Author Archives: Danny

No dilemma, Apple is a hardware company

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John Gru­ber of Dar­ing Fire­ball points to this arti­cle at the WSJ: Apple Has an Iden­tity Cri­sis: Is It a Hard­ware Com­pany or a Soft­ware Firm? Gru­ber notes that this dichotomy has been true every one of Apple’s 37 years.

But I beg to dif­fer. There is no dilemma. This has never been true. Back when I used to write about Apple, twenty years ago, and today, it is quite clear: Every­thing Apple does is about sell­ing hard­ware. You can set your watch, your rumor mill, and your stock options by this.

If they don’t think it will fur­ther hard­ware sales, they won’t do it.

iTunes Match Airport Wall Wart

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Delight­ful name, no?

I would like Apple to build a wall wart1 that con­nects to my iTunes Match account (nee, my iCloud account) to stream music.

It should be very much like an Air­port Express, being wall-wartish, and hav­ing an audio out option, but it should be pur­pose built to con­nect to my music in my Apple ecosys­tem. I would set it up via my Apple i(OS)X device, con­nect to my WiFi, log in to iCloud, save my cre­den­tials, and it would be ready to go.

This magic wart would then let me lis­ten to my music, via iTunes Match, with­out a com­puter or a copy of iTunes run­ning. I wouldn’t have to plug my iPhone in any­where, or use minutes/battery to stream music. I wouldn’t have to “Start iTunes, Honey, so we can lis­ten to music.” I could still use Remote (or iTunes on OSX?) to skip, pick a playlist, etc.

How sweet would that be?

Really sweet.

Bonus, it would be ready for iRa­dio, or what­ever Apple calls their even­tual stream­ing music service.

Yes, I know this is very spe­cific to the Apple ecosys­tem. And it would be fab if Apple would let you con­nect it to Pandora/Rdio/Spotify/whatnot, but Apple would never do that. On the other side, Apple would never allow a third party wall wart to con­nect to iTunes Match, so. I am, in my cir­cum­stances, stuck with Apple. I can live with that.

But I can’t live with­out this thing. Build it, Apple!

  1. wall wart (n): elec­tronic nub­bin with plug prongs on the back that you plug into the wall where it sits like a par­a­sitic lump, doing “some­thing.” ↩

NRA: Shoot the bad guys for double points!

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There is so much to say about today’s NRA state­ment in rela­tion to the Sandy Hook shoot­ing. But let us start with this. The NRA blames the shoot­ing on a cul­ture of vio­lence. They call out video games (spe­cific ones, I guess you know who your friends are now!), media, the gov­ern­ment. It’s actu­ally a pretty com­pre­hen­sive (if slight) overview of the com­plex prob­lems of child­hood and games and tele­vi­sion and men­tal health and the econ­omy. I’d say bravo for rec­og­niz­ing that the issue is shades of grey upon shades of grey. Except…

Iron­i­cally, their answer is to present the fix to society’s ills as a video game:

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.“ Wayne LaPierre, NRA Lobbyist

Bad guys. And good guys. Shoot the bad guys to save the children.

Well, I have some black and white rhetoric for you, too, Mr. LaPierre.

What is safer than a good guy in a school with a loaded firearm? No firearms. Not for good guys. Not for bad guys. Leave the firearms to the pro­fes­sion­als who need them.

Hunters and their guns

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So, my wife and I had a lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion today about hunters and their guns in light of my pre­vi­ous post. We eat meat, and that meat has to be killed; hunters kill ani­mals, and some of them eat that meat… she won­dered if there was a prob­lem with my argu­ment in that con­text. I had to think about it for a moment before I wrapped my head around it.

But I’m good now.

I don’t have a moral prob­lem with killing ani­mals for meat. Never have, really. I have lots of prob­lems with the way we raise and kill food ani­mals, and try to buy my meat from local pro­duc­ers with small scale slaugh­ter­ing oper­a­tions. I don’t eat a lot of meat, for health rea­sons. But I’m fine with ani­mals as meat, killed by humans.

In that sense, I don’t have a prob­lem with indi­vid­ual hunters going out and killing ani­mals for meat. And while I may have a per­sonal dis­taste for hunters going out and killing ani­mals for fun, that isn’t what my argu­ment is about.

I have a prob­lem with peo­ple own­ing guns.

As I have said before, pro­fes­sional gun own­ers need their guns to do their jobs. Fine. But recre­ational gun own­ers do not need their guns. Recre­ational hunters do not need their guns. Recre­ational hunters do not need to kill ani­mals, and they cer­tainly don’t need to do it with guns.

They may want to. But that isn’t a good enough rea­son to own a gun.

  • You want to be one with nature? Go camping.
  • You want to feel the “thrill of the hunt?” Grab a cam­era on your way out to the blind.
  • You want to feel like a man? Vol­un­teer at a soup kitchen. Build a house. Read at the library.
  • You really need to kill? Do it with a bow, if you must. I’ll con­cede that piece of ground.

Your hunt­ing rifle does not make you safer. It puts every­one around you in dan­ger. What is safer than a respon­si­ble, trained hunter with a prop­erly secured gun? Not hav­ing a gun.

And then there’s this:

“…the urge to kill lies within us all, espe­cially as chil­dren. With­out proper chan­nelling of these instincts, chil­dren often grow into phys­i­cally abu­sive and/or mur­der­ous adults. Can any of us hon­estly say that, as kids, we didn’t shoot birds with our sling­shots and bb guns, or set home­made traps for other crit­ters? I say that if you can say that, then you either never had an oppor­tu­nity as a child, or you’re an excep­tion to the rule of human nature.”

From Why do Hunters Hunt? by Russ Chastain

I’m sorry, you have an instinc­tual “urge to kill” that you need to chan­nel prop­erly? And you had it as a child? I don’t have an alter­na­tive for you, except to hope to God that you are the excep­tion, not the rule.

Some of the read­ing I did for this:

You should not have a gun

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I heard about the shoot­ing in New­town, Con­necti­cut, hours after it hap­pened. I was fly­ing East that day, and hadn’t checked in with the news. I don’t know any­one involved, but I have two boys in ele­men­tary school, one a six-year-old first grader. I have been sad, con­fused, and angry in turns, some­times all at once.

It has been sev­eral days, and I think I’ve come to some… con­clu­sions about what I think. Buckle up.

First off, men­tal ill­ness is a ter­ri­ble prob­lem. Unlike with guns, it is an almost unfath­omably com­pli­cated topic, of enor­mous impor­tance, that I am com­pletely unqual­i­fied to speak to. I do think that, as a coun­try, we should be able to tackle both guns and men­tal ill­ness. Both clearly need the attention.

But, on guns, I think this:

  • I believe that peo­ple should only have access to guns if their pro­fes­sion requires it. Yeah, I’m a lit­tle left of Lib­eral on this. But there is no rea­son, in a civ­i­lized soci­ety, for indi­vid­u­als to own guns for any sort of recre­ational pur­pose. None. Try your best to give me a rea­son. I like them doesn’t count. I grew up with guns doesn’t count. I need to defend myself (from other peo­ple with guns) doesn’t count. I’m part of a well-regulated mili­tia and I need them to defend myself from a future totalitarian/socialist gov­ern­ment. Really? Guns kill, and you can’t tell me that killing is an accept­able end goal. Punto final.

  • If you own a gun for recre­ational pur­poses, I will be civil to you (lest you, you know, shoot me), but I will not be your friend. My chil­dren will not play at your house. You had bet­ter tell me now, and get it over with. You can unfriend me and we can go our sep­a­rate ways. My chil­dren and I will be safer.

Sure, a full-on firearms ban will never fly in this coun­try. I under­stand the prac­ti­cal prob­lems with my stance. A ban on assault weapons, or on high-capacity mag­a­zines, or on bul­lets, is likely to be much more suc­cess­ful. But I remain con­vinced that you do not need a gun. You should not have a gun. You are not safer with a gun. I am not safer if you have a gun.

Gun-related deaths in 2010 in the United States, from the CDC:

  • unin­ten­tional firearm deaths: 606
  • homi­cide firearm deaths: 11,078
  • sui­cide firearm deaths: 19,392
  • total firearm deaths: 31,672

Gun related non-suicide deaths per 100,000 peo­ple:

  • United States, 2008–2010: 3.97
  • France, 2009: 0.68 (17.1% of US total)
  • Italy, 2009: 0.47 (11.8%)
  • Aus­tralia, 2008: 0.26 (6.5%)
  • Ger­many, 2010: 0.16 (4%)
  • United King­dom, 2011: 0.07 (1.7%)
  • Nor­way, 2010: 0.06 (1.5%)

Yes, in the US, you are 56 times more likely to die from a gun than in the UK. That does not include suicides.

Once they come out of hid­ing, the NRA will trot out all their usual tropes: guns don’t kill peo­ple, gun safety train­ing is very impor­tant, every­one should have gun locks, or gun safes, or unloaded guns, or some­thing that makes your gun safer.

You know what is more effec­tive than gun safety train­ing? Not hav­ing a gun. You know what is more effec­tive than gun locks? Not hav­ing a gun. You know what is more effec­tive than gun safes? Not hav­ing a gun.

You know what is safer than hav­ing a gun? Not hav­ing a gun.

A Tax on People Who Are Bad at Math

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Here is what is annoy­ing about the lot­tery. If the two peo­ple who won yes­ter­day had played the Power­ball Sim­u­la­tor twice a week for the equiv­a­lent of 7,000 years (like I did yes­ter­day), they would not have won (like I did not win). Then they would have said to them­selves, “Self, them is some bad odds. I’m gonna go watch some TV.”

Arr. Prob­a­bil­ity, I hate you.

Scouting Dilemma

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On the one hand, the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica are (offi­cially) a dis­crim­i­na­tory orga­ni­za­tion of whom I really do not approve. On the other hand, my boys are in Boy Scouts (Cub Scouts, tech­ni­cally). They enjoy the peer social activ­i­ties, and I enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ties they would not have if they were not in an orga­ni­za­tion like that (camp­ing, civic duties, vol­un­teer­ing, etc.). I also like that they have friends there and get to hang with them.

But I am find­ing it more and more dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile the two.

There are few estab­lished alterna-Scouting oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in our area. (No Camp­Fire group, no YMCA Adven­ture Guides, no BPSA group.)

So, I can:

  1. Keep my kids in the BSA and shut my mouth (or work from within for change). In the mean­time I keep send­ing money to the BSA, implic­itly sup­port­ing their positions.

  2. Pull my kids from Scout­ing and enjoy not hav­ing annoy­ing activ­i­ties three times a month.

  3. Put my time and trea­sure where my ethics are and start some­thing myself, either per­son­ally ((DIY looks cool) or with the struc­ture (if not sup­port) of some orga­ni­za­tion like BPSA.

The first choice, stick­ing it out, is where we have defaulted. But when we joined the cur­rent Pack, (remem­ber, we just moved) at the intro­duc­tory meet­ing some hon­cho from the local Coun­cil came to sell it, and the first thing he said was how won­der­ful it is to have a place “where we can talk about God. We can’t do it in our schools!” He went on a bit about how glo­ri­ous this was, and how impor­tant, and then he might have caught my eye and he never came back to it. It left a really unpleas­ant taste in my mouth.

The sec­ond choice, ditch­ing, would be easy, but it feels so wrong. Worse than choice num­ber one, in fact.

The last one is clearly the right choice. But I am old, lazy, and tired (or at least I feel that way) and this would be a huge com­mit­ment on my part. I think there might be some sup­port in the com­mu­nity (at the very least in my church, where it has already been brought up once), so I prob­a­bly wouldn’t be fly­ing alone. But this is really quite a daunt­ing task. I am, shall we say, daunted by the thought of it.

Thoughts? Encour­age­ment? Volunteers?

The best elections links of the day (if you’re happy right now)

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Here we go:

My thoughts on the election

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So, the elec­tion is over. And I am pretty pleased with the results. I don’t have any­thing really grandiose to say about it, no procla­ma­tions or pre­dic­tions, but through­out the night (I was up until 1 am local) and this morn­ing I have had some ran­dom thoughts.

There may be pro­fan­ity below. There will def­i­nitely be Lib­eral bias, so you have been warned.

  • Dur­ing his con­ces­sion speech, I real­ized that I have no ani­mos­ity towards Mitt Rom­ney. I think he is an ambi­tious man used to suc­cess, and he really, really, really wanted to be Pres­i­dent. I think he really is a mod­er­ate, and I don’t think he believes half of what he “stood for” in this cam­paign. And while it dis­turbs me that he would be so glib with his val­ues, I don’t hate him for it.
  • But Mitch McConnell can take a fly­ing leap onto the near­est free­way. Here is what he said this morn­ing, “Now it’s time for the pres­i­dent to pro­pose solu­tions that actu­ally have a chance of pass­ing the Republican-controlled House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a closely divided Sen­ate, step up to the plate on the chal­lenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office. To the extent he wants to move to the polit­i­cal cen­ter, which is where the work gets done in a divided gov­ern­ment, we’ll be there to meet him half way.” (Source). That is such bull­shit, com­ing from a Repub­li­can Party that delib­er­ately, explic­itly, and ulti­mately unsuc­cess­fully stonewalled the Pres­i­dent on every­thing he tried to do, even when he moved to the right of the polit­i­cal cen­ter. I call bull­shit, Senator.
  • I con­fess that lis­ten­ing to Obama last night, I felt a lit­tle of the hopey, changey thing from four years ago. And it felt good.
  • I may have gloated a bit on Twit­ter last night. But seri­ously, the GOP spent the last four years actively deny­ing Obama, try­ing to cast him as a failed Pres­i­dent, and last night they got their ass handed back to them by the Peo­ple. Fuck yeah.
  • Where has Boehner been? Isn’t he from Ohio? Rob Port­man was pop­ping up every­where like an eager gopher, but not John Boehner. Curious.
  • Last night, only one per­son I voted for was actu­ally elected, even all the way down to the local school board. Not the worst bal­lot expe­ri­ence I have had (that was 2004 in Omaha, Nebraska, when nobody I voted for was elected). I may be liv­ing in the wrong place.
  • The next gen­er­a­tion has arrived. Gay mar­riage passed in two states (after los­ing 33 times in pre­vi­ous elec­tions). Pot is (or will be) legal in Col­orado. (Source). And the youth vote car­ried Obama again, just like it did four years ago (Source). So fas­ten your seat belts, Boomers, your young tat­tooed Latina barista is about to take the wheel.
  • Fox News, et al., was not only wrong, but dis­hon­est with their view­ers, all sea­son long. This arti­cle in the Atlantic is (lib­eral and) very inter­est­ing. And they call us sheeple. (The Atlantic)
  • And finally, this. “I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re will­ing to work hard, it doesn’t mat­ter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t mat­ter whether you’re black or white or His­panic or Asian or Native Amer­i­can or young or old or rich or poor, able, dis­abled, gay or straight, you can make it here in Amer­ica if you’re will­ing to try.” (Tran­script source)
    See the video

I voted. Also, donuts.

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Last night we got together with some like-minded neigh­bors to kvetch about the elec­tion. It was tons of fun, and we are eter­nally grate­ful to the host for track­ing us down (she showed up at our door with an invi­ta­tion, based on our yard signs). Then this morn­ing we got up before the crack of dawn to bun­dle the kids into the car and go vote. We actu­ally got there before the polling place opened (6 am!) and there was already a line of forty or fifty peo­ple. We voted, I dropped every­one off at home to get dressed, and I went and got cel­e­bra­tory donuts.

It has been a good day so far.

Please, exer­cise your right to vote.

Take your kids to show them how impor­tant it is.

And then get donuts.