Interesting NYT article on how bad customer-service can be:

To listen as Mr. Ferrari tries to cancel his membership is to join him in a wild, horrifying descent into customer-service hell. The AOL representative, self-identified as John, sounds like a native English speaker; he refuses to comply when Mr. Ferrari asks, demands and finally pleads — over and over again — to close his account.

One of the things that always irks me about conventional political wisdom is that red tape, bureaucracy and organizational ineffectiveness are the exclusive province of the State. "That's what you get from government," and the like. The truth is that large business organizations are as bad or worse, and are fundimentally less accountable.

In most cases the actual answer is to increase transparency, which is something that all bureaucrats (State, Business, Non-Profit or otherwise) resist. Gotta be done, though.

It's a holiday weekend, and I been doing the American thing, clearing some brush. I can report this to be one more point you can count me in solidarity with the President on. He and I share few enough points in common, and I feel it's important to recognize these. Clearing brush is good hard work, and it's fun.

And here are a couple other photos of me in front of the blackboard I hung in my room. I think this may figure into future video art.

And Nick and his woman and Luke have just arrived. Gotta go now.

More about Iran, worth reading in its entirety.

I found this bit interesting:

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

It seems like a lot of people want to be on the historical record for standing up to the Bush administration at one point or another. This is essentially the rationale Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi) gave last week on Meet the Press for wanting to censure the Prez over his extra-legal phone-tapping program.

I wonder at what point wanting to be on the record as opposed to something that happens stops being enough.

More about Iran, worth reading in its entirety.

I found this bit interesting:

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

It seems like a lot of people want to be on the historical record for standing up to the Bush administration at one point or another. This is essentially the rationale Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi) gave last week on Meet the Press for wanting to censure the Prez over his extra-legal phone-tapping program.

I wonder at what point wanting to be on the record as opposed to something that happens stops being enough.

From the New Republic via the Political Wire:

"This isn't the first time that Bloomberg has privately flirted with a 2008 bid. But what makes a Bloomberg candidacy look increasingly real is that he has also begun to think about the mechanics of running. New York p.r. eminence Howard Rubenstein recalls Bloomberg putting a price tag on his Oval Office ambition at a dinner party in April: 'I could easily put up half a billion,' the mayor had said, naming a figure over one-third higher than the Bush campaign's spending in 2004."

"Bloomberg has suggested that, if he runs, it would be on a new party line of his own creation. No cold days in Iowa, no small rooms in New Hampshire. He could afford, like Ross Perot, to set up a petition drive to secure ballot status in late 2007 after the Republican and Democratic candidates were clear... Playing to his strengths as a technocrat, he would run on competence and nonpartisan management -- the style, over the substance, of his politics."

I would add that Bloomberg is viable (or "dangerous," depending on how you look at it) also because he's very well-versed in information technology. His fortune was built on providing services we now take for granted as part of the internet to the financial sector as much as 20 years ago. His chief accomplishment as Mayor was implementing 311, a catch-all service number for the city. It's been a rousing success in an otherwise bland/middling (or, to spin it brightly, "competant") term in office.

Assuming he'd take that kind of savvy into his campaign, he'd probably have a fairly sophisticated communications strategy; at least as innovative as Perot's infomercial timeblock buys were in '92. This plus a huge potential war chest would make him viable enough to steer the national debate.

My guess is he probably won't, but somebody might. Assuming neither party produces a nominee who breaks with the status quo, the opportunity will be there to make a splash. Lots of people pretty generally upset with things, looking for alternatives...

No One Is Exempt:

Early reports indicate that soldiers may have raped a woman, burned her body and killed the woman's family in a "crime of opportunity,", the news agency reported, citing an unnamed American official. The A.P. recently had a reporter embedded with the 502nd Infantry Regiment.

Earlier this month, two soldiers from the same unit were abducted while guarding a traffic control point in the town of Yusufiya, and were killed by insurgents. Their mutilated bodies were found along a booby-trapped road, after the American military deployed 8,000 American and Iraqi troops into the area in a search-and-rescue operation that was perhaps the largest of the war so far. A third soldier was killed in Yusufiya at the time of the ambush.

Though it appears the killing of the Iraqi family was unrelated to the Yusifya ambush, the March incident came to light when a soldier felt compelled to report it after the discovery of the bodies of his kidnapped comrades, the Associated Press reported. One soldier has been arrested, and four have had their weapons taken away and are confined to their base in Mahmudiya.

The most dangerous part of that whole "greeted as liberators" schtick and the puffing up of American Exceptionalism during the run up to the invasion is that it obscured the central fucking fact: that war is hell, and no party in the fray can remain above it.

This is why you don't want to have wars of choice.

Via Farsheed (midnightparking.com), I discover the Portable Folk Band.

Lovin' this track. There are more available from archive.org on the band's site (clicky above).

Or maybe you'd rather see Connie Chung:

Via Farsheed (midnightparking.com), I discover the Portable Folk Band.

Lovin' this track. There are more available from archive.org on the band's site (clicky above).

Or maybe you'd rather see Connie Chung:

(UPDATED below) I'm ignorant on a lot of things Israeli/Palestinean, but I was reading about this poor kidnapped kid and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. The reports are kind of confusing, and I wonder if not missing some critical subtext.

So, Gilad Shalit is serving his stint in the IDF, and his checkpoint was attacked by Palestineans. No article seems to mention which specific groups were involved, but apparently in response the IDF has arrested a number of ministers in the Palestinean government, presumably most or all of them Hamas. Now, Hamas has been involved in all sorts of ugly violence over the years, but no one seems to be claiming that they're holding onto the kid.

Is this just how business gets done these days in the Middle East? One would think that with the proximity and history between the Israelis and Palestineans the IDF would be able to decyper the situation and target people who are more directly responsible. I mean, this seems almost as dense as our handling of sectarian issues in Iraq, but at least we're half a world away (although that's still no excuse).

Anyway, it seems like I'm missing something. Anyone care to put a lightbulb over my head?

UPDATE: I see now that the kidnappers are identified as "identified with Hamas" and that also "Hamas may be willing to release the solder," so clearly they're in control. Still, seems odd. Like, was this a freelance kidnapping, or was it planned? Did the abductors think they'd get a promotion for showing initiative, or were they acting on orders? Murky.

Got a bike! Surly cross-check, black, 60cm. Oh baby.

I got the call from the shop after finishing a return to the Gym, and I don't have the arm control to really give it a whirl, but tomorrow is another day.