The Skinternet Innovation Alliance

With nothing but time to kill, I've taken to reading a lot recently. The problem is, sometimes there's something you really want to tell someone--and not knowing any professional bloggers, I guess I just have to do it myself.

On the Washington Post's website, I was reading an article from a week or so back about Janet Napolitano's confirmation hearings (for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security)--I wanted to see if she had anything to say about Immigration and Customs Enforcement's recent killings of some detainees, or about the general loathesomeness of the department generally.

Instead, I noticed a slick ad on the right hand side of the page for the "Internet Innovation Alliance's" new & free "Broadband Factbook," which offers "convenient research items culled from the best broadband data sources." Now I'm used to ads on the NYTimes website for useless things like Steuben bowls that you can carve your name in, not free and useful resources, so perhaps I was a little jaded when I decided that "Internet Innovation Alliance" sounded like just the name an industry advocacy group might choose to lobby for their interests with the public. Moreover, 'broadband' is one of those catch-words that keeps coming up every time President Obama and 'stimulus' are in the same headline. And to industry that means money.

The 'Factbook' models itself as a cheat-sheet for business types, "If you need to find bite-sized talking points on a tight deadline, you're in the right place. We've already done the hard part for you!" But apparently the 'hard part' was filleting arguments into one-sided, ideologically empty quotes. Take, for example, this entry on Net-Neutrality (the principle that says owners of lines of communication aught not be able to discriminate against different types of communication):

Advocates of net neutrality argue that ISPs should have little flexibility to manage their networks and that the solution to any kinds of network congestion or other network performance challenges can and should be solved by simply adding more network capacity—primarily in the form of “bigger pipes.”

http://www.internetinnovation.org/factbook/tags/tag/net+neutrality

I suppose that's one viewpoint. But It's also the factbook's only viewpoint. Strangely, the IIA took a very different tack back in 2004 when SBC tried to start charging VoIP providers more (according to common cause), but has apparently reversed its stance since SBC became a major contributor.

For a primer on net neutrality, try googling it. Or click here

I suppose the real story is that powerbrokers are expected to read the Post, and fancy-glass-mongers read the Times.

In Memoriam

American values are rarely what they aspire to. Besides making inspiring fodder for ridiculous popular cinema, we rarely get much use out of the term 'liberalism' except when we're shying away from it. To that end, just about every person in this country should read this essay and weep for what they themselves have forsaken.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/01/letter-from-the.html

Updates

because i've been getting that 'what are you doing?!' response a lot, let me fill in this blog.

On the 19th of January I'm heading to Budapest (where Cat happens to be living and working at an NGO).

On February 23, I will fly to Beijing and enroll at the Beijing University of Technology, where I will study Chinese.

I will also be tutoring English, saving up to pay for a ticket to fly cat out to beijing on April 4th for the Qing Ming break.

On June 26th, I will fly from Beijing to Budapest for more intensive post-communist research.

On August 24th, I will fly from Budapest to Newark and commence moving to Cambridge, MA.

On August 28th, I will move up to Cambridge, try and find an apartment and attend the MIT TPP orientation.

Following that, I will take a bus back to new york, pick up my bike, and bike back up to my new apartment in Cambridge.

That's about it for now. Three sheets to the wind!

An All-Volunteer Army?

Among my daily reading-fodder is George Packer's blog at the New Yorker's site called 'interesting times.' Two weeks back, he posted an embedded video from Doctors Without Borders about the continuing chaos in Africa's Great Lakes region. Something about my firefox settings makes it so that every time i load the blog, the video starts playing. I'd call this annoying, but it's hard to be dismissive, considering the content of the video. I don't know if Mr. Packer did this intentionally, but for literally two weeks now, almost every day, readers are reminded of the depressingly increasingly hopeless hell that people live in. Combine this persistent nagging with stories like this from the Times about massacres being carried out less than a mile away from the U.N. Peacekeeper's base, and you really take a gulp.

I won't claim to know very much about the Hutus and the Tutsis and Warlordism, or even the local culture. But I know why Peacekeeper forces are stretched hopelessly thin, and it has everything to do with George Bush. Between the public ridicule of the U.N.'s missions, non-payment of dues, and reckless international politicking, Mr. Bush has done significant material harm to the U.N. and its missions. Furthermore, the wars he started already precluded his more competent successor's use of U.S. troops as peacekeepers in any of the places they are really needed.

It occurs to me that while the armed forces are having trouble meeting their recruiting goals as they attempt to fight an overly-costly but unpopular war, The President Elect could knock out a whole flock of birds with one stone by opening up a new branch of the Armed Forces--one dedicated to U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping missions. Besides being wildly popular abroad, a peacekeeping force could draw in prospective recruits who are either ideologically opposed to the present wars, risk-averse, or both. By offering potential recruits the guarantee that they would not be sent on missions which had not specifically been mandated by the U.N. security council, and offering training beyond that of traditional armed forces--namely a greater emphasis on conflict-resolution--but also the radical ideologies that General Petraeus brought to Iraq.

Boo On Scientists

Consider the last time you asked someone to keep something confidential: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09bomb.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Excuse me, could I have my chocolate slightly more Aryan?

From Putong-Kong

But was it a State Sponsored Hangover?

Friends, for the benefits of inquiring minds, I have assembled a brief summary of three locally available beers (though there are plenty more). I'll start with "Blue Ice Beer," a purchase I made in the hopes that it was a re-branded version of Snow, the Chinese JV with SABMiller which recently became the most consumed beer in the world. See for yourself; with the ice and mountain theme, I was hopeful:

From Putong-Kong

Alas, Blue Ice, it turns out, is a down-label San Miguel. Which itself is a beer I'd never touch, and for good reasons. Blue Ice is probably the worst beer I've ever had. I don't consider myself an expert in this field, and I wouldn't ever call my tongue refined, but I don't ever recall having such a bad reaction to the taste of a beer before (except perhaps my first beer ever--a 'Tecate.' pleasant memories of Tijuana...).

The nifty thing about Blue Ice, though, is its packaging. It feels retro--and closer inspection shows why. Not only does Blue Ice fail to instruct one to drink responsibly, remember to recycle the can, or even fill us in on its ingredients (label contains name of beer, and name of importer), it even has a nifty pull tab like the one that kid from the movie in the 80s use to hack that payphone. I'm pretty sure I watched it on VHS.

From Putong-Kong

Second is Pearl River Lager, suspicious only because of the option of two different colored labels in the store, but no difference in text. Both were called pearl river lager. I chose Yellow and black:

From Putong-Kong

I don't have a whole lot to say about this beer. It was actually quite nice, a meaty kind of lager devoid of powerful hops (this is China), but still scrumptious. Plus their the official beer sponsors of Chinese Basketball. A telling endorsement, perhaps, but not quite as strong as

YANJING BEER: THE OFFICIAL STATE BEER OF CHINA.

From Putong-Kong

I don't care if you people don't think this is hilarious, but I think it's great. Yanjing features that one ingredient of all great beers: Rice.

It was 'aight. Ill say more when there's more to say. Until then I'm Jonesin' for a Sierra Nevada. Or at least a Champagne.