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Osama Bin Laden Killed – How the Right and Left Will Spin the Death
0 Comments | Posted by gimme-five in General, Politics
If you haven’t heard yet, Osama bin Laden was killed this past weekend (see WaPo, WSJ, NYT, CNN, NPR). This is a positive development for the United States, and the world, in my judgment. But right now, the real work has began: the political spin machines on both the right and left are working hard to spin this story the way they want it. I’ll make predictions now (9:50 am eastern time on 5/2/2011, about 10 hours after bin Laden’s death was announced) about how the spin machine over the next week will treat this story. I predict by 5:00 pm eastern time on 5/3/2011, we’ll see most of these spin stories emerge.
From the left:
- Death of Osama is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Death of Osama cures cancer, stops climate change, makes everyone in the world love the United States.
- Death of Osama shows that President Obama is the greatest commander in chief ever; President Bush had absolutely no hand in killing Osama.
- When a commentator slips and accidentally says “Obama” instead of “Osama,” (I already heard someone slip on NPR this morning) he or she is labeled as a racist.
From the right:
- Congratulations to President George W. Bush / “our military” while deliberately avoiding mentioning President Obama’s name.
- The death of Osama could have occurred earlier, but President Obama waited until recently to improve his election prospects.
- “Killing Osama doesn’t matter. Who cares?” (if this happened while GWB were in office, the left would be saying this, obviously). Or, alternatively, “why are we celebrating someone’s death? How cruel are we!”
From Donald Trump:
- That wasn’t Osama. Where is the birth certificate?
The birther movement is insane. There can be no reasonable person who believes Barack Obama was born outside of the United States after he produced a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. It’s surprising anyone questioned it to begin with. But according to a Wall Street Journal poll conducted today, 27.9% out of 10,354 people stated that the release of Obama’s birth certificate did not settle questions about his citizenship. In other words, they think the certificate is a fake. They think that the President of the United States of America forged a birth certificate. Are you KIDDING me? That sounds like something a 16-year-old kid would do on photoshop, not the most powerful person in the world.
And this poll was conducted on the Wall Street Journal’s website. The Wall Street Journal is regarded as a very high-quality publication, and the people who read it are considered to be some of the smarter individuals who read newspapers. I’m not saying it’s true, but I think we can all agree that regular readers of the WSJ are not dummies. Yet around 28% of WSJ’s readers think this birther movement is legitimate.
Why? Well in addition to the fact that most WSJ readers are relatively intelligent, the paper also tends to have a large conservative readership. So my only thought is that these readers are so immersed in being conservative that they ignore facts and vote in the poll in whatever way suits their political interest.
Additionally, Donald Trump is essentially running on a platform of being a birther and nothing else. But some polls have him LEADING THE 2012 REPUBLICAN NOMINATION RACE RIGHT NOW. Really? He’s running during a time of extreme fiscal crisis, yet has a record of personal and business BANKRUPTCY. What good does he bring to the table? Holy crap.
And of all the things to criticize someone about, focusing on the citizenship requirement for being a president has to be one of the pettiest. Yes, it’s a constitutional requirement, and yes, you have to satisfy constitutional requirements to be President. But do we gain much from prohibiting non-citizens from becoming president? Many people who are born in the United States take this country for granted. Many who immigrate to the United States do not, and love their country more than those who have lived here for their entire life. Is there a valid policy reason for prohibiting non-citizens, perhaps those who love the United States more than anything else, from becoming president? Do we really have some secret fantasy that “foreigners” will become president and destroy the US in favor of their former country? Won’t people with evil intent or fake love for the country be rooted out in the extremely-invasive election process?
The same exact thing happens with people on the left attacking people on the right unfairly. But the birther movement has to be the most crazy recent example.
Recently, I drove by a gas station in Montgomery, Alabama that had a large sign stating “No Ethanol in Our Gas!” I had not seen a gas station advertising ethanol-free gasoline before. Intrigued, I typed in “ethanol-free gasoline” on Google and found the website Pure-Gas.org. At this website, you can find gas stations in your area (if you live in the United States or some parts of Canada) that offer ethanol-free gasoline. You can also download POI and KML files that you can plug into your GPS device, smart phone, or Google Earth that will make it easier for you to find the gas stations.
Pure-Gas.org also has a handy map of the ethanol-free gas stations throughout the United States. This map shows lots of ethanol-free gas stations in the Southeast.
Why might you want to purchase ethanol-free gas? For one, ethanol reduces fuel economy by, at least according to the EPA, about 2-3% with a 10% ethanol blend (E10). Many have criticized these studies as overly optimistic and that fuel economy actually falls by 2 to 7%. Therefore, you will get more miles per gallon by purchasing ethanol-free gas.
Second, ethanol makes gasoline more corrosive, thus causing more harm to your engine over time than if you had just used gasoline. In 2009, for example, Toyota had to recall 214,570 Lexus vehicles because of corrosion caused by ethanol.
Additionally—and this is really significant for individuals with older cars—E15 is coming. The EPA recently decided that it is OK for gas stations to sell gasoline that is contaminated with up to 15% ethanol, which is 5% greater than the current rule of 10%. While the EPA claims that a mixture of 15% ethanol in gasoline is “safe” for car engines, it recognizes that this is only the case for car engines made after 2001. If you have a car made in the year 2000, the EPA admits that you shouldn’t be putting this stuff in your tank. Additionally, even if you have a car that the EPA deems as able to deal with the more-corrosive 15% blend, do you really want to put something in your car that is more corrosive rather than less corrosive?
There are also many concerns about the damage E15 will do to non-car engines, such as lawn mowers and boats.
E15 will also of course reduce fuel economy even more than E10. So when E15 is here, that is even more reason to find gas stations that sell ethanol-free gasoline.
Finally, buy buying ethanol-free gasoline, you avoid supporting the economic and environmental disaster that is the ethanol industry. See this post for more details.
Ethanol-free gas might cost slightly more money at the pump (the ethanol-free gas station in Montgomery is about 10 cents per gallon more expensive than other gas stations). But the reason isn’t because ethanol is cheaper to produce, rather, it’s because ethanol producers get a gigantic subsidy from the federal government. In any event, the increased cost of ethanol-free fuel is offset, and perhaps subsumed by the benefits of avoiding ethanol, primarily better fuel economy and less damage to your engine.
The iPad, note home button at botton of screen (image from Apple)
There are rumors that the upcoming versions of the Apple iPad and iPhone will rid themselves of one of their few physical buttons: the home button. See, e.g., The L.A. Times. The home button was a button located at the bottom of the iPad and iPhone that a user could press to exit out of whatever application that user was in to return to the home screen. It was sort of like a no-questions-asked, get-me-out-of-here kind of switch that you could press when you needed to, say, check your email or make a phone call. Analysts have suggested that the home button’s functions will be replaced by a variety of “multi-touch” gestures, which will allow a user to swipe a certain number of fingers across the iPhone or iPad’s screen to return to the home screen, or to switch applications.
Apple’s rumored decision to get rid of this physical button on the iPad and iPhone is not an isolated choice, either by Apple or by other manufacturers. Apple has eliminated physical buttons for controlling music playback on the most recent version of the iPod Nano. Motorola’s much-hyped new tablet PC, the Motorola Xoom, has no physical buttons. But Apple’s rumored decision underscores this movement.
The Motorola Xoom (image from cnet)
While touchscreen interfaces can be extremely useful, and should certainly be featured in devices such as tablet computers and cell phones, I think that the designers of these products must be careful not to forget the utility of physical buttons. In some situations, the absence of a physical button is not a big deal. Losing a physical button to change from one song to another on an mp3 player is not really a problem when you can more easily select the songs via a touchscreen interface.
On the other hand, there are some situations where I think that manufacturers get rid of physical buttons in a gimmicky way that takes away more from the product than it adds. Take, for example, the iPod Nano. The iPod nano now has no physical buttons for controlling music playback; rather, it is controlled via a touchscreen interface. Apple markets the Nano as a device that runners will use to listen to music on while they run. However, if you want to change a song while you run, or pause your iPod, there are no physical buttons that you can quickly tap. Rather, you need to press a button on the touch screen, which will almost always require looking at the screen and pressing the button. With a tiny screen, if you are running at a reasonable pace, you are likely going to have to slow down or stop to see what you are doing. The iPod Nano also has a feature that allows the user to draw “gestures” on the screen to change to different features on the iPod, such as changing from viewing artists to viewing album titles. Unfortunately, this means that if you are running, and you are trying to press the button to “pause” the music, you might accidentally send yourself into some other screen you don’t want to be in, making it even harder to pause the song you’re listening to.
The iPod Nano (image from Apple)
Another example of poor use of touchscreen-like technology is the Garmin Forerunner 405. The Forerunner 405 is a GPS running watch. The 405 is one of a series of Forerunner watch models that records distance and pace run. However, unlike most of the Forerunner models, many of the Forerunner 405′s in-run controls are accessible not by physical buttons, but by a touchscreen bezel that surrounds the face of watch. The bezel is like the earlier models of the iPod; you run your finger along it to highlight different options, and then press a physical button to choose the option. While using a bezel is fine for sitting around on the couch, it’s a pain in the butt to do while you run. Additionally, some have reported that the Forerunner 405′s bezel does not react well to sweat. And, well, sweat and running go together like cherries and cherry pie.
The Garmin Forerunner 405 (image from Garmin)
The iPod Nano and the Garmin Forerunner 405 are two examples of where touchscreen and touchscreen-like technology can become a bit gimmicky instead of useful. To an extent, I see designers thinking of how many “features” they can list on a bullet-point list of product features, as opposed to actually considering what their product is going to be used for, and which features will aid that use.
Will the loss of the home button on the iPad and iPhone be a net gain? It’s hard to say. I think that, on the plus side, getting rid of the home button will decrease wasted space on the iPhone and iPad, allowing the screen to cover nearly the entire front of the device. This could either mean a larger screen or a smaller device. On the other hand, the loss of the home button takes away a user’s no-questions-asked, get-me-out-of-here button. If an application slows to a crawl due to a system bug or crash, thus slowing the entire operating system, a user cannot simply press the home button and know that the “quit” command has been transmitted to the operating system. Instead, the user will have to rely on gestures that he or she will need to draw on the screen, and may not be registered if the device is lethargic and unresponsive. Moreover, users with little experience at using the operating system will have no button to fall back on when they cannot remember how to do the gesture they need to return to the home screen. Additionally, if Apple really wants to implement gestures that can allow users to switch applications or return to the home screen without pressing any buttons, Apple can do so while still leaving the home screen button as a “last resort.”
In sum, if Apple is indeed ridding the iPad and iPhone of the home screen button, that choice underscores a trend of many electronics-makers to move toward touch screen interfaces. While Apple’s rumored choice may turn out to be a net positive, it also could be yet another example of an electronics designer swapping physical buttons for touchscreens as a gimmick. We’ll see what happens.
After writing that consumers shouldn’t use credit cards as a substitute for self control in my last post, I realized that there are legitimate reasons why one might not want to use a credit card.
For example, every time you use a credit card, unlike a debit card, it costs the merchant you are purchasing from an “interchange fee.” These interchange fees can add up for the merchant over time. In fact, credit card issuers were recently hit with an antitrust suit by the DoJ which might change the way these interchange fees work.
Because of these interchange fees, one might want to support a particular merchant by purchasing from them using cash or a debit card to save them money. One also might feel morally opposed to charging merchants extra for providing the same service to you. I think these are legitimate reasons to avoid using a credit card.
There are other, legitimate reasons to choose not to use a credit card. The above is just an example.
