Eric Reasons

Maureen Dowd follows the litany of professional chattering class members thumbing their noses at Twitter . In an oh-so-clever twist, she interviews Biz Stone and Evan Williams, creators of Twitter, in a format that allows for only 140 characters in the questions or answers. (She even used the same title as one of my blog posts on the same subject , which probably means I wasn't being clever enough.) It's one of her more insipid articles, second only in recent memory to the article asking whether Michelle Obama should stop showing off her biceps . Why did you think the answer to e-mail was a new kind of e-mail? Fritinancy gives an excellent sendup of Ms. Dowd's article , rewriting it was if Dowd was interviewing Alexander Graham Bell. Why did you think the answer to telegrams was a noisy new telegram? Read Maureen Dowd, then read Fritinancy. Too good.

I'm about to break the fourth wall, here. Something I specifically avoid most of the time on this blog, but this example is just too good not to document. Forgive me just this once, but I'm going to mention my day job . I get home from work today, and I hit my RSS feeds in Google Reader. Most of these are typical subscriptions, but a few are Google-driven blog searches. The one that searches blog posts for mention of "The Henry Ford" (where I am the network engineer), strikes this post on Re*Move . The first line? Joe and I have decamped this week quite a lot to the cafe in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, because the wifi's so much faster than the Dearborn Inn, where we've been staying. Hehe. You're welcome fellas. They go on to say: Proving the power of Twitter to get people together, we tweeted we were here and yesterday were soon joined by Carrie Nolan, a PR manager from the museum, who came to say hi and tell us how things are going. Chec...

Martin Belam, Information Architect for the Guardian, UK, on the principles guiding the Guardian's online presence: That URLs should be PERMANENT, that all content should be uniquely ADDRESSABLE, that multiple routes to content make everything DISCOVERABLE, and that everything should be as OPEN as possible. Looks like he's promoting Jeff Jarvis' model of searchability, Search Engine Optimization, and making the site as easy to search, link, and share as possible. This philosophy should guide all Internet Development, everywhere. Particularly for information rich sites like news organizations. These principles maximize your chances of landed on the coveted first page of search engine results. Read the whole piece here .

I've been watching must of the post-game analysis on the nationwide Tea Parties this week, and I'm a little embarrassed for the Media. Someone has to be embarrassed for them, because they themselves are pretty shameless. Red Eye had a nice send-up of CNN and MSNBC's adolescent humor: CNN's Susan Roesgen went after protesters with the MoveOn.org talking points memo in hand. I expect this crap from MSNBC, but CNN? On the flipside over at Fox News, the network is quick to jump on the coattails of the movement, and all but take credit for it. Neil Cavuto hit the Sacramento Tea Party, and Sean Hannity decided to take his show to the Tea Party in Atlanta. Newt Gingrich joined him from the one in New York. The Republican party, starved for leadership and a message is trying to glom onto this movement. But RNC Chairman Michael Steele was allegedly rebuffed by the Chicago Tea Party organizers. This attention from conservative media led some of the liberal (nay, mainstream) medi...

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. This is traditionally a very busy time at my job, and I've got a few side projects that have been sucking up some time as well. When you live in Michigan in this economy, you never *ever* complain about having too much work... Also, today is my 34th birthday, and I've been squeezing in some celebration time with friends and loved ones, making sure that these 34 years have been actual *living*, not just *surviving*. I have not, as some have joked, "gone underground" due to the Department of Homeland Security report out this week that may consider my "Internet Chatter" in favor of free markets indicative of my right-wing extremism. :-) (Incidentally, DHS, I am pro-choice, pro gay marriage, pro open borders, and non-interventionist in foreign policy.) I have many posts brewing for your reading pleasure, including: * Reflections on Alexis de Tocqueville and Erich Fromm (!?!) * A love-filled missive on why I think that t...

I often write of the unintended consequences of government intervention in markets. Most of these unintended consequences stem from regulations (or selective de-regulation) that results in a government putting its thumb on the scales of the market, and distorting real prices. The general mechanism is as follows: 1) Price is determined in the market for a given good. 2) The price for this good is too high for some people to pay. 3) The government wishes these people to have that good as well, and creates a subsidy for these people to acquire the good. 4) The price of the good rises, because it is guaranteed a market based on the subsidy, establishing a new, higher, baseline price for the good. 4a) The more desirable the good, the more likely it is that the increase in price will match the increase in subsidy. Thus pricing more people out of the market for it, and creating more need for government subsidy. 5) Go to step 1. ---They Can Have Any Color They Want, So Long As It's Green-...

A few weeks back, I posted a link to Sen. Rockefeller flubbing his way through a speech on cybersecurity where he says "It almost makes you ask the question, 'Would it have been better if we had never invented the Internet?'" Sen. Rockefeller(D-W. Virginia) and Sen. Snowe(R-Maine) introduced a bill on April 1 called "The Cybersecurity Act of 2009". Rockefeller is concerned that "critical infrastructure" could be harmed in Internet attacks. I agree with Jim Harper over at the Cato Institute , that this is a reason to keep key infrastructure off the Internet--something most financial institutions, water and sewer services, and electrical grid operators already do. But in the Washington Post , Rockefeller says: "People say this is a military or intelligence concern, but it's a lot more than that, it suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity." Instead of arguing that key physical infrastru...