Apathy Towards the NSA Leaks

I was at a bar that one of my friends runs near Wrigley Field when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. I hadn't considered that the area would turn into a full on mostly peaceful drunken riot. Not so bright in retrospect. I'll get back to this.

On the train there I read an article (worth reading) that outlined the blowback the US is beginning to experience from the rest of the world concerning the NSA leaks. It's intriguing because it's such a comprehensive non-US-centric view, and this isn't on the list of common talking points in the US. The main issue I and many people have had in reacting to the NSA programs is, what exactly does one do about it? Riot or demonstrate in the US? Not likely.

The crowds in Wrigleyville proved otherwise. The police can't control that many people, and if they tried to use violence it'd just bring more attention to it. The depressing part is that people will form en mass for hockey but not to protect the Bill of Rights, and I'm not bashing people liking sports. I just wish people gave a fuck about the world they live in. To be fair, it's not that obvious or easy as protests aren't planned for a specific time like a hockey game.

What's so strange about the whole affair is that the Obama Administration and Congress are walking in lock step on the matter; the first issue both parties have agreed since I can remember (wtf?). Obama mostly keeps talking about how he's going to extradite Snowden, but not a single person I've talked to wants this. Yet he keeps saying it as if to pacify. What we want is for you to stop acting like the Stasi, or maybe just keep your campaign promise (italics are my emphasis):

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Update: Obama doesn't think this is a big deal.

Government Agencies Hiring Architects: Kind of a Waste of Time

Disclaimer: This post represents my views and not that of the firm I am employed at.

Recently the architecture firm I work for submitted what is known in the Architecture and Engineering (A/E) community as an RFQ (request for qualifications) for the City Colleges of Chicago's new Malcolm X College. An RFQ consists of sheets detailing relevant work that the firm has engaged in recently, proof that the firm is insured, forms signaling that the firm doesn't have conflicts of interest, financial statements going back several years, etc. You get the point. It's a lot of information. I was in charge of putting together the RFQ for my firm along with the fifteen other firms we partnered with.

The project itself is an educational facility that has a teaching hospital component and a budget of $251 million. My firm designed two of the three hospitals that Malcolm X College has a partnership with, so we're familiar with the area and its stakeholders. We specialize in healthcare, teaching hospitals, high rises, corporate centers, and higher education.

The A/E team that won the contract can expect to see maybe 4.5%-6.5% of the $251 million budget, so the design fee will be roughly $12-$15 million which gets split between more than a dozen professions - structural engineers, architects, geotechnical engineers, etc. It's the kind of money that allows you to expand your office and hire additional staff.

Submitting for these RFQ's is a gamble. They consume a lot of time and energy that could go towards billable work. I personally put in well over 160 hours for this proposal and there were multiple people who worked with me. The document we produced is 290 pages and was coordinated between sixteen separate consulting firms. The submission required multiple physical copies in addition to electronic copies that had to be couriered over to the CCC's headquarters. All of this is done at our expense. We aren't reimbursed for anything. I would conservatively place the cost to my firm, not including the cost to our consultants, at well over $10,000 and probably closer to $20,000 or more. To be clear, we are aware that this is a gamble and typically only go after jobs that we think we are highly qualified for and have a good chance of winning.

We were selected for a call back after the initial submission, so we had to produce yet another set of booklets and show up for an interview. This requires more preparation, more printing, and more hours. We then had a second call back that was followed by more questions:

"Does your firm have enough people for a job of this size?"

"We have nineteen people in our office and we've partnered with another firm that is similarly sized. We also plan to hire additional staff." And the truth is that today's software (BIM, Revit) is so powerful that really this project could be done by maybe less than ten people in our office if they worked on it full time. We've designed buildings that were many times this size (Water Tower Place, Prudential Plaza/Tower, Old Orchard Shopping Center, etc.)

"Your team is very diverse but what about your firm?"

Crickets. How do you tell a review committee that your firm went from roughly 65 people to nineteen in the matter of a couple years? Architecture is feast or famine and right now we're starving. We used to be diverse and to some degree we still are. We're just not the kind of diverse they're looking for.

It was announced (source) that Moody Nolan, a firm based in Columbus, Ohio, won the contract. Their Chicago office has nine people (related). They also happen to be the largest African American owned architecture firm in the US; a fact that both the mayor and CCC are very proud of.

Moody Nolan is qualified to do the work and I harbor no ill will towards them, but why did the CCC pick a non-Chicago based firm? Especially since they keep touting how many jobs the project will bring to the Chicago area. Why did they question our size if they picked a firm that's local office is less than half of our size? This contract is for design development and construction documents (the design was done by Canon Design) so it will have to be handled locally with feet on the ground. Why did they question the racial makeup of our firm if we exceeded the MBE/WBE requirement (25% minority, 7% female) by almost three-fold? Are you really telling me they couldn't find a qualified architecture firm in Chicago?

I call shenanigans.

Many of the RFQ's we submit for are to some extent a ploy. The agencies asking for them are largely going through the process to satisfy legal requirements, but then choose not the most qualified firm but the one that fits whatever profile it is that they're looking for. And that's to be expected, but don't drag us along and waste our time and money. We don't have any to spare.

After the announcement my firm had a very terse Monday morning meeting. We were told that five people would be laid off by the end of the day and everyone else's hours would be cut by 20%. Just fourteen more people and an almost century old Chicago architecture firm will be out of business.

Where Did All the Real Republicans Go?

For the past several years I've been increasingly concerned about the change in course of the GOP. They have a different ideology than myself, and that's fine. In fact I think it's necessary for a healthy political process, but it seems like they're making up their own reality. All the while I've been worried that the change was not in fact with the GOP but perhaps my own biases... maybe? So what to do/think.

Historically when I think of Republicans this is what I think of:

I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. -David Frum

And although I don't entirely agree, I find it to be a reasonable position. It does one no good to only read things that they agree with - it's intellectual incestuousness. So for a while I've been searching for a voice on the right that I could actually listen to. Someone who held a different viewpoint than myself, but who actually lived in reality. It seems that person is David Frum - a former Bush speech writer, prominent blogger and writer, and Harvard Law Grad. Here are two of his pieces that I've found very helpful.

The first piece of his I read was this one: Were Our Enemies Right? which if you have to read only one thing this month please read this - it's short and dead on. First he brings up an example from Susan Sontag:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader’s Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

The point is of course that liberals were entirely wrong about the realities of communism. It was corrupt, people starved, and once great nations were reduced to ineffectual countries that hurt generations of its citizens. Argue all you want about the idea of communism but it just didn't work. As Frum says, "You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts." So he puts a new spin on this for our modern day economic situation:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

Frum has more or less been shunned by his conservative peers for saying such things just as Sontag was booed loudly by her liberal crowd. Krugman is reviled by the right and he can often be a little shrill to my own ears, but the guy just keeps being right... it's actually kind of shocking.

Anyways, Frum has a new article about the direction of the GOP entitled When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality? It's a bit long but it's entirely worth it. I'm interested to hear what people think. He says a lot of things I've been thinking for years but had no credibility in saying as I'm not associated with that ideology.

Affordable Healthcare Act Explained

I hesitated to watch this since it ran about 9 minutes long but it was actually very good and informative.

The Koch Brothers

This article by Malcolm Gladwell is well worth the long read. It gives a really good look into the long game played by certain libertarian/very right of center very wealthy individuals - in this case the Koch brothers.

Readings From Monday

This is a free movie produced by a group of two guys called the Yes Men. Basically they find ways to trick event promoters, journalists, and talk show hosts into believing that they represent some company. They then go on to embarrass the company by revealing truths, stating positions that make sense but that the company themselves would never agree to, or just straight up comedy. At the very least watch the first 10 minutes or so.

Economists View via Krugman (seem to be reading a lot of him lately... yet he's so accurate and great at representing data) - why the climate bill was killed.

The Big Picture explains why deficits don't matter much to bond holders which is kind of an explanation of what Krugman would call the invisible bond vigilantes. thirty year bond notes are still below 3%... Also, AMAZING graphic on federal income and expenditures.



(Explanation of what I'm talking about - bonds being below 3% means that EVERYONE is willing to lend the US government money because they view it as safe. This goes somewhat counter to the idea being promulgated by conservatives that as the government amasses more debt bond buyers will at some point be completely unwilling to lend the government money and bond prices will soar and we will be unable to finance our expenditures - i.e. Greece. My own addition to this is that the US government enjoys a position of lender of last resort to the world - that is - if we default the world we know will cease to exist. It will make the Great Depression look like a shallow recession. It's like the Supreme Court, it's not that they're infallible, they're infallible because they're the highest court in the land.)

The Big Picture on net worth on as percentage of disposable income.



Algae as a biofuel seems to be nearing the possibility stage.

The biggest story of the day - wikileaks published 77,000 reports from Afghanistan that give a different view of the war then what is generally portrayed.

This is a must read: Martin Wolf, a British economist, explains supply side economics or rather the failure of along with a host of other scientifically broken models that politicians love to tout. Scarey. Here's Krugmans simple take down of supply side economics.

Nanosecond market trading pushes the envelope of internet speeds for all.

Readings #2

Want to try out a Leica M9 for a few hours? Go to NYC... damnit.

Hawaii puts the kabash on "birthers" (people who think President Obama is not a natural-born US citizen) because they're burdening the health department with all their requests. Even the right is embarrassed, and this is coming from people who expect you to be bad at math to buy the party line.

Interesting design company in Brooklyn called RockPaperRobot.

Life on earth has one common ancestor. Not to say that life on earth only arose once but rather that life does in fact (by odds of about 100,000 to 1) share a family tree and not a web.

Apparently 3-D TV's are coming out soon. The real lesson here is more that technology is changing at an increasing rate, so much so that at some point consumers are going to face interesting dillemas towards adopting new technology. A common theme in history is the adoption of new technology and how this effects societies, economies, etc., but a common occurance I'm noticing is that change is so quick now that we have a hard time adjusting. Architects barely learn a program before it is obsolete. We purchase technology that is obsolete within months and years (my laptop is 3 years old and it can barely run the newest software I put on it), and we train for jobs that are no longer needed well before we are middle aged. I'm not sure where this all points but it's interesting none the less.

A company called Square has just released an application and (free) hardware (plugs into your headphone jack and is tiny) that will allow you to process credit cards on either an iphone or android based system. The fees are 2.75% + 15 cents or 3.5% + 15 cents if the card isn't present. This should make splitting lunch bills easier. I've always wondered when we will get rid of tangible money and use something similar to this, but probably less cumbersome regardless of the fact that this system is fairly light. Imagine just a fob that you can run across someone elses phone then you type an amount into your phone and they accept. Anyways, I doubt tangible money will die off for a long time, people are clingy and hate change (seriously, read that article - no pun intended). There are multiple lobbies and advocacy groups in Washington that make sure pennies and nickels get minted even though they cost 2 and 9 cents respectively to make. The advocacy groups think that changing the material of pennies will somehow decrease their value. Hey interest group - fiat money system. It's all based on confidence. This isn't even worth writing about, it's just sad that we are so encumbered by bureaucracy and interest groups/lobbyists and inability to make logical non-political decisions that we continue wasting out time with pennies, nickels, dollar bills and tangible money in general (although I don't advocate abandoning it just yet... but steps should be taken to start). Getting rid of the first two and making the other a coin would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Plus, no more stupid pennies.

Videos from The Onion

They're all oddly political and make their point quite well.


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?


White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase


Obama Axes Pentagon Plan To Build Billion Dollar Tank In Shape Of Dragon


9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Picturequote

"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green." - Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele

Hilarious and kind of scary... Here's why they're actually named as such.

This image has nothing to do with anything, I just like it. This is the view off my rooftop.

Cut Taxes or Raise Spending

First, I read this article about the White House's proposal to strengthen the economy. Which of course is a big trick (it's a small article, go read it). It forced me to think about the fact that presidents in general face similar problems and have less of an influence in solving these problems than most Americans think... but I feel like I've mentioned that repeatedly.

That being said the House and Senate are both drafting and voting on stimulus bills. I found myself a bit apathetic yesterday after I heard that not a single republican had signed the bill in the House. The vote was 244 to 188, with 11 democrats and all the republicans voting against it. The republicans reasoning was that they wanted more tax cuts. Hm...

This is one of those counter intuitive phenomenons that pains me every time I hear it. To stimulate the economy government has two options; cut taxes or raise spending. This is called fiscal policy. They both work, but cutting taxes is more politically popular while raising spending tends to be more effective. In the end they really have the same outcome. If you keep the same taxes but spend more you incur debt. While if you keep spending the same and cut taxes you... incur debt. And cutting government spending at a time like this has the opposite effect, so this whole "size of government" debate that centers around fiscal policy is silly. Here's the thing, if you cut taxes it takes a while before people see any gain. Also, this would seem to benefit those who pay the most in taxes. Which isn't really the point (man I sound like a socialist!). If spending is increased that money goes into the economy almost instantly, and better yet it has multiplier effects. Say the government chooses to spend an extra dollar on energy research. Okay, a university gets a grant, they pay the professor, the professor buys lab equipment, the equipment company buys more supplies, hires more people, etc. It's basically the opposite of what is happening in our economy right now that is causing people to lose their jobs. Of course, some smart people disagree. He's got a point too. Governments do tend to waste money, and I kind of wonder if taxing people less is inherently more efficient due to the dead weight loss of income received from taxes. One thing that is agreed upon is that one of the two or some combination there of needs to happen quickly.

That's why I got upset yesterday. It's just so sad. People are going to lose houses, jobs, and marriages over this and our political system still can't work together. I am convinced that politicians know this stuff. I mean, I do and most of my economics teachers were fairly conservative. Politicians often won't act on what they know is right because it's unpopular. I understand that, but can't you explain to your constituents a better reasoned approach to the problem?

Randomly, this is Obama's speech concerning this plan. FWIW Whitehouse.gov is pretty awesome.

Obama's Workforce

Obama's workforce of volunteers and his supporter list are fast becoming coveted commodities.

One of my friends, who worked in Obama's new media department, is now part of a group that gets to decide what to do with all that information. More specifically, this group is trying to figure out what to do with this highly trained group of volunteers and the biggest donor list in history.

I think the biggest issue is attrition. A lot of people just aren't going to care now that their man got elected. You have to think a lot of peoples' motives for being involved in this election was that they hated the Bush administration. It would be interesting to know how many people stay engaged in the coming months and years. I thought some sort of forum/blog community type website would be appropriate. Then ask experts to weigh in on given issues and write opposing arguments. Then readers could be given some sort of mechanism to vote and further discuss said issues. There's really more to say here than I care to type, but at the end of the day whatever this becomes it should create transparency and a sense of belonging to a community.

If you have any ideas of your own please post them up. If they're good enough I'll pass them on.

Links

Bush's soon to be disclosed illegal wiretaps.

Paul Krugman, the latest Nobel Memorial Prize winner in economics, on what Obama needs to do. The Nobel Memorial Prize in economics isn't actually linked to the original Nobel Prize. Both are worth reading if you weren't already aware.

The best article I've seen yet on the Houdini Project. The last 3 or 4 paragraphs are the relevant ones.

Operating systems (finally) get smaller.

Houdini Project

This was sent to me via another Obama worker concerning our progress on the Houdini Project.

Basically so many people were using the phone system to call in their polling places numbers that it was dragging down the system and crashed/was killed. Heres my conversation with another Obama worker:

me: yea it's been confusing. here's the actual deal.

the phone system did in fact go down, it was dragging down the internal phone system so they killed it around 11am

Sent at 2:33 PM on Tuesday

me: colorado started calling us saying wtf? stop undermining our system... states have been implementing their own system of getting the data to the field workers. theres a websitewatch4barack.com or they can go to their field organizer/boiler room

so since then we've returned to our regular mission of just catching typos and wrong information input and calling the poll watchers and telling them to resubmit their data

Sent at 2:35 PM on Tuesday

me: some places are just more organized than others. there's definitely a lot of info falling through the cracks, but every number i call and get ahold of someone is another 50-300 voters knocked off the list to narrow the sights of the ground team... i'd say we're fairly effective.

christopher: that's more or less what i figured

mostly i just wanted to let you know that you were famous

me: haha

EDIT: The phones (IVR) are back up.

Obama HQ

I've been here since about 5 in the AM. Ick.

I'm working on a project that knocks voters off the ground team's list once they've voted. This campaign is pretty incredable. They've thought of just about everything and they are efficient, well staffed, well funded, and smart. The few hundred people in this office have done a lot to increase the efficiency of the overall campaign to levels that have never before been seen. They are squeezing ever little bit of efficiency out of everything they've got.

This place is really cool.

Interesting Weekend

I have no idea what the focus of this blog is. I think it's morphing into some pseudo diary ranting Nietzsche quote posting forum inhabited by me and read by few. Moving on...

I finally got to see The Kings of Leon at the Aragon Ballroom on Halloween. It was awesome.


Been meaning to do this for a while. This was a poster in the library of South Park Elementary. I laughed so hard when I saw it I just couldn't not make this shirt.


My friend and former coach works for Obama, so I've gotten the chance to volunteer at the head quarters in Chicago on election day... uh yea, pretty psyched. Anyways, I went there for some sort of training and a tour. It's pretty awesome. It's more or less exactly what you'd expect it to look like. Barack stickers, pins, posters everywhere. It's basically a bunch of young, impressive, fun, workaholics doing some really clever stuff. I really really hope they don't steal my camera on Tuesday.

Why I Hate Politics

Or more specifically, why I hate talking about it with people. If they agree with your views then generally you just nod your head a lot and reinforce one anothers' views. If you talk to Hass, you probably learn something. If on the other hand you talk to my dad you get acquainted with a brick wall.

It was the end of the workday and as I was leaving my father and brother were talking about taxes and the election. Naturally my dad fears his taxes being increased by a democrat. Even though Obama's plan for taxes is essentially a more graduated income tax system. Which isn't an insane idea when the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing. Those making about $250,000 will pay more, and if the free market hasn't graced you quite as much you will pay less. Pretty simple, yet McCain has spun this into a tax increase that strikes fear into the hearts of the very people Obama is trying to help.

One such person is my dad. I assume there is a double digit percentage of americans who share the same feelings as he does. Once I explained the differing positions on taxes of both candidates he responded with, "Which tax plan is this one? If a democrat is in office I can't see how my taxes won't go up." Why are the republicans so good at politics? They fool the very people they then screw over, and they do it under the guise of free market/laissez faire views which infuriates me.


Pretty simple stuff. Under McCain everyone pays less. Under Obama over 95% of people pay less. The number of people who make over $250,000 per year is less than 5%. In fact, the bottom half of income earners pay about 3% of the federal income tax, so why not give them a break? It won't cost the government much and they'll spend the money which has all sorts of multiplier effects. So why, under McCain's plan, do the rich get a bigger break? The top 1% pays 40% of the federal income tax. A large burden certainly, but aren't they profiting off the backs of those beneath them and within our great economic system?

The numbers on the vertical (y) axis show how many more times a certain income group earns per year as opposed to another income group. In 2005 if you were in the top 95% of US income earners you earned 3.6 times as much as someone in the 50% range. Someone at the 50% range earns about 2.4 times as much as someone at the 20% range. This later finding has remained stable for at least he last 40 years while the former has been growing and continues to grow even now.

Income inequality is pretty bad for a society. I'm not really a big fan of income redistribution; as a graduated income tax system is, but I can't think of a more fair mechanism. In the above linked freakonomics article William Bernstein offers that "Wealth does trickle down to the rest of the population, but often not fast enough to avoid political strife and worse." And the classic Alfred Maynard Keynes quote explains why sometimes the government must step in, "Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

Articles

This first one is a but long, but it's a great look into open-source hardware. I had no idea such a thing existed. It seems that any product or forum that utilizes user generated content comes up with incredibly original ideas at a break neck pace.

For those of you who have been living under a rock this is Blackwater. I was unaware that there was as much controversy about them. There are all sorts of links on that video's page that are worth watching. I started researching them a bit after I had a privatization debate with a friend. Although I tend to lean towards the side of privatization on many issues the military is certainly not one of them. Here's how much Bush knows about them. Scary...

Cops are racist... who knew?

Take it Thoreau. I read the other day that while living at Walden pond, which was near town and his family home, he would often go home on weekends to raid the cookie jar. So much for seclusion.

What I read Today

Links -

For Evan. Q&A: World of Warcraft Lead Producer J. Allen Brack and references in WOW.

The Smart Car has competition. $15k or less, 56 MPG (diesel), and fits 4 people.

If you follow the financial holocaust or whatever this is a really good read on solutions.

Tech stances for the presidential candidates.

Wiki of the Day -

Sparta is one of the most fascinating societies ever to have existed. It might be the best fairy tale/war story, if such a thing exists, ever. And it's nonfiction.