I’m currently designing a fairly complex piece of software at work, and have to collaborate intensely with 2 colleagues about all decisions, and a number of colleagues about various subsets of the project.

In the process of design, I had a small, very obvious realization that profoundly affects the productivity and pace of our discussions:  start with what’s good.

I notice that when our meetings devolve into bickering, nitpicking, distraction, or one of the myriad of antiproductive patterns that meetings and discussions are prone to, there is generally a great deal of overlap in our apparently oppositional stances, but people are focusing on the contentious points rather than the what they all agree on.

Consider:  Colleague 1 proposes a design pattern (P1) for use for a particular pattern.  Another Colleage 2 says “no that’s the wrong pattern for this because of bla bla bla”.    C2 is technically correct.  There are a number of flaws in how C1 has expressed his suggestion, but if one takes the time to sketch out the class diagrams and write out what will actually happen during thread execution, one sees that the class-structure imposed by the pattern is indeed a good fit, even if it doesn’t fit all the characteristics the pattern implies. 

If you nitpick about everything that’s wrong about the idea you get away from the productive part of the discussion, you’re likely to raise the other colleague’s temper and it rapidly becomes unlikely that any productive work gets done.  If you start out with a discussion like “okay, what are you thinking of here, how would it work, okay yeah I see what you mean… but you know the term <whatever> is maybe not completely accurate here because of <whatever>, but who cares, the idea is a good one” then you can switch the detail points that you want to fix, but you’ve established some common ground, you’ve made your colleague feel like you appreciate their input and their intellect, and you’ve established a productive, friendly tone that makes the colleague receptive to constructive criticism.

Further, if you are actually wrong in your nitpicking, you come across as less of an asshole.

All this seems really trivial, but it’s amazing how rarely it actually gets practiced.

I had a teachable moment this morning. I was on my way to work. On the train I was working on my laptop, writing a rebutall to the asinine, wrong, and wrong headed coding policies some of my colleagues are trying to get accepted as coding standards within the company. This is a stressful activity to me, and gets me fairly
tense and agitated internally.

As the train halted at my stop, I stood back and waited for a man to help a woman get her baby carriage off the train. I was slightly miffed when someone standing next to me took this as an opportunity to shoulder between me and said carriage in order to et off the train faster. In this tense, agitated and slightly miffed frame of mine I took the first stair off the train. A young man was trying to shoulder his way up the train despite the fact that there were
still a number of people debarking the train.

Because of my frame of mind, I guess I was feeling a little confrontational. I certainly felt some anger well up in my chest as I put my hand on his chest and said (in english) “you should wait until everyone is finished getting off the train”. I was tensed and ready for a confrontation.

Instead, the young man said “Oh entschuldigung, thank you” and stepped back off the train. My first reaction was guilt and shame for being so angry at such a nice man. My second was relief that I hadn’t been ruder or more confrontational. If he has a generous heart (and evidence would indicate that this is the case), he might interpret my actions as firm but polite, even if I was being an confrontational asshole on the insde.

My final reaction was a warm feeling of gratitude. The gentleman in question behaved exactly as I strive to behave (even though I was behaving badly). Often when I preach that kind of behavior, I’m told I’m naiive or idealistic. So it was
nice to have an encounter where another person to behave exemplary.

Obama suggests (I paraphrase of course) “ok, let’s cut Medicare and Social Security to get rid of the deficit, but at the same time let’s start taxing the millionaires at the same levels we did before Bush”.  The Republicans cry out “It’s class warfare!”.  Obama strikes back:  “It’s not class warfare, it’s common sense”.   Mitt Romney thinks the wall-street occupation is “dangerous”.  He calls it “class warfare”.

Of course it’s class warfare.  Somewhere, probably on a sign at a labor rally in the 20’s or 30’s, I have seen a sign saying “They only call it class warfare when we fight back.”.  Finally, after some 30 years of brutal class warfare, America’s beleaguered and beaten working class has begun to awaken and react.   In a desperate attempt to rally the fear of communism Republicans are crying out class warfare.  Both Republicans and Democrats pay lip-service to some ephemeral concept they call the “middle class”, which has all but disappeared from the American landscape.  If you look at their actions however, both the Republicans and Democrats are defending the interests of the ownership classes.  Obama just wants them to make small gesture of compromise, so he can effectively convince us (the working classes) that it is not class warfare.

To properly understand the battle-lines here, we need to understand that the class lines are not between the middle class, upper class, and lower class.  These are disgusting terms on principle, and aren’t helpful in framing discussions and solutions.  The true class lines are between the working class and the owning class.   While there is some merit to using terms like “moneyed elites” to describe the principle antagonists in this conflict, I prefer the ownership class.  This is the group of people who believe they should make their income, their living, by virtue of owning things.   Once the owning classes owned slaves.  Then they owned factories and businesses.  In both these cases there was at least a minimal interest in protecting the value of their capital:  keeping their slaves, and later their factories and wage slaves alive and healthy enough to provide them with lifestyles and prestige they enjoyed.   Now they own capital, and in today’s age of mobile capital, there is little to no interest in protecting these working classes, and boy does it show.

We need to construct a society in which managers are recognized as another form of working class, working to keep social structures and industries functioning.  They should be payed their worth, which might be a little more than a good janitor (10 times?  12 times?) — but certainly not 500 times the value of the work done by the scientists, engineers, and skilled laborers producing the actual products resulting from their labors.

Through a happy accident of history, we in America have a relatively democratic form of government, which gives us, the citizenry a certain amount of power to control how our society has been organized.  For many years our country became more and more democratic, thanks to the hard work and sometimes bloody sacrifices of working classes.  It’s been all downhill since Reagan though, whether Democrats or Republicans were steering things.  There have always been at least two mechanisms of decision making in America, the democratic principle (one person one vote), and the capitalist one (one dollar one vote).  Since Reagan the nation has moved, sometimes faster sometimes slower, in the direction of capitalism and away from democracy.  Things have gotten so critical now that we have taken inspiration from Egypt, and attempt to bring democracy to the USA.

So I say bravo.  Yes it’s class warfare.  Yes we are fighting back.  It’s those of us who work for a living — whether we sit at a desk or stand at a workbench, against those who collect dividends off the labor of others.  We are fighting for the principle of democratic processes, over the principle of financial processes deciding the course of human progress.  The political class is far too allied with the owning classes.  Capital plays far too large a role in our electoral processes, which have never been sufficiently democratic in the first place.  In our workplaces (for those of us fortunate enough to have work) where we spend the majority of our waking hours, democratic principles scarcely play a role.  Wall street however plays a very large and direct role, regardless of where you live.

I live in Switzerland, where I enjoy the fruits of a democracy much stronger and more direct than America has enjoyed since the white man wiped out the Iroquois.   If my heart and courage were strong enough to follow my convictions, I would fly to New York and at least stay till my vacation time ran out (which is 5 weeks a year, imagine that!).  Thus far however I am too much of a coward.  I am afraid of losing the comfort and privilege I enjoy, even though I know you, not the owners of my employers, are the ones defending that comfort.  So I apologize for my cowardice.

All of you participating in the American spring, my hat is off to you.  I feel guilt and shame that I am not with you in body, but I am with you in spirit.

There is a simple and vital aspect of America’s strategies regarding undocumented workers, which is scarcely reported on but should be understood by anyone attempting to form an opinion on the subject. 

Nearly all legislation, and indeed nearly all debate on undocumented workers in America focuses on how to handle the undocumented workers themselves.  Employers of undocumented workers face scarcely any sanction for doing this.  This results in an incentive for employers to hire undocumented workers, as well as leverage for them to exploit those workers.  The harder the punishment for undocumented workers in America, the more leverage the employers have.  This gives employers power to drive wages down, violate worker safety laws, and engage in unfair practices.  It takes power from the working classes, whether they are documented or not.

All members of the working classes should fight for stronger punishment for companies or individuals hiring undocumented workers.  This is the policy, for example, which Switzerland follows.  It makes it extremely difficult to get work illegally as it simply is not worth the risk for the companies or individuals who might otherwise consider hiring an undocumented worker.    It’s cheaper than all the ridiculous crap the U.S. does to keep Mexicans out, and infringes less on our human and constitutional rights.

If you are wondering why American politicians don’t consider such solutions, you should ask yourself whose interests they are actually fighting for.

I find it impossible to avoid commenting on Texas Governor Rick Perry.   Recently engaged in a question and answer session with a fourth-grader, he was asked how old the earth was.  He replies that:

In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools, because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.

It’s like he’s in a contest with Bachmann to see who can out-idiot Bush.  Interestingly, the subtext, which is consistent with Perry’s gubernatorial record, is that schools are completely unnecessary because fourth-graders are clever enough to figure that stuff out.

President Obama rejected senior White House counsel when he decided to continue engagement in Libya without seeking approval from Congress. On PBS News Hour, Senator Harry Reid defended this action saying:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: The War Powers Act has no application to whats going on in Libya.

Jim Lehrer: None?

Senator Reid: I dont believe so. You know, we did an authorization for Afghanistan. We did one for Iraq. But we have no troops on the ground there, and this thing is going to be over before you know it anyway. So I think its not necessary.

While presidents have been pissing on the War Powers act since its inception, it’s hard not to get upset over this. First, whether we went through congress to authorize interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan has no relevance to the discussion at hand. It’s just noise. I’m reminded of the observation (I believe it’s from Orwell) that our “defense” organization is like a cuttlefish: it defends itself by spewing forth a cloud of ink. Of course in the modern world this is done over the television rather than in print, but it’s a good simile.

He goes on to say that the war powers act isn’t relevant here because

1. We have no ground troops in Libya
2. “This thing is going to be over before you know it anyway”

But the war powers act doesn’t restrict itself to ground troops, so the first point is irrelevant. The entire purpose of the war powers act is to specify a time limit to military engagement, above which the president must request congressional approval.  We have exceeded this time limit, so the war powers act is relevant.

I have to say, it’s distressing that a politician can come out on PBS and spew such utter and complete bullshit without being called on it.  Harry Reid should be drummed out office.  We should go ahead and impeach Obama.  Whether these guys are Democrats or Republicans is absolutely irrelevant to the issue, which is their abuse of power.  Frankly, as much as the Republicans hate Obama, we might finally have a chance of getting a president impeached for a real abuse of power, setting an important precident.

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defence, joined in the bullshitathon, sayin about Afghanistan:

<blockquote>

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: My own view is that real reconciliation talks are not likely to be able to make any substantive headway until at least this winter. I think that the Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure and begin to believe that they cant win, before theyre willing to have a serious conversation.

</blockquote>

Okay, we’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 10 years.   Mr. Gates feels like we need an additional 6 months before they will feel themselves under military pressure?  If they still feel like they can win after 10 years of U.S. assault,  if they are not “willing to have a serious conversation” after ten years of brutal bombing and attack from the worlds largest military force, what’ going to happen in the next six months to change that?

These statements should be compared to the bullshit spewed towards the end of our vicious, cruel and unjustified assault of Vietnam.  One might note that the bullshit is of very similar texture, color and smell.  The only difference is this stuff is fresh.

I was having a discussion about programming languages with a work colleague the other day. Like many people, he felt like restrictions of freedom were useful, making the points that apple’s iphone is better than android because of their walled garden approach, that Java is better than C++ because it prevents you from writing certain specific cases of retarded code (no matter what the language, you can write retarded code, don’t let anyone tell you differently), and that Japanese society works well because it has so few foreigners. While I list these points in unconnected fashion here, the connections were reasonable in the conversation, and I’m the one who pushed the metaphors. What I find enlightening in the conversation is how conditioned people are to accept authority and hierarchical power structures, and how this spreads across broad swaths of subject matter.

What blew me away was his observation that Japan has a well functioning society. While I’m sure Japanese society functions well by certain metrics I don’t think it’s fair to say it functions well, nor to arrive at the conclusion that the merits of Japanese society draw from the homogeneity of their culture.

In particular, since Fukushima Germany and Switzerland have made the decision to wean themselves off of nuclear power. Japan, suffering terribly from their disaster, prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, has not. This is a clear indication of a malfunctioning society, and indicates a lack of democracy in their institutions and power structure.

While the media and the pro-nuclear camp like to focus on the risks of disaster, nuclear power is gigantic crime against our children and the poorer elements of our society, even if the reactors run flawlessly. The pundits like to praise nuclear power as being clean and cheap, but this is for very specific definitions of clean, and an equally special accounting to arrive at cheap.

Just look at the waste, which is some of the most toxic stuff on earth. We have no idea how to deal with the waste we have already generated. How do they define that as clean? Well it produces no CO2, never mind the toxicity of the stuff. If clean is defined in terms of CO2 production, yeah, ok, it’s clean… but only a fool would accept such a definition. But hey it’s ok, we have the mafia to help us deal with the waste.

Want one metric of how democratic and well functioning your society is? Take a look at it’s attitude toward nuclear power.

I’m frequently appalled at how effectively the powers that be use language to manipulate people who should really know better. One day I should make a compendium of modern technical language, and how it is used. I remember when I read 1984, some 20 years ago, I didn’t immediately see how pervasive that manipulation of language is in our society. It’s important to remember that when Orwell wrote 1984 he was writing a parable not only about the Soviet Union, but about Britain as well. He was a leading critic of British empire and social policy, as well of the debasement of the English language by both the government and media that support them.

With that in mind, I’d like to list a few such “technical terms” that I noticed reading the NYT today:

• Stability This is a key word.  Whenever we justify our support for some brutal dictator or another, we inevitably justify this as being warranted because that tyrant is bringing “stability” to the region.  The word is quite telling, as we will use it even when the tyrannical rule is manifestly causing giant uprising, upheaval, even civil war in the region.  Stability in this sense means a stable distribution of power, with U.S. corporations getting the lions share.    Thus Mubarak was a stabilizing influence in the region and the citizens of Egypt demanding democracy were destabilizing, until of course it became clear that Mubarak’s tenure was untenable and we attempted to generate the impression we were on the side of the demonstrators all along.  This kind of dissembling is also telling — we aren’t fooling the people of Egypt, who see our duplicity for what it is.   This is unimportant as the intended audience — the American public — is far more gullible.  Stability is used to say “We follow this policy because it encourages stability”… the implication is that stability is good, therefore we should support the policy.  We are expected not to pay attention to what system is being made stable.
• Dynamism When we want to support a policy that leads to terrible instability, such as the shock-doctrine, we don’t call the chaos and instability that ensues instability.  When conditions are sufficiently bad that they can’t simply be painted over, we say the country or economy is in a period of adjustment.  The fundamental goal of course is a “dynamic”, responsive economy.  Dynamic is of course an antonym of stable.  Here we see that stability and security for working people is irrelevant.  In fact,  instability and insecurity for working people is desirable, because it brings more profit to the wealthy elites.  It is telling that the word is used identically to the use of stability.
• Intellectual Property This is another manipulative, loaded term.  For a good discussion consult articles on the subject by Richard M Stallman, or the Free Software Foundation.  Briefly though, the umbrella term “intellectual property” conflates a number of completely distinct concepts including copyright, trademark, and patent law.  These things have far less in common than they have in contrast, but they are routinely lumped together.  The reason such disparate subjects are grouped together in such a meaningless and confusing way is quite clear:  copyright, patent, and to a lesser extent trademark law have morphed into gargantuan legal constructs which overreach their original intent, and far from serving their original function actually work counter to their original purpose.    They have become a tool for large monopolists to control, restrict and parasitically profit from human creativity.  This distorts our culture and slows our progress as a society.  In particular the scope and implementation of copyright and patent law have reached such an egregious state they directly oppose our own common sense and innate sense of justice.  As a result, the oligarchies whose profligate lifestyles depends on the exploitation of people using these laws require a powerful system of propaganda to maintain their positions of power and wealth.  Since they control the media they have been largely successful in this.  One example is the campaigns that confuse copyright-violation and theft (two completely distinct things).   Another is the nearly ubiquitous use of the term “intellectual property” which serves two powerful roles:  First, by conflating unrelated issues it makes it far more difficult to have a meaningful discussion on the subject, and second it creates an association between copyright, trademark, and patents with actual property rights.

In the ass-kissing portion of his speech at the White House Correspondents dinner, the president said:

In the last months we’ve seen journalists threatened, arrested, beaten, attacked and in some cases even killed, simply for attempting to bring us the story. Give people a voice. Hold leaders accountable. And through it all we’ve seen daring men and women risk their lives for the simple idea that no-one should be silenced, and everyone deserved to know the truth.

Bravo Mr. President. I find it excellent that you recognize these vital principles. Now if you would only stop defending our arrest and ongoing torture of Bradley Manning, the informant that provided Wikileaks with documents detailing years of murder, lies, and betrayal by American leadership. You could also come out in defense of the wonderfully brave work being done by Wikileaks, the only journalistic entity brave enough to challenge our lie machine.

I personally think Manning should be released and decorated as a hero fighting for truth and freedom. He certainly deserves a medal more than George Bush does. Barring that, you could at least accord the guy the right to fair treatment, and a fair trial, before condemning him as a criminal.

I have a work colleague who essentially believes all of the basic assumptions that underlie the capitalist, social darwinist world that we live in. His reasoning is essentially panglossian. I find it fascinating that he constantly engages in me conversations where it must be clear to him that I have fundamental disagreements. I don’t know if he expects me validate his statements, but of course I don’t. Normally I try to keep my answers brief, and rely on provoking thought and asking questions rather than lengthy lectures. But doing so is much more challenging, and I often feel like I’m constantly being picked at. So on occasion I carefully go through the various faulty assumptions, faulty logic, and mistruths which are inherent in the beliefs he states as truisms.

In his defense, these truisms are ones you are likely to hear in any modern media outlet. In a corporate environment they are certainly uncontroversial.

Without going into detail, today I went into a lengthy discussion citing historical evidence that contradicts the assumption that people are inherently racist. Rather than argue on the basis of facts or logic, he made the statement that it’s a question of belief. I have my set of beliefs, he has his. But beliefs are not equal. You might believe the world is flat, that light does not have a constant velocity regardless of your frame or reference, that America has a vibrant democracy, that the moon is made of green cheese. This is fine. You are entitled to believe whatever you like. But you will still be wrong. The reason these beliefs are not co-equal is that all of these things are testable.

So you can formulate your belief in a god to the point where that belief is completely untestable. Then I can’t say anything, it’s a question of opinion. To maintain a set of beliefs in contradiction of evidence, to refuse to consider the implications of your beliefs, it’s intellectual cowardice. When that set of beliefs is used to maintain a set of personal ethics based on apathy and complicity with exploitation and inhumanity against your fellow man, well, that’s just plain unethical.