March 13, 2010

Re: Askville.com

Dear Mr. Bezos:

Almost three years ago, I accepted an invitation via e-mail from your firm to participate in a new venture called Askville. I will always be glad that I acted upon the invitation.  Askville opened the door to many hours of fun and fellowship for me. Askville also gave me an opportunity to improve my Internet research skills, as well as an opportunity to learn many new things through researching my answers to the questions. Until recently, logging onto Askville was the highlight of my day.

Sadly, the new team running Askville has so drastically altered Askville that participating in Askville is no longer fun. Indeed, many of the users of Askville have either departed totally or have scaled back drastically their participation. At the moment, I belong to the later camp.

The changes made to Askville all share a number of common flaws.

One, they were not needed. Here in Texas we have an applicable saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Askville’s management appears to be ignorant of this basic concept.

Two, the changes were made with apparently no customer research or participation. We both know that customer input is a requisite for satisfied customers. Since those of us who post on Askville have literally decades worth of collective experience with Askville, keeping us out of the loop makes no sense.

Three, the changes were badly executed. Many of them failed to work as planned, leading to preposterous results. Management has begun to respond to some of the complaints, but their response over all has been grudging and slow.

If you would be so kind, please ask someone unconnected with Askville to log onto the site and read the questions and answers and the comments on the discussion boards under the topic “Askville.”  Anyone who looks at these things objectively will be able to discern that Askville’s management has created a serious set of avoidable problems.

As a customer of Amazon.com, Inc. and a shareholder, I firmly believe that you ought to be made aware of what is going at Askville. If anyone at your firm desires to contact me, my contact data is listed above.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Rory R. Olsen

Since I mailed the letter, several interesting things have happened.

First, a “strike” has been called. If you log on now, the place is as dead as a ghost town. All that is needed to complete the picture would be for them to change their log to tumbleweed blowing across a dusty street.

Second, someone (not me) has organized an e-mail campaign to Mr. Bezos. I imagine when my letter reaches him in Seattle on Wednesday or Thursday, he and his staff will have already noticed that the new management team at Askville has managed to create a problem for no good reason.

Why did all of this confusion and controversy occur? If you look at Scott Rasmussen’s book, “In Search of Self-Governance,” you will see that at this moment, the mood of a majority of Americans is anti-authoritarian. We don’t want our lives controlled by others. Bless their hearts, the new management team must be oblivious to this change in the national mood. Their changes to what is at best a casual hobby for those of us who post there have managed to create a revolt of the masses. This result became inevitable once the management team decided to behave in an arbitrary, capricious and dictatorial manner. Treating adults as if they are children is not a smart thing to do.

It is bad business to alienate one’s customers.  It is even worse business to do it to no good end. The current management team is young. Perhaps they will learn from their mistake to the benefit of their next set of employers.

Being lobbied like this is a risk of being a judge. If the case were still open, I would have to chastise her at a minimum and perhaps hold her in contempt of court. I would also have to disclose these contacts to all the counsel and pro-se parties.

Fortunately for everyone in the case–and me–the case is closed and the period for filing a motion for a new trial is long past, being thirty days under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 329(b). When the thirty days came and went, I lost jurisdiction over the case. So even if I were so unethical as to change my mind because of an Internet stalker making attempts to contact me ex parte, I couldn’t do it!  Unless revived by a higher court, the case is closed, over and done with.

Being stalked on-line over a case which has long since passed from my jurisdiction and the judgment become final is rather humorous, isn’t it?

I hope that the stalker will find more productive outlets for her energies in the future, thereby avoiding further entanglements with the  legal system.

The itinerary called for me to fly from Hobby Airport to Love Field. At Love I was supposed to change planes to catch the flight to Lubbock. Everything went wrong. The flight that I was schedule to take to Love Field was delayed. Fortunately I arrived at the airport early enough so that I was able to catch an early flight to Love Field. When I arrived at Love Field, my plane was ready to take me to Lubbock.

The day was heavily overcast in Lubbock. There was some sort of technical problem on the ground in Lubbock, so the flight was diverted to Midland. When we touched down at Midland, I called the student from Tech who was supposed to be my ride. He told me that at the Southwest ticket counter in Lubbock, they told him that the problem at Lubbock would not be fixed until morning. so he started to head to Midland before I called him. The student, Sean Carey, went well above and beyond the call of duty. He deserves a medal.

He met me at the Midland Airport after eight. We stopped to eat and then drove to Lubbock. Unfortunately, the area was covered by a thick fog that made driving both dangerous and difficult. We reached Lubbock a bit after midnight. I guess that I am one of those rare people who when he leaves the Texas Gulf Coast manages to bring the humidity with him.

After a six hour sleep of exhaustion, I had breakfast. Got my room key remagnetized so I could reclaim my overcoat and gear. We went to the law school, which is a nice, modern facility. I gave my talk, which seemed to be a big hit, and then stopped off for lunch and a trip to the airport.

It was a great experience from my viewpoint as a speaker. I made it home with no further problems other than someone from TSA confiscating a tube of toothpaste that she said was too large.

Everyone that I dealt with at the law school at Texas Tech was first class. I wish them all the best. I also suggest that if anyone reading this blog is asked to speak there, he or she should jump at the opportunity, the travel problems notwithstanding. From the viewpoint of a speaker, it was a first class trip.

To add to the confusion, the HBA always makes a big production of the results of the poll, listing it prominently on their web site and then distributing the results to the news media. Bar polls are essentially nothing more than an attempt to influence the voting public to vote for judicial candidates liked by lawyers. As anyone with half a brain knows, being liked by lawyers is not necessarily the same thing as being a good judge. Judges are elected to serve the public, not the lawyers.

The bar poll can be manipulated by candidates who spend an inordinate amount of time and resources visiting the big law firms,  or spam the HBA membership when the polls come out.  Unfortunately, as long as the HBA keeps conducting these pseudo-polls, candidates will be forced to endure the results of this ill-conceived idea.

Today I received an e-mail, which blew me away in its crass attempt to manipulate the bar poll. Here is what it says in relevant part:

January 21, 2010

TO: Members of the Harris County Bar

FROM: Members of the Coalition of Harris County Democratic Elected Officials

“First, we are all proud to see a broad and accomplished group of individuals filing as Harris County Democratic candidates.  This spring, with almost forty judicial nominations being contested by more than seventy Democratic candidates, and almost forty more Democratic candidates unopposed in their Primaries, it is easy to tell that times are changing rapidly and the two-party system is once again alive and well in Texas’ most populous county.

“For more than six months, the members of this new organization of Democratic-elected officials in Harris County, many of whom are lawyers, sorted through the list of Primary candidates for judicial posts on our county ballot, interviewed them, examined as best we could the extent of their legal experiences, their reasons for offering themselves as candidates for the nominations of our Party and their strengths as potential jurists.

“For your consideration, we have listed here the candidates we are recommending to Democratic voters … who are also our constituents … in the upcoming March Democratic Primary.  Because of the great influence the Houston Bar Association’s poll has on the opinions of local voters, we felt you might appreciate having the results of our collective thoughts.”

Gag!  This blatant attempt at politicizing what is supposed to be an honest evaluation of the candidates based upon the personal knowledge of the respondents  is signed by its perpetrators, many of whom are not lawyers.  Their names are listed below. Have they no shame?

Also, do they really think that lawyers really care about who a committee of elected officials–lawyers and non-lawyers–think is qualified? Most lawyers are too independent to be led by the nose by a bunch of politicians.

Obviously, the elected officials who signed this memo want to decide who will win the Democrat primary. One must assume that they do not trust the voters to make the right decision.

We Republicans would not do such a thing. We let the voters decide.

I wonder if this is going to backfire on them.  I hope that it does!

The ostensible reason for having a non-academic on the committee is that the rules of the program require that one of the members of the committee must be on the UNR faculty. Dr. Dobra filled that role. The second member of the committee is to be a faculty member of the National Judicial College. Justice Keasler is a long standing faculty member of the NJC, teaching the arcane subject of Judicial Ethics. The final member of the committee can be from either faculty. Dr. Wendel filled that role, since she also teaches Economics at UNR along with Dr. Dobra.

As an aside, when I first read that rule years ago, it reminded me of the joke from the not all dearly departed U.S.S.R.

“Why do police cars have three officers in them?”

The punchline was “They need one officer who can read, one who can write and a loyal comrade to watch the two intellectual types.”

Knowing  how university bureaucrats lack senses of humor, any resemblance of the foregoing rule to the old joke is purely a matter of accident.

The other major event was seeing that change that I was able to believe in.  I wish Senator Scott Brown the best as the forty first Republican in the Senate.

The glitch was that the audio/video clip that I had inserted into the presentation failed to transfer either to another computer in my office or to the editors at Texas Tech. I spent the afternoon figuring out what to do. In desperation I contacted the Harris County ITC department. They came up with a way of resolving the problem.

Apparently, PowerPoint has this tendency to not travel well. So if you have any attachments, what you need to do is to put your PP presentation in a folder with your attachment. Somehow if the attachment is in the same folder, CD or DVD, it will borrow the needed attachment. I tried it out once on another computer and once on a CD. It worked both places. Go figure!

Things like this make one wonder about global warming.

Today, December first, my mind has started to wander to thoughts of Spring. Unfortunately, the weather is not the cause of my thinking about Spring. No, what has happened is that thanks to last Sunday’s loss to the Colts, the Texans have been essentially eliminated from going to the playoffs–again.  They will be lucky to tie last year’s record of 8-8. Since the Rockets don’t seem to be showing much signs of life, I have been reduced to thinking about that magical day in late February when the pitchers and catchers will report to Spring Training.

Its sad to be forced by circumstances out of my control to have to think about Spring in early December. But for a Houston sports fan, what else is there to do except wait for next year? Being a sports fan in Houston is akin to being one of the refugees in the movie, “Casablanca.”  We wait..and wait..and wait!  Sigh!

Sigh!

Dominique is the sweetest tempered being of any species that I have been blessed to have known.  She is a Tonkinese cat and like many of her breed has a calm demeanor, excellent social skills and enjoyment of human companionship. For instance, as I am typing the blog entry, she is sitting on my shoulder watching me type.

Tonkinese Cat

http://www.world4pets.com/catbreeds/tonkinese.jpg

Going to a vet’s office must be the a feline version of a trip to the Infernal Regions.

1. The cat, being used to roaming freely in the house, finds herself stuck in a carrier.
2. The cat has to endure a ride in a motor vehicle.
3. The poor cat has to sit the vet’s waiting room and watch, see and smell dogs in the same area.
4. The cat then is carried into the examining room, which probably has lots of strange smells in it.
5. Then the poor cat is grabbed by an attendant, weighed and has her temperature taken anally.
6. Then she is poked and by prodded by the vet.

************************************

Dominique endured all of these things with equanimity and grace–and lots of TLC from me.

When the doctor asked for a blood sample, she also endured being taken away from me into some alien environment full of lots of other strange smells and was jabbed with a needle by the tech who returned smelling of alcohol. Yuck!

When she was returned to me, the vet indicated that he wanted her to receive twice daily doses of an oral medication. I asked the doctor if he could have the tech visit with me and give the first dose to Dominique so I could brush up on my technique. The doctor agreed.

When the tech returned, I sensed from Dominique’s non-verbal response that her reservoir of calm and good manners was about empty, so I wondered what was going to happen. The tech, who seemed to have a natural affinity for small animals, said that for more troublesome cats, he used one procedure. But for docile cats like Dominique he would use a more direct approach. I thought that he was making a mistake, but it would have been rude for me to tell him his business, so I said nothing.

The tech positions her on the table and asked me to hold onto her shoulders. No problem there! When he approached her mouth and almost got the syringe into it, Dominique’s claws came out and she slashed at him. Who could blame her?

The tech decided to use Plan B. He told me that they call it, making a “cat taco.”  He had me wrap her up in the small towel that I had lined her carrier with and then lift her up.  Wrapped up that way, it was heard to miss the visual resemblance to a taco.

The tech got the syringe into her unwilling mouth this time and squirted one ml. of the solution into it. Of course, she spat half of it out right away. So we went through the drill a second time, embarrassing the poor tech even more.

Once we got back home, Dominique seemed quite peppy and she ate heartily. Obviously she had gotten over her trauma.

This evening, my wife and I had no difficulty in administering round two of the medication. I suspect that we may have to hunt her down for the next six days before we can give her medication. But, she won’t claw us, probably because we don’t do all of those other nasty things to her.

The moral of the story is that after you have abused someone a number of times, it is best to let them calm down before attempting to inflict any further indignities upon them–particularly if your victim has the means and will to resist. Its a shame that the Powers That Be inside the Beltway haven’t figured this out yet.

What the good doctor did was to suggest that medical students and their professors should wash and disinfect their hands after dissecting corpses in the hospital morgue before going to the bedside of a patient in labor. Since Louis Pasteur had not yet promulgated the “germ theory” of disease, there was no theoretical explanation of why washing and disinfecting a caregiver’s hands to remove cadaverous tissue should lead to a decline in puerperal fever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

Dr. Semmelweiss’s discovery was rejected by most of the leaders of Obstetrics of his time. After his live saving discovery was published, his career was troubled, to say the least. Less than two decades later he died in a mental asylum, having been sent there because of deep depression, alcoholism and other psychiatric disorders. Did his professional rejection cause his decline? Possibly. But what is clear was that his profession was slow to accept his findings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

It is sad to think of how many lives were lost because the leaders of Medicine rejected his findings out of hand.

It is also very easy to think that in our modern day and age, such a rejection would not have occurred. However, would the findings of Dr. Semmelweiss be accepted today? I have my doubts.

According to great economists, Dr. McCloskey and Dr. Ziliak, in their seminal work, The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Errors Costs Us Jobs, Justice and Lives, the result of a research project is not able to be published in most scientific journals unless the findings are statistically significant. Dr. Semmelweiss’s research was only based upon his findings which compared the results in one hospital in Vienna. His data was probably too small to yield a statistically significant result. If Dr. Semmelweiss had tried to publish his findings today, they would have been rejected for a lack of statistical significance.

What we have here is a modern version of the old bane of mankind–narrow mindedness–clothed in the wrappings of applied mathematics. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Sad.