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Starting Over

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Today, the second day of the semester, I was not in the classroom.  I held office hours.  It was a spectacularly beautiful late summer day.   Judy and Josh were at Fenway watching the Sox come from behind in a 5-4 walk-off win against the Orioles while I sat in my airless office 400 hundred yards away, listening to game audio over the Internet.  I had few walk-ins and was able to read some articles, write a post, handle some administrative chores, and work on the AFC Legal Resources site.  About 2:30  I was logy and went to the SMG Starbucks on the second floor.  Only a half-dozen tables were occupied and I did not recognize anyone.  That’s the September Story.  Hundreds of the familiar faces I would have seen last April have graduated and gone, new seniors are working, looking for jobs, or otherwise occupied off campus, dozens of juniors are abroad, and it’s too soon to know many of my first-time students.  It hits me each September that we have to start again to build relationships, get beyond facades, forge the personal links that make teaching an emotionally satisfying pursuit.  Soon when I enter Starbucks and walk the halls this feeling of re-generation will have passed but, this week, it defines my relationship to the school.

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Web Sites and the ADA

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

As reported by Law.com last week Target Corp. settled a federal class action lawsuit brought by The National Federation of the Blind, who claimed that Target’s website was inaccessible to the blind in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  At issues was Target’s failure to code its website to enable use of keyboards and software that convert websites into speech or Braille.  Target agreed to pay $6 million in damages and recode the site to accomodate those with vision disabilities.  Target was prompted to settle in part by the trial judge’s ruling that the ADA applies to a business’s website, agreeing with the plaintiffs that there is a nexus between physical Target stores and its online presence.  The article reports that other companies such as Amazon.com and RadioShack have agreed to improve their web sites to enable use by visually impaired customers.  (Source:  Evan Hill “Settlement Over Target’s Web Site Marks a Win for ADA Plaintiffs,” The Recorder, 28-Aug-08.)

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Is McCain Serious?

Monday, September 1, 2008

Sarah Palin is John McCain’s VP candidate?  Is it April Fool’s Day?  This cynical, craven capitulation to the far right underscores the  deep flaws in McCain’s judgment.  Do any of the pundits crediting McCain’s boldness honestly think Palin is ready to be one heartbeat away from the presidency?  This decision is bold only in the context of politics as a game.  In the context of statesmanship, leadership, judgment about the future of a nation, it is criminally negligent and insulting.

A friend asked me to state my problem’s with McCain’s candidacy in a sentence.  I said that he hasn’t shown any ability to comprehend the complexity of either national or international issues.  A few moments later I said it more succinctly:  John McCain is a binary thinker in a non-binary world.  I understand the emotional appeal of yes/no, black/white, good/bad answers, the desire to reduce bewildering complexity to simple bit-sized solutions, but that’s not economic, political, or social reality.  John McCain is like Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies–whose character is, ironically, named “John McClane”–except John McCain is not running for a celluloid presidency, the USA is not the Nokomura Tower, and the bad guys are not Eurotrash in $400 haircuts led by Alan Rickman.

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Don’t Enjoin the Messenger

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Two weeks ago three students from MIT appeared at DEFCON in Las Vegas to present their successful hack of the Massachusetts Transit Authority’s electronic fare system–the “Charlie Card.” The MBTA went to federal court to enjoin publication of students’ presentation, claiming it would violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The court granted the injunction on August 9, only to lift it yesterday, ruling that the MBTA was not likely to succeed on its CFAA claim. Follow the story’s arc here, here, here, and here–and then read Bruce Schneier’s timely (8/7) essay from The Guardian. Schneier’s piece discusses the successful hack of the London subway’s Oyster smartcard by students from the Netherlands. The Oyster card’s maker, NXP Semiconductors, sued to prevent publication of the hack; it lost. The Oyster card uses the same chip–the “Mifare Classic”–used by Boston and other transit systems. Schneier writes “[t]he security of Mifare Classic is terrible . . . it’s kindergarten cryptography. Anyone with any security experience would be embarrassed to put his name to the design. NXP attempted to deal with this embarrassment by keeping the design secret.” In ruling against NXP the Dutch court said “[d]amage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings.” (Emphasis supplied)

These two cases follow a familiar pattern: Company A does a crap job designing or delivering a good or service to Company B; someone blows the the whistle on Company A’s mis- or malfeasance; Company B blames the whistleblower for leaking news of flaw instead of blaming Company A for its lousy performance. Here the Dutch court got it right, and the U.S. court is heading in the right direction.

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Recently, in the garden . . .

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

It’s been a terrible summer for the vegetable garden:  too much rain, not enough sun, and unchecked parasites.  While weeding the garden the other day Judy called to me:  “You have to see this!”  When I entered the garden she said “look!” and pointed at a denuded branch of a tomato plant.  It took a moment to spot this cute l’il feller:

"Creepy tomato bug"

Feasted unmolested for weeks this hefty beast had grown to about 4″ long,  To learn its name I entered this search string: <creepy tomato bug>.  Google’s first hit led to a page with “tomato hornworm” in the first paragraph, a name that squarely hit most of this bug’s particulars:  “Ma’am, can you describe your assailant?”  “Well, he was a worm  . . . green . . . eating a tomato branch . . . and he has a horn on one end.”   A search of <tomato hornmorm> confirmed this to be Manduca quinquemaculata, which grows into the Five-Spotted Hawk Moth.

When I disposed of the intruder I half expected it to hiss at me like the Aliens monster,  which would have stopped my heart.  It took its fate quietly, munching on the branch and dreaming, no doubt, of metamorphosis.  One more view:

Tomato Hornworm

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Lower Drinking Age?

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Would lowering the drinking age to 18 reduce the amount of binge drinking on college campuses? The Amethyst Initiative, started by the former president of Middlebury College, believes it would, as reported in College chiefs urge new debate on drinking age. The Initiative, represents presidents from about 100 colleges and universities, is “calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.” The proposal carries counter-intuitive appeal: reduce problem drinking by reducing legal impediments to acquiring and possessing alcohol. Mothers Against Drunk Driving opposes the proposal because it believes it would lead to more fatal car crashes; “MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.”

I don’t know what impact a lower drinking age would have on binge drinking on campuses. Doing so would remove the forbidden-fruit allure of under-age drinking for those over 18, and that would somewhat change the social dynamic that leads to problem drinking. Since both typically occur when one is 18 alcohol consumption would still be linked to going off to college and experiencing greater freedom from adult supervision. One could argue that the drinking age should be lowered to 16, to enable teenagers to experience legal drinking when most are still living under their parents’ roofs. The causes of binge drinking are complex and drinking age is just one factor.

This topic comes up often in class. Not surprisingly, most students oppose the current laws. Students routinely ignore and subvert them. Anecdotal experience tells me that more than 50% of underaged students possess a phony ID at some point before they turn 21, which puts them at risk for arrest and a criminal record. Laws that criminalize a large number of people for customary behavior encourage disrespect for law: “when beer is outlawed, only outlaws will have beer.”

One cannot ignore MADD’s point about traffic fatalities. I believe (relying on someone I trust who researched this subject extensively a few years ago) there was a direct correlation between raising drinking ages to 21 and reducing alcohol-related fatalities. Opposing MADD is political suicide for state legislators.

This is unfortunate. It takes off the table solutions other than more rigorous law enforcement and stiffer penalties for underage drinkers. These don’t work, as our experience with harsher drug laws shows. It’s a plain fact that college students are going to drink. Solutions that don’t start with this fact–solutions of the “just say no” variety–are doomed to fail.

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