Kavanaugh: What does the FBI need to investigate?

How much investigating does the FBI need to do to determine that Kavanaugh is not suited to the US Supreme Court?

Exhibit #1: his 1 July calendar entry with the rather obvious smoking gun. Why would be be going for “skis” with a list of people Ford said were at the party if  she was mistaken about details or making it all up?

No way she could have seen the calendar in advance.

So I disagree with the need for the FBI to do much digging – there ARE facts backing her up. And Kavanaugh provided them. Even if Lindsey Graham tried to cover that up with a crazy tirade as soon as Rachel Mitchell got to the point of uncovering that.

Go to 1:11:00 here – Rachel Mitchell asks him about the “small gathering” involving the specific names in her allegation – himself, Mark Judge, PJ Smith and Leland Ingham were there plus one other male whose name Ford didn’t know, and the people were drinking. He denied flatly that he was at a gathering fitting that description.

He goes on to deny all other details of the incident. 1:12:29 – she goes on to his calendars:

He agrees it is all his and was done at the time and was not changed since 1982. He explains his whole calendar thing then requests a 15 minute break.

After a round of Democrat questioning about his yearbook, Mitchell is back at 1:37:30 and goes back to the calendars and goes to the “July 1st entry”: “Go to Timmy’s for skis with Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie and Squi.” After he goes through the first part she didn’t read out, she asks for clarification that “Judge” is Mark Judge; he agrees. Asked if PJ is PJ Smith, he agrees and adds a surname for Tim. She goes on to the August 7 gathering and he looks nervous reading out details. She goes on to details of how police would handle such a case and other unrelated issues.

Back to Democrats. Still pushing on the FBI investigation point.

And whoosh! She’s gone and the Senator Graham rant takes off over 1:48:36 – “most unethical sham”? Really? He made damn sure Mitchell did not take another look at the smoking gun.

Exhibit #2: the edited Wikipedia page supporting Kavanaugh’s “non-standard” interpretation of “devil’s triangle”.

So what’s to investigate?

• Study the entire record of the Kavanaugh hearing and check for inconsistencies such as his claim he never drank weekday nights vs. going for “skis” (brewkis = beers) on 1 July
• Compare the 1 July entry with the Ford allegations
• find out whose IP address corresponds to the WikiPedia edit

 All that should not take much more than a day.

Solve the right problem – dustless chalk

Here is a lesson on how not to do new tech. Make sure you know first what problem you are solving.

Chalk was the greatest educational technology ever. You can write anything with it, draw, do arbitrary mathematical notation, correct as you go.

The only real problem is that it makes a lot of dust when you erase.

So: we need dustless chalk.

Instead, they gave us whiteboards. Slightly less erasing dust, true. But walk into a room with a chalkboard and you can see instantly if you have all the equipment you need. Chalk missing? Walk next door and grab some. The whiteboard introduces a new problem: a line of pens that look inviting but all are dry.

We needed dustless chalk – that didn’t do it. So what do we get next?

The overhead projector. Works well – you can pre-make slides or write as you go (even with erasable pens). But it introduces a new problem: the burnt out bulb.

All we wanted was dustless chalk.

Next: computer presentation. No dust at all. Very pretty slideshows with animations possible. But now we have multiple points of failure – projector bulb dies, computer won’t talk to projector, slides turn out to be the wrong size for the equipment, you brought the wrong adapter … and worst of all, not even a whiteboard as a backup plan in many lecture rooms.

All we wanted was dustless chalk!

Then after all this, one day, I was giving a talk and started thinking: “If only someone would invent a presentation tool where you could edit as you were going.”

Read my paper “Teaching without technology” to see where this went. No, I didn’t mention dustless chalk. But I should have.

Remember always when designing new tech: keep your eye on the problem you’re solving.

iPhone slowdown: class action against predatory lawyers?

Some people are threatening a class action lawsuit against Apple after the company admitted slowing iPhones down to protect them against sudden shutdown when the battery is weak.

Apple’s biggest mistake was failing to announce this feature to users. For those who want speed at all costs and don’t mind the risk of the phone suddenly shutting down, maybe Apple could provide an off switch for the feature.

The threatened lawsuit is idiotic, notwithstanding Apple’s poor PR.

Why?

Because Apple didn’t pour go-slower gunk into your phone ruining it permanently. It is a software fix and a software fix can be turned off.

What actual damage have plaintiffs suffered? Their phone sometimes runs slower instead of shutting off without warning when the battery is below par. That is not actual damage. It is the sort of design trade-off engineers make as a matter of routine.

If there is a case for a class action lawsuit, it is one by Apple shareholders who stand to lose from any gratuitous drop in Apple’s share price arising from an idiotic class action like this.

See the first class action filing here.

How Brexit Broke Britain

There has been a lot of analysis of the Brexit vote; this article is one of the best.

What is missing is the peculiar dynamics by which the position of a party that scored less than 13% of the vote in the 2015 general election and only won one seat was able to secure over 50% of the vote in a referendum on the position they were advocating.

The Tories won about 37% of the vote in 2015 so even if every Tory voter was actually opposed to the EU, this still does not add up to the 52% Brexit vote. Take away the pro-Euro Tories and a substantial fraction of voters for parties who are pro-EU voted the opposite way to the party line. Some blame Jeremy Corbyn for not taking a strong pro-EU line in the referendum campaign. But his position – that the EU was flawed but it was better being in to fix it than out – is not much different from David Cameron’s and the only real difference is that Corbyn stated that view honestly rather than pushing hard for a yes vote, implying that he was more strongly in favour of the EU than he really is.

Even so, it is not usual that party supporters break ranks like this. Most parties can rely on their core base to vote for them no matter what – for example through the sort of change when Blair reversed much of Labour’s traditional policy position or when the US Democrats effectively switched sides with the Republicans on many major positions. With the Republican-Democrat switch, there was a switch in where the parties drew support: the Democrats used to be the party of the South. But this switch in support based took a long time and some very dramatic events like the Civil Rights movement (and even through that, some deeply racist Democrats did not switch sides: George Wallace of Alabama remained a Democrat despite a run for president as an Independent Party candidate, and only saw the error of his ways much later in life, when he ended his political career as an opponent of racism).

So let us study the dynamics of the thing – how Cameron got himself into such a mess.

With Europscepticism a major force among the Tories, he was able to secure his leadership as well as shore up votes in the marginals by promising a referendum. His calculation: not many people really wanted to break with Europe so by pandering to them, he could retain the leadership of his party and shift enough anti-EU voters his way in marginal seats to prevent UKIP from winning and to tilt such seats away from Labour.

The problem is that when the referendum came up, it was at a time when there was mood for shucking off the establishment – the same mood that gave Jeremy Corbyn Labour leadership, that made Bernie Sanders unexpectedly successful and that has kept Trump not only in the race but has made him the Republican candidate (presumptive but in reality, it would be pretty hard to change that now).

What is weird about all this is that the “anti-establishment” mood crystallizes around such different positions.

Trump and Sanders stand for completely opposed values yet a substantial fraction of Sanders voters are more willing to vote for Trump than Clinton.

Meanwhile, parliamentary Labour is revolting against Jeremy Corbyn, as if he is solely responsible for the Brexit vote. Labour MPs, listen up. The public voted Corbyn in because they found you revolting. Labour has failed to tap into the anti-establishment mood since Corbyn’s election not because of him but because of the rank and file who desperately hoped he would go away and they could return to the failed world of Blair and Brown.

The point of the anti-establishment mood is that people are tired of business as usual. That creates a need that can be fulfilled by sane politicians offering real alternatives – like Corbyn and Sanders. But of course their sort of alternative is not very palatable to the plutocrats behind the scenes so when politics as usual fails, they back unpleasant, irrational alternatives like the Tea Party in the US and UKIP in the UK. Out of this, Trump is something of an anomaly as he is not so much a representative of plutocrats as a representative of plutocracy: he does not stand for class interests but rather for himself.

The EU was in many ways a flawed creation – but one that blurred inessential differences and encouraged a rights-based view of difference. Splitting off the UK risks further splits – the Scottish independence movement is revitalized for example. If that goes ahead, it adds impetus for other separatist movements. The end result could be a Europe of much smaller countries and with no unifying framework. That takes us back to the 19th century.

If you really are opposed to the establishment – good. It needs shaking up. But do not be conned by voices of bigotry and hatred. This is not shaking up the establishment. It is about destroying the values that have made a world-wide civilization possible – one that respects difference but does not demand shallow capitulation to imposed values and identities.

Such a civilization does not exist yet, but there is a possibility of one – and the EU hinted at what was possible. The alternative in a world with advanced technology is mini-states hostile to difference and belligerent to those less fortunate than themselves; not an attractive prospect.