A friend lent me this book, and I'll admit that I sat down with a very low impression of Bill O'Reilly, that Bold Fresh Piece of Lowest Common Denominator that he so seems to be on air. Considering how low my opinion was from the start, it's only natural that I'd finish the book with a higher opinion of him. It's partly because he delivers some melodramatic stories of his trials and tribulations in the penultimate chapter; it's hard not to sympathize with a guy when he's telling a story of how when his father died, and he tried to take some time off, his rival co-workers spread rumors that he was fired. 'We shall overcome, Bill!'
But still, I find it strange how self-righteous he can be at taking the moral high ground while at the same divulging some pretty horrendous stories of his own behavior. Here are two that stuck out from the rest:
1) For a while he owned a painting company, and one time one of his employees dropped a canister of paint off his ladder, dousing a bush in white paint. Rather than telling the owner, they cut it down, went out to gather loose branches from the woods, and fashioned them in the likeness of the bush to cover up what they'd done.
Ok, it's no Auschwitz, but definitely not the kind of guy I'd trust to work on my house, or report on my country for that matter. It's a funny story, but since he's so in the habit of moralizing to his readers about taking personal responsibility (rather than depending on big government or resorting to victimhood) you'd think there'd at least be some sort of minor admission of guilt associated with the incident.
It left me wondering: if the man's ready to cover up the death of something so trivial as a bush, why should we believe he's going to be straight with us about monumental issues like whether Iraq is likely to have WMD, or universal health care will save money, or even just plain, everyday news reporting? Claiming a pile of branches is a bush is the epitome of 'spin'. Before reading this, I'd thought that there was a 10 foot ring of 'No Spin Zone' that followed the fresh guy every where he went. What happened, Bill?
2) Apparently, one time the fresh guy (as Bill O'Reilly likes to call himself) was pretty ticked off when his manager told him his performance evaluations weren't good. Being the bold fresh guy he is, Bill didn't believe the guy, so he sneaked into the building where his manager worked late at night, broke into his office using the famous credit card trick, rifled through his boss's files, and read the actual report. I'm not making this up. It's actually in the book. Breaking and entering. Again, no hint of a guilty conscience over this. Instead it's all righteous indignation about how his manager would dare lie to him about the eval.
These are the types of things I'd expect to be reading in a book by Abbie Hoffman, not this 'traditionalist', conservative, talking head, head-biter-offer, who feels compelled to profess moral values at innocent bystanders who just want to watch TV. But then again, his writing does exude the same macho that is so apparent on-air. My suspicious is that Bill feels that when engaging in 'sissy literary activities' he needs to prove he's a real man by strutting his stuff a bit. Vandalism, petty frat boy buffoonery, you know. All these things win him a seat at the table with Joe Six Pack. Except he claims not to drink, so the usual excuses don't apply.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
David Brooks Laments The Decline of America
In his NY Times column today, David Brooks worries that the protestant work ethic is fading quickly from the American psyche, as evidenced by our perpetual shift from producer economy to consumer economy.
Only I wish he'd mention the great contribution open immigration policy has made to maintaining a good American work ethic over the years. Most of our professors and PhD's are immigrants, as are many of our technology entrepreneurs and workers. I think America has managed to avoid the decadence that has historically afflicted other great nations by giving each generation a shot in the arm of new immigrant blood to lead the way forward. It takes a lot of motivation to drop everything you know, leave a country, and come to America. It's precisely this motivation that propels us forward. As border policy is tightened, we'll see the decadence Brooks fears take over ever more quickly.
Unfortunately, many conservatives have a tendency to only see immigrants as a burden to America, which perhaps explains why he hasn't mentioned this.
Only I wish he'd mention the great contribution open immigration policy has made to maintaining a good American work ethic over the years. Most of our professors and PhD's are immigrants, as are many of our technology entrepreneurs and workers. I think America has managed to avoid the decadence that has historically afflicted other great nations by giving each generation a shot in the arm of new immigrant blood to lead the way forward. It takes a lot of motivation to drop everything you know, leave a country, and come to America. It's precisely this motivation that propels us forward. As border policy is tightened, we'll see the decadence Brooks fears take over ever more quickly.
Unfortunately, many conservatives have a tendency to only see immigrants as a burden to America, which perhaps explains why he hasn't mentioned this.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Movie: The Departed - A Fool Proof Plan To Catch The Mole
I just saw the original Hong Kong film, Mou Gaan Dou, which Martin Scorsese knocked off to create The Departed. The Hong Kong version was much better in my humble opinion, but on a more interesting note, it got me thinking about tricks the police chief could have played to catch the gang's mole within the police force. Here's one that I think is pretty much guaranteed to work, assuming everyone follows orders properly.
Background:
In case you're not familiar with this movie, or don't remember it, the situation is basically that the gang has a mole within the police force, and the police force has a mole within the gang. Each side is trying to find out the identity of the other side's mole without revealing the identity of their own mole. Great plot line. Anyway, here's a nice solution that surreptitiously uses the gang's own mole against the gang. It can be used by either side to win the game, but for clarity's sake, I will describe how the police could do it. First let's start with a simple example to illustrate the basic idea:
Example:
Let's say the police chief has 3 reports, Peter, Paul, and Polly, and he wants to figure out which is the mole. Meanwhile, the gang leader has 4 reports, Greg, Gary, Gus, and Goliath.
The police chief tells Peter that the mole is Greg, tells Paul that the mole is Gary, and tells Polly that the mole is Gus. All of these statements are lies, because the chief already knows Goliath is the real mole inside the gang.
If Peter is the gang's mole, he will tell the gang leader that Greg is the police's mole, and the gang leader will kill Greg. Goliath will know this and report back to the police chief that Greg was killed, indicating Peter must have been the mole.
If Paul is the mole, Gary gets killed, giving away that it's Paul.
If Polly is the mole, Gus gets killed, giving away that it's Polly.
In no circumstance in the real police mole killed, but you're guaranteed to catch the gang's mole, while also seeing the gang kill off one of it's own loyal members!
Generalized Solution:
1) Assume the police chief P has p underlings P1...Pp, and the gang leader G has g underlings G1...Gg. Also, for clarity, let's assume p=g for now (ie: the police and the gang have the same number of members). Let's also label the underlings so that Px and Gy are the moles. Therefore, G knows Px is a mole, and P knows Gy is a mole. P's goal is to find Px.
2) For each policeman i, P takes Pi into his office and tells him "Gi is our mole in the gang, but you can't tell anyone else. I'm telling you this, because I'm assigning a top secret mission which requires you to communicate and cooperate with Gi." (Or some other pretext can be given for revealing this information). Note that Gi is NEVER the actual police mole. Instead it's some random other member of the gang.
3) The mole within the police Px will think he's learned the identity of the gang mole Gy, and will immediately tell gang leader G: "Gi is the mole." All other policemen Pi will not reveal their information to anyone, because they are loyal.
4) Gang leader G will immediately kill (or do something very nasty if it's the PG-13 version) Gi thinking he's the mole. The police's actual mole, Gy will note who was killed and tell police chief P, who can use this information to determine who mole Px is (because only Px was told that that the Gx who was killed was the mole, so he MUST be the source of the leaked information).
That's the basic outline. Here are some special cases that aren't covered above:
1) Multiple moles in the police force:
If there are r moles, then r people will be killed inside the gang, each of which can be trace back to the r moles who leaked the info. So the solution works for this case too.
2) g > p: (ie: more gang members than policemen)
Trivial. Just select p gang member's names to tell the p policemen.
3) p > g (ie: more policemen than gang members)
There are 2 ways to handle this:
A) Do the trick on a g-sized batch of policemen. Wait a couple days. If no one is killed, select another batch. Keep trying until someone is killed.
B) Tell each policemen that there are 2 police moles in the gang they have to work with. Pick a unique set of 2 for each policemen. This works assuming g-Combination-2 < p
Background:
In case you're not familiar with this movie, or don't remember it, the situation is basically that the gang has a mole within the police force, and the police force has a mole within the gang. Each side is trying to find out the identity of the other side's mole without revealing the identity of their own mole. Great plot line. Anyway, here's a nice solution that surreptitiously uses the gang's own mole against the gang. It can be used by either side to win the game, but for clarity's sake, I will describe how the police could do it. First let's start with a simple example to illustrate the basic idea:
Example:
Let's say the police chief has 3 reports, Peter, Paul, and Polly, and he wants to figure out which is the mole. Meanwhile, the gang leader has 4 reports, Greg, Gary, Gus, and Goliath.
The police chief tells Peter that the mole is Greg, tells Paul that the mole is Gary, and tells Polly that the mole is Gus. All of these statements are lies, because the chief already knows Goliath is the real mole inside the gang.
If Peter is the gang's mole, he will tell the gang leader that Greg is the police's mole, and the gang leader will kill Greg. Goliath will know this and report back to the police chief that Greg was killed, indicating Peter must have been the mole.
If Paul is the mole, Gary gets killed, giving away that it's Paul.
If Polly is the mole, Gus gets killed, giving away that it's Polly.
In no circumstance in the real police mole killed, but you're guaranteed to catch the gang's mole, while also seeing the gang kill off one of it's own loyal members!
Generalized Solution:
1) Assume the police chief P has p underlings P1...Pp, and the gang leader G has g underlings G1...Gg. Also, for clarity, let's assume p=g for now (ie: the police and the gang have the same number of members). Let's also label the underlings so that Px and Gy are the moles. Therefore, G knows Px is a mole, and P knows Gy is a mole. P's goal is to find Px.
2) For each policeman i, P takes Pi into his office and tells him "Gi is our mole in the gang, but you can't tell anyone else. I'm telling you this, because I'm assigning a top secret mission which requires you to communicate and cooperate with Gi." (Or some other pretext can be given for revealing this information). Note that Gi is NEVER the actual police mole. Instead it's some random other member of the gang.
3) The mole within the police Px will think he's learned the identity of the gang mole Gy, and will immediately tell gang leader G: "Gi is the mole." All other policemen Pi will not reveal their information to anyone, because they are loyal.
4) Gang leader G will immediately kill (or do something very nasty if it's the PG-13 version) Gi thinking he's the mole. The police's actual mole, Gy will note who was killed and tell police chief P, who can use this information to determine who mole Px is (because only Px was told that that the Gx who was killed was the mole, so he MUST be the source of the leaked information).
That's the basic outline. Here are some special cases that aren't covered above:
1) Multiple moles in the police force:
If there are r moles, then r people will be killed inside the gang, each of which can be trace back to the r moles who leaked the info. So the solution works for this case too.
2) g > p: (ie: more gang members than policemen)
Trivial. Just select p gang member's names to tell the p policemen.
3) p > g (ie: more policemen than gang members)
There are 2 ways to handle this:
A) Do the trick on a g-sized batch of policemen. Wait a couple days. If no one is killed, select another batch. Keep trying until someone is killed.
B) Tell each policemen that there are 2 police moles in the gang they have to work with. Pick a unique set of 2 for each policemen. This works assuming g-Combination-2 < p
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