On Topic: My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement

See how small bands get bent over too: My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement

Change You Can Believe In

Sure, go ahead. Believe all you want. You're a nation of believers, it's what you do. While you're at it, believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too, if it helps keep us in power.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html

"State secrets" is the executive branch's new checks and balances combo-breaker. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And suck.

Would you drink from this glass?

This pint glass aligns surprisingly well with Digg's anti-duplication efforts. (Duplication/reproduction...get it?) I'm sure it's probably just trace amounts of lead and cadmium at worst, and the sticker is probably just a nonsense legal requirement. Still, I wonder if Kevin and Alex would imbibe their "favorite frosty brew" from this possibly toxic pint glass. I have no doubt they would, but would they still enjoy it as much?

Backspace to the Future with Firefox

One more complaint to throw on the already gigantic pile that web browsers have earned:

PLEASE stop using the backspace key as the default shortcut for backwards navigation. Yes, its name has the word "back" in it. We get it. No, this does NOT make it appropriate to use for backwards navigation in a web browser. With that logic, we might have browsers closing themselves whenever the "End" key is pressed.

For everyone who has lost a long forum post, e-mail, lengthy form, or progress in a browser-based game due to an errant backspace, there is an easy fix. Install Firefox, navigate to about:config (you have to type it in manually), then scroll down to "browser.backspace_action" and set its value to "2". Done. No more backspace key tomfoolery.

Microsoft, I generally love your stuff, but I think you might lose even more market share to this poor browser design choice (among others). I hope you fix it. The dismal tradition continues with IE8, and there still doesn't seem to be any easy way of disabling that shortcut in it, either.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is broken

These two op-ed stories recently published in the The New York Times are amazing:

The Defect: Conflicts of interest in the SEC, as summarize in The End of the Financial World as We Know It

The Consequence: The Madoff scandal, huge Wall Street executive payoffs, bank and corporate bailouts

The Fix: Many suggestions provided in How to Repair a Broken Financial World

Bank of America Gave Me A Counterfeit $100

A week ago, I cashed a check for a little over $160, at my local Bank of America branch in downtown San Diego. The bank teller handed me a hundred, a fifty, and the rest in common bills and change. I thanked her, wished her a good day, and walked out of the bank.

I found out today (while paying for some furniture) that the $100 bill was fake. It was a convincing reproduction (the counterfeit detection pen didn't work on it), but holding it up to the light next to the $50 bill revealed a noticeably different security strip. The one in the $100 bill was more opaque and harder to read.

Being a man of principle (and in sudden need of $100), I drove to a Bank of America just down the street and handed the counterfeit bill to the teller (Suzette), asking her to confirm it was fake. She showed it to her manager (Damaris), who pronounced it fake before running it through the sorting/detection machine to confirm the fact. I knew I couldn't prove that Bank of America gave me the counterfeit, but I still explained how I'd received it and politely requested compensation. Of course, Damaris denied my request, offering me a look of sympathy that looked more like wary defensiveness. I asked Suzette to help me withdraw another $100 from my account. She offered me a $100 bill. I half-laughed, and requested twenties.

Shortly afterward, I returned to the branch that had given me the counterfeit bill, and repeated the same dance with the manager there. I hoped that a sense of personal responsibility and connection might get me somewhere. I was treated to an encore performance of the same "bank policy" apology and counterfeit sympathy. No surprise, I was not expecting any other result. Hoping, but not expecting.

My defect analysis follows...

In A Nutshell

The Defect: Bank immunity from consequences for passing counterfeit bills.
The Consequence: Customers pay for banks' counterfeit bills.
The Fix: Create a paper trail, such as tracking serial numbers for large denominations.
Deliberate?: Meh...

In Depth

"It is bank policy not to replace counterfeit money once it is removed from the bank." This is what I was told (twice), and it's very clever. It is perfectly logical, and implies the customer is at fault (for leaving the bank with counterfeit money). Bank of America would like us to believe we are to blame for not authenticating the money they hand us before we walk off the premises.

The defect here is not related to the authentication of money--authenticating money is a side issue that has no good solution. No matter how good you are, there will always be a better counterfeit. One of the managers I spoke with helpfully told me that they don't even bother with counterfeit detection pens any more. You could have the bank check it for you, but what if their machines are faulty, out of date, or just unreliable? Even if they detect a counterfeit, they will simply replace it with a valid bill. Their only consequence is that they have lost that money, which actually gives them motivation to avoid checking the bills. They don't face any repercussions for having given you counterfeit currency. Your only alternative is to train yourself to detect counterfeit currency. The number of people who will do this is certainly not enough to make banks worry about the consequences of handing out counterfeit bills.

The defect in this system is that the bank has no practical motivation to authenticate the money it gives you. Of course, any bank will rigorously test money you give to it, because it will probably lose that money if it is counterfeit (unless it opts to recirculate the money without checking it). However, the bank faces no such consequences for handing you a counterfeit $100 bill. Though it is a crime to knowingly pass counterfeit currency, how could anyone prove them of committing it? Banks have the perfect cover for passing counterfeit money...they pass so much of it, how could they authenticate it all?

Remediation

In my opinion, tracking the currency used in bank transactions seems like the only way to motivate banks to avoid recirculating counterfeit currency. Tracking could be accomplished by requiring banks to log the serial numbers of large bills used in any cash transaction. They could provide receipts containing these serial numbers to customers, or allow customers to track this information online.

It is worth noting that tracking currency presents possible privacy issues, if that tracking information were abused. Perhaps an opt-in approach would be necessary.

Deliberate? (aka. the tin-foil hat section)

Keeping a paper trail for currency would cost banks time and money. Since they face no tangible consequences for passing counterfeit currency, they have no reason to spend money trying to avoid doing so. The only times I've seen a bank employee use an authentication machine is when they are taking my money. When they are giving me money, they always give it to me straight from a drawer. Are banks deliberately passing counterfeit currency? Probably not, and who could prove it if they were. Are banks deliberately avoiding spending money on practical measures to avoid passing it? Certainly. To them, the cost simply outweighs the benefit. I don't blame them for not doing it, but it seems like bottom-line mentality to me.

Here are just a few reports of banks passing counterfeit money:

• Wachovia Bank: http://www.local6.com/news/16960809/detail.html


• Bank of America: http://www.wealthjunkies.com/money/bank-of-america-counterfeit-money/


• Bank of America: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/376/RipOff0376282.htm


• Wells Fargo: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/consumeractionline/2006/12/07/counterfeit_mon/


• http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/Oct/15/bank-responds-counterfeit-lawsuit/

The United States Election System

In A Nutshell

The Defect: Plurality voting
The Consequence: A two-party political system (Republicans vs. Democrats)
The Fix: Proportional representation (systems such as IRV or the Schulze method)
Deliberate?: Probably not at first...

In Depth

The major symptom of the flaws with plurality voting is so familiar to most voters, we simply take it for granted: the two-party system.

Voters often complain about being forced to vote for the lesser of two evils (ie. either a Republican or Democratic candidate). Many voters would like to support a third-party candidate, but know that doing so would be "wasting" their vote. This popular perception reinforces and possibly even creates the two-party system we have today, a principle known as Duverger's law.

Related to the above, another common voter complaint is regarding "spoiler" candidates. So-called spoilers are third-party candidates who draw more voters away from one of their opposing candidates than the other. Ralph Nader's campaign in the 2000 Presidential election proved controversial for likely tipping the election in Bush's favor. A Republican group attempted to capitalize on the spoiler effect when it paid for TV ads supporting Nader, in that election.

The consequences of these flaws are far reaching: a two-party system is extremely vulnerable to private influence and entrenched corruption. With only two viable candidates, private interests can effectively focus their efforts on supporting (and perhaps influencing) candidates who would return the favor, once elected. With only two parties, if either or both of the parties is corrupted by private interests, it is very likely that the government created from those parties will also be corrupted by those interests. If both parties are compromised, a compromised government is virtually guaranteed.

It is also worth noting that a two-party system may contribute to polarized, divisive elections. With only two viable parties, neither party can risk taking a neutral or "middle of the road" position on polarizing issues, since the opposing party may earn a significant advantage by pandering to certain demographics. In order to succeed in a two-party system, both parties must take strong, often opposing stances on hotly debated topics like abortion, gay marriage, gun control, etc.

Remediation

There is no flawless voting system, because there is no perfect process that satisfies all reasonable evaluation criteria for voting systems. Every known electoral method can be influenced by sufficiently organized efforts, except for Sortition, based on randomly selecting a winner from a pool of eligible candidates. Sortition might be the only ideal "democratic" alternative, but it is not likely a viable alternative in America, since it would effectively eliminate the intense vetting process that is currently so popular here.

Though a perfect voting system doesn't exist, there are systems which can improve on plurality voting and effectively address its major flaws. For example, approval voting allows voters to select multiple candidates. Voting systems known as "preferential" systems allow voters to prioritize candidates, to vote for their favorite candidates in order of their preference for them. For more about these alternative systems, check out proportional representation.

Deliberate? (aka. the tin-foil hat section)

In the case of plurality voting, I think the original intention was to implement the best, most democratic voting system available at the time. These days, more robust alternatives are available and just as feasible to implement. However, the two parties that control our government could lose their duopoly if an alternative system of voting is implemented. It stands to reason that anyone connected to or benefitting from the Republican or Democratic parties would have significant motivation to maintain the status quo. In other words, our current government has a vested interest in keeping plurality voting around. While it's questionable whether the government or political parties are actively fighting election reform (general ignorance is probably sufficient alone), the apparent conflict of interest makes it seem very feasible that plurality voting is a deliberate defect.