Layman after a discussion on the importance of the human element in computer security led to a discussion on the Milgram experiments and the Stanford Prison experiments. Certainly there are many elements of computer security and computer crime that can be better understood through studying human psychology. For example, the simple fact that as the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were removed from direct participation (e.g. pulling the trigger themselves) to indirect participation (e.g. leading Jews to death trains) they were more easily able to cope with their actions psychologically. Similarly, computer crime is easily disassociated because of the impersonal nature of dealing with computers rather than humans. However, after reading the book my strongest reaction has been broader than just computer security.

When I was in high school I had to read quite a few books on the Holocaust. It seemed that every year we read a different book on the subject, and I tired quickly of the extremes that were pushed. Nazi Germany in general and Hitler in particular have become famous for being the most extreme extreme. This is perhaps best identified by Godwin’s Law.

Ordinary Men suffers from over-extremism to some extent as well. For example, Browning causally refers to the Holocaust as the “most extreme genocide in human history” without offering much in the way of proof or comparison. The number of Native Americans systematically killed by Europeans and the number of Russians killed by Stalin’s regime could each easily exceed the numbers of Jews killed by the Holocaust. The rate of killing in Rwanda could easily surpass the rate of killing in the Holocaust. The brutality of groups like the Khmer Rouge and leaders like Genghis Kahn could be argued to be greater than that found in the Holocaust. Is it even possible to classify something like the “most extreme genocide in history?”

My point is that our only reaction to events like these cannot be the emotional one; we must attempt to understand why and how these things happen so that we can learn from them. We aren’t good at rationalizing emotions, and we are rarely able to draw objective conclusions based on them. However, if we can take a look at some facts, then we may be able to learn important lessons. For example, before the brutality caused by Nazi Germany and in former Yugoslavia, we see extreme hyperinflation. Do we know anywhere else in the world where that is happening right now? I think so. This is something to be concerned about.

More generally security is a field that suffers from extremely emotional reactions. The air travel response to the September 11th attacks is a good example. How many of these responses have been the result of reason rather than emotion? How many of them have actually improved airport security? These are questions that we will probably continue to struggle with for years because of the highly charged emotional response most Americans have to the September 11th attacks.

On the whole though, Browning does a good job of ensuring that we don’t view the people of Reserve Police Battalion 101 as caricatures of themselves. As a result, there are many lessons to be learned from this book. The Holocaust should not be thought of as an abstract evil thing, but instead as a real consequence of human plans and actions. As Browning says, “Ultimately, the Holocaust took place because at the most basic level individual human beings killed other human beings in large numbers over an extended period of time.” The book offers an objective take on how ordinary people are capable of such a thing. I found it to be a very worthwhile read.

In an election year, it is easy to become caught up in the political discussion about which candidate has the best policy on education, which candidate will fix healthcare, or which candidate will lower our gas prices. It is easy to focus on the problems because politicians don’t get elected for the things that have gone right. These are the things we take for granted, but there are certainly places in the world where the things we take for granted are serious concerns.

Zimbabwe is one of those places. Yesterday, it was determined that the Zimbabwe dollar has suffered from 11,200,000% inflation for the 12 previous months. That’s 11.2 million percent inflation. As Tom Palmer has aptly said, this is how you destroy a country. As you may have surmised, this is a classic example of hyperinflation.

The leaders of Zimbabwe are at best clueless and at worst ruthlessly careless as to the effects of their policies. Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono have devalued the currency rather than attempt to address the root causes of the problem. They blame sanctions from western countries for their economic woes, when in reality they have created their own crisis.

Zimbabwe has the natural resources to be one of the wealthiest African countries. Zimbabwe is home to Victoria Falls, a worldwide tourist attraction. They also has rich mineral deposits that could support some of the best mines in the world. Zimbabwe’s sub-tropical climate could support significant agriculture as well. These resources simply need to be managed properly.

Meanwhile, the people of Zimbabwe are suffering. The unemployment rate is over 80%. The brain drain has been staggering. Only those people who can’t afford to leave or who care too much about their homeland to leave remain in the country. Parts of the country have been without running water for months. The electric grid is unstable. Basic elements of the country’s infrastructure are failing.

Zimbabwe’s economic problems dwarf those problems in the United States. The US has had a 17 year high percentage of inflation: 5.6% This is certainly a problem, and one that has caused the economy to be a serious topic of the current presidential election. The economic concept of sound money (a monetary unit that is relatively stable and inflation-free) is crucial to any economy. However, it is important to remember that things could be much worse and we still have a pretty stable economy. If you find yourself tired of paying too much for gas or fed up with the election year political chatter, remember that there are probably quite a few things we may be taking for granted.