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Monday, September 12, 2005
Perspective 
| | The President's eventual words of assurance and steely resolve didn't convince me of anything other than his need to express them — and our need to hear them as well. |
| | Now, by Evan Thomas in Newsweek: |
| | How this could be — how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century — is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace. |
A proud Pop reports
Countdown
Customer swervice
| | Bills for one of my credit cards for two months have been going to an address in Texas (where, according to Google Maps, there appears to be a parking lot). Fraudulent charges were made on the card, all in July. The credit card company hasn't been forthcoming with information about how this happened, although they did cancel the fraudulent charges and issue a new card. Meanwhile, a number of monthly charges made against that card need to be corrected. So right now I'm listening to music-on-hold from Verizon on one line (half an hour so far) and Dot*DomainRegistration on the other (ten minutes so far). |
| | Meanwhile I'm just wondering how somebody could get into my account and change the address (the card company doesn't want to give me their guesses); and if the bad guys have possibly done caused other damage I don't know about. Yet. Any ideas? |
| | [Later...] Still on hold with Verizon. At about the :45 minute point a Spanish voice came on, then put us on hold again for an English-speaker. Still waiting. "We're sorry. All of our representatives are still busy. You'll hear music until your call is answered," a loud voice on the speakerphone just said. At least the music volume is just above silence. Kind of like the rest of Verizon, I suspect. |
| | [Later still...] We're past an hour now. They just changed the music. Lots of static and distortion. Sounds like they're poorly tuned to a faraway radio station. |
| | Now it's 1:15 on hold. Glad I still have a fax line I can use to call some of these other numbers. |
| | At 1:24, they're playing "You've lost that loving feeling." |
| | At 1:38, we gave up. Needed the phone for useful calls. |
| | Later I tried the website again. It wouldn't take my password, so I tried another browser. That time it worked. While I was able to add one service (callerID), I was unable to subtract Complete Blocking. I left a message. We'll see what happens. I'm not holding my breath. |
| | Later still, I got an email from Verizon that repeats in text the put-off so often heard in recorded voice: |
| | Due to high volumes, you may experience a delayed response. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. |
Lineup
Spotted
| |  I was too busy with family stuff to blog the fact that a solar flare blasted from Sunspot 798 on September 7 was expected to push the auroral halo down (or up, Down Under) over lands that don't normally see bright colorful lights in the sky, on September 11: last night. Well, the flare turned out to be one of the brightest ever recorded, and the results can now be seen in this gallery here, in case you missed them in the sky. Shots were taken in Cape Cod, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Wisconsin and elsewhere. According to Spaceweather.com, there's a 75% chance of more flares coming in the next 24 hours, so be on the lookout tonight as well. Here's the page to watch for live coverage. |
| | Solar flares aren't always pretty, by the way. They can cause radio blackouts and worse. |
| | Right now (night in Russia and getting there in the Baltic regions), it looks like there is strong auroral activity (level 10). Days are still trend longer than nights in the far Northern lattitudes, but viewing should still be good. If the level stays high tonight, viewing may be possible over Canada and much of the U.S. Remember that the aurora is a curtain of light as much as a thousand miles high. That means sightings can happen from Bermuda to San Diego. |
Public futility
| | David Isenberg: I think I've got it. Qwest is saying, "What's our traffic, generated by your city government, doing on your city network?" Clearly the city network is interfering with Qwest's Freedom to Connect to its (putatively wholly owned) customers. |
Talking markets
| | So what is really going on in a market is a transaction of authority; and all of those transactions are, at root, efforts to hold onto or increase one's rank in the hierarchy of the society the activity takes place in. It is not a social activity that has the pleasure or enjoyment of the mutual exchange of attention, which is what a conversation is about, as its fundamental objective. To the extent that conversation takes place, it is to facilitate that exchange of authority - to make the sale. It is most often to seek an advantage, which may or may not be a fair one. And from this effort to seek advantage, the aphorism caveat emptor derives its meaning. |
| | So, if we grant that Dave is right to emphasise the self-interested authority-building nature of what vendors do (and what customers should be wary of) in markets, is that all there is to them? |
| | I'd like to add that the intent behind that phrase was to remind us that before markets were arenas, battlefields, demographics, geographic sectors, bulls, bears, invisible hands, or jungles where the only laws that matter are the ones that reward self-interest and favor the top of the food chain, they were were public places where people gathered to do business and make culture. |
| | I'm glad Dave is on the case here, because it's important to examine what we mean when we talk about markets. Especially since we have, with the Net, a place where markets are far different than they were when production ruled consumption and supply ruled demand (a condition without which supply would not have had the control over distribution and pricing that has prevailed since the price tag was invented in the late 1800s). Big suppliers still rule in many ways, but the power balance is changing — along with methods for exercizing that power. |
| | Chief among those methods is communication. The Powers that Were are no longer the only ones with the power to communicate, influence and change culture as well as prices. Look how the market for (actually the category of) photography has changed, thanks not only to what Nikon, Sony, Canon and Flickr have done, but to what any of us can do with tagging. |
| | The Net has changed many things, but not every thing, and not in the same ways. What's new, and what has and hasn't changed, are all important to talk about. |
eSkype? sBay?
| | Thanks to Sean Bonner for the tip. Sez Sean, Hell, I'd take the $1.3B and walk. |
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