Essay – Page 5 – Author Shlomi Harif

An Open Letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler

shlomi on January 23, 2014

Mr. Wheeler:

In the ancient days of Ma Bell, before she fractured into Baby Bells, and then eventually back into the communication conglomerates we face today, was under very tight scrutiny. And the same forces that broke the original monopoly are as valid and vital today.

From the time that Microwave Communications, Inc. (MCI) won the right to interconnect with AT&T’s monopolistic network, the US Government has, again and again, ruled that the free market and level playing field competition are the rules governing access to communications.

The last big win for US citizens was the line number portability initiative in 1997, taking away the monopoly of phone numbers leased and paid for by a subscriber.

Now we’re fifteen years into that future. Amazon has gone from a startup with doors for desks to a company aspiring to flood the FAA with drone requests (just kidding) while developing a real-world caching technology that would set up deliveries of items to people before they even order them. Companies like Netflix have been instrumental in deconstructing the very idea of video content, taking the HBO and Showtime concepts and moving them into a direct-to-consumer model without a cable company’s infrastructure. Much as MCI’s leverage of AT&T.

This isn’t going to stop. Ideas will flit to startups to be swallowed by larger and successively larger fish. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and cable companies are as fearful of ‘net neutrality’ as Ma Bell was of MCI. And for good reason.

The best ideas get traction. The disruptive technologies redefine the online customer experience and break cost and profit models again and again — to the benefit of the entrepreneur and a free market economy.

I urge you to help them: define the roles of cable providers and ISPs so that the FCC has a clear, unfettered mandate to ensure the freedom of all voices, all IP packets, to be equally heard across the Internet.

Of course, the FCC has an integral role in regulating communications even in this communications-neutral environment. Folks who abuse Internet communications for foreign espionage are the realm of the NSA. But the 419 scammers, the incessant ‘botnets and spammers and hackers must be rebuffed. While the Department of Justice has its means, the FCC should help, even to helping ISPs spread information and solutions.

What the FCC cannot do, may not do, is allow ISPs to determine which traffic they will expedite, and which will trickle unless users, or providers, pay the piper fees only they deem sufficient.

Please take the time to think about how Internet Neutrality can be achieved in the spirit of the continuous entrepreneurship that has defined and nourished the environment Allowing ISPs to decide who, when and why a content provider can deliver to a customer is a crime AGAINST the free market economy (messy though it might be) to decide which content is “worthy” of proper delivery.

Choose freedom. Freedom for all packets to reach their destination. And let the market, not bandwidth, to determine which content is worthy of a consumer’s time.

On Salary: A Rebuttal

shlomi on December 17, 2013

Liz Ryan has a long post on how to dodge the “how much do you make” question during the interview process. http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131217070749-52594-how-to-answer-the-question-what-was-your-last-salary. Check out her graphics; really nice hand-drawn pieces!

I don’t normally reply or even read them, but seeing that I’ve got kids entering the workforce, and I’m talking with friends at various stages of job careers, I read through it for any pearls of wisdom I might glean.

I respectfully disagree with Ms. Ryan, although it does raise many legitimate issues and concerns. Having been an employee for about 38 years at positions as varied as tech writer to running a piece of the business, I’ve been on many different sides of the issue, from absurdly in demand to long-term unemployed. When I was early in my career I danced around the “how much are you” question making a lot. I was trying to make sure I was earning enough to pull myself up to the next level, while at the same time not self-confident enough to stand my ground on remuneration.

Two decades in I shifted gears: I use transparency to gauge a company’s interest to commit. Interchanges like the following:

HR: So, what was your previous salary?
Me: Let me tell you straight up that I expect to be paid what I’m worth. I am making $xxxK a year plus benefits. The minimum that I need to change positions is $yyyK. Am I in your company’s ballpark?
HR: Well…
Me: That’s the minimum. I know that the average salary for someone of my skill set here in town is $zzzK plus benefits. I’ll leave it to you to make an offer that shows your interest in me.

I used this approach in the 90’s to receive $100k is salary raises — plus over $200k in bonuses and options and stock grants. I used the same method from 2010 to the present to triple my salary to one that I believe is more than fair — I’m appreciated by my current company and I’ve the paycheck to prove it.

I used that exact same approach for many years as a hiring manager — I’ve managed and hired hundreds of employees over that last 20+ years. I first figure out how much this employee is worth to the company a year. I might need to LOWER the pay range, even if it’s less than the going rate, because there’s no point in hiring someone whose position is not worth the money. Temping, outsourcing, using interns and cross training administrative folks are all legit ways of filling those kinds of gaps.

So I’m blunt about asking for salary needs in the interview, and I stress how I do the process. I try not to reveal maximums, because that puts possibly false expectations in the candidate’s head. But I always see relief in the face of the candidate when we get that out of the way. And most candidates have been surprised when the offer was for more than they expected. And that kind of surprise brings loyalty and commitment along with it for the ride.

Being this transparent means doing a couple of things:

1. Owning what your _REAL_ lowest salary is. It might be lower than what you’re currently making. Remember that salary isn’t a “how low can we go” decision for companies: it’s getting the right talent to do the best job. Otherwise Williams and Sonoma would be out of business and everyone’d by from Wal-Mart. Own that number. But know that number well — under-guessing is deadly.

2. Get the stats on what’s going on in your town. If your salary target is 30% more than the local salaries for a person applying for the job, you’d honestly better have the right chops to be worth it.

3. Being prepared to let go of that gnawing worry that happens after buying a car: did I get skinned? Did they give a number based on how low they could go, or what is their “real” number?

“Worst” case, here’s what happened to me: I was hired in a place where I was paid $40k less a year than other programmers at the firm doing a similar job (B1 imports, no less). But you know what? I’d given a level that I felt I could live with, and they offered more than that. I agreed to it, even though I was below the mark, because it looked like a fun and challenging job. And it was.

My current job ways a good prevailing wage for my skills and it’s constantly a place where I’ve offered opportunities to ‘spread my wings.’ And while I’d gladly take a pay raise (and see it as a sign of my continued usefulness to the company), it I were flat for a year, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Bottom line: We don’t need to keep up with the Jones’, or even inflation. We have to keep even with what we feel we need to live a fulfilling and happy life. My number is different from anyone else’s. Yours will be too.

How to Ensure PTSD’s Continuity

shlomi on November 16, 2013

Israel used to have one of the highest quality educational institutions in the world. Sadly, that’s now long in the past, with levels of ignorance and ineptitude rising as they are in the US, complete with superstition and myth replacing scientific fact.

The Holocaust isn’t a myth, of course. As the son of two Holocaust survivors, I’ve been well and truly branded by their experiences, traumatized hearing their stories at an age where I could understand, but not defend against, the horrors visited upon my parents. It’s one of the many things that make the lives of G2 and G3 kids (second and third generation children of survivors) so… “interesting.”

Apparently that’s a good thing according to the nitwits currently infesting Israeli’s ministry of education and the Instilling Paranoid Fear Forever Department (story here). The only “age appropriate” education about the Holocaust that I can see is… none. Six year old children should be learning basic skills, enjoying recess and (IMHO) not having any internet or gaming access. Okay, well, I can’t have everything.

There’s a slightly nuts argument to be made that kids that age are exposed to violence in the media, and in games, so why not tell them that there are entire countries that killed millions of their grandparents and other relatives less than a century ago?

Because kids have a way, however sad in the context of Israel’s existence, of putting violence from the news and games into some kind of grasp. Terrorism is random, even if directly generally at Israelis. Missiles land with the dubious luck of the fin. That ability is dwarfed by the pervasive horror that one’s nameable ancestors were hunted and put to death by an entire country singularly bent on their personal destruction.

Sure, there are swathes of the Arab countries around Israel that have that on their to-do list, after oppression of internal elements, subjugation of women and generally killing all those who stand in their way. (At least, that’s the portrayal: most families, asked on their own, would much rather live in safety, health and food security rather than die in a formless Jihad. And yes, there are exceptions, but are all Jews Fagins? Merchants of Venice? Sheldon Adelsons?)

But these are issue that pervade Israeli society on a daily basis. Yes, they cause stress to kids and sure, PTSD his higher in populations living under these conditions. But why inculcate this into children almost too young to read? To what end? They’ll learn about it, at home or in the world, within a few years. And they should learn about it, in school, in a structured way. But give them a few years of innocence. Let them learn that fear, the anger and the resultant defiance or hate when they have a few more emotional tools to handle it. They’ll never forget it. Or not learn it.

Let’s let children be happy an innocent for as long as possible before tattooing them with the past agonies and future dangers of their people.

On Nazis and Politics

shlomi on October 13, 2013

Frank Bruni had a great piece in the New York Times today (read it here).I’ve been on the soapbox regarding the power of words for years, and I guess the tsunami of hyperbole has finally gotten someone’s attention.

There are enough true and honest conversations to be had regarding debt, the national deficit and the two-way social contract that defines us as Americans to descend into the jello wrestling pit of illogical arguments, name-calling and shutting down.

What worries me is that those with a radical bent (yes, those on the right, and yes, I have what I believe to be a well-founded point of view) have taken the fundamentalist religious tactic of simply creating facts to suit their theory. (I would use the phrase “the Nazi’s “Big Lie” but that would trigger Godwin’s Law and there’s no point in going there.) There are “media outlets” that only vaguely fit that appellation with regards to certain topics, and their output is taken as (literal) gospel by a wide swath of Americans who can’t be bothered to research all sides of an issue and then form their own opinions. The deficit has gone down in the past five years. The tax rate has not shot up since President Obama was elected. No one has taken anyone’s guns, and the President of the United States is not an enemy of the state or some kind of terrorist. Folks who believe this, especially the latter, are encouraged to see a psychiatrist. If they have insurance, of course.

I truly hope the GOP gets its act together and decides to gamble its future on returning to the right wing, back from wherever it’s gotten to. The gerrymandering that created “safe” congressional voting districts is now biting them in the ass: with a ‘the more fanatic the better’ mentality sweeping through them like the 1917 influenza. And dare I say, just as lethal to our democratic way of life.

The best way to help them is for all of us, left, center and right to seek points of contact and agreement. Can we decide to take a close look at the Social Security disability mechanism? Yes, we should. Medicaid, Medicare? Of course: every organization should be accountable and transparent. The military? Yes, as well. We’ve got weapons systems for which there are no reasonable enemies, and defense and government contractors that are not just sucking at the hind teat, they’ve got all the nipples in their mouths. We should look at that kind of funding.

By the same token, we should look at what it means to be an American citizen. It’s not the idea of mine, mine, mine. Never was. Shouldn’t be. If we want safe drinking water, let’s be adults and make sure we’re checking on the quality, and thinking two steps ahead before exposing aquifers to risks from industry. We have a great logistics system, but if the government doesn’t invest at the levels President Eisenhower did back in the 1950’s, our ability to keep production up will degrade. Quickly, not slowly. And yes, investments in education are necessary to keep our future adults from believing in quackery. Must as some religious fundamentalists might want to deny it, faith and theory are not compatible. There are plenty of scientists who are deeply religious and mesh their research, their hypotheses and yes, their fact-checked, peer-reviewed theories within their religious contexts. And a healthy population is a productive one. What we had until the Affordable Care Act took effect was all citizens subsidizing the uninsureds’ visits to ER departments instead of cheaper well-person visits.

All topics should be discussed. Rationally. With respect for the other party as a person. Because if we dismiss the humanity of the opposing side, we’ve negated them as a co-equal citizen of these United States, and that’s a slippery slope to social, and then political, anarchy.

Words and Transoms

shlomi on September 23, 2013

Transom over a door I have nothing against Kim Harrison. She’s a successful author who balances a myriad of internal emotional states in a chaotic (to say the least) universe of her creation. It has the same there’s-no-time, I’ll-kick-my-way-out-of-this, gee-magic-comes-to-me just-as-I-need-it. I just bought the first three books of her series, and Friday’s payday, so that’s where the money’s going — for the rest of the published volumes in the series.

That said, I’m disappointed in something I’m seeing more and more in e-books, at a rate I hadn’t seen in print copies: vocabulary mistakes. There’s somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 distinct words in the English language ^[1]. That means that there’s more choice to use the right nuanced word. It also makes it easier for a “valid” word to be the wrong word choice. And these errors can change the meaning of a sentence and, even with mental correction, jars a user out of the story.

The first time I read “slacked” in Kim’s novel “Every Which Way But Dead.”, I tried to correlate “loosening the pressure” with the scene. Given the high-tension story line, some loosening was most welcome. But no, the word was supposed to be “slaked,” as in relieved of thirst. (Blood, in this case.)

Once is a typo. But there were at least three instances. And I found myself anticipating the wrong word’s next appearance on the page.

Sorry, Kim, for picking on you for this. It’s not just you, rest assured. Even e-book versions of existing books I find containing both typos (weird, right?) as well as incorrect or just plain wrong word splitting. Sure, reader software might be to blame, but e-book converting software does mangle texts by inserting font changes in inexplicable places^[2]. Ang again, publishers need to have skin in the game to ensure that they understand the technology they’ve adopted, at least to the extent they can do QA on their own work.

Perhaps what bugs me more is that this is the kind of mistake that a paperless editing process can create. I make no assumptions about Kim’s process, but I know that a close visual read by someone knowledgeable in English would catch these. More than that, I know that editors producing 20,000 trade paperbacks were a lot more persnickety about typos fifteen years ago than they are now. Part of it is the wonderfully listened-to urge to give readers what they want. Another is to get the book out there to hit in time for this -Con or another.

As a paying reader, however, I find this slipping in details irritating. It smacks, clearly unintended, of an author losing control over her or his work. Or, as was said in the “olden days,” ‘tossing it over the transom.’

On Hierarchies of Rabbis — not as a human pyramid

shlomi on August 6, 2013

The following essay was written in response to the article I Have No Chief Rabbi at www.hartman.org.il. I’ve made some edits so it makes more sense out of the context of a facebook stream.

Reb Yonah is one of my elementary school rabbis: Rabbi Yonah Fuld, now living in Israel. As tough as my struggles with religion have been, loving, thoughtful and caring rabbis such as Rabbi Fuld and Rabbi Yitz Greenberg reinforced my view that Judaism is many things, but lovingkindness is at its core.

…

Thanks, Reb Yonah, for sharing that article against the obscene bureaucracy called the Rabbinate with its chief rabbis. While having standards for rabbinical status (i.e., Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary) make perfect sense, and provide each stream of Judaism with a level set of education and experience, my experience with the rabbinate was noxious and toxic, amid all the happiness of the occasion; it spoiled a friendship with a cousin and rankled throughout my marriage.

In Israel, in the 90s, one had to be married by the rabbi/priest/immam paired with one’s religion or background. There was no civil marriage in Israel back then, so tough noogies if you were an atheist. Because my (now) ex and I were both of European extraction, it was decreed that we be married by him.

He was a stupid prat resembling an egotistical orthopedic surgeon on a bad hair day. My grilling for proving my Judaism was a matter of dropping the right rabbi names (my religious grade school had no meaning to him, but the name of my high school head rabbi — Sorry, “spiritual proctor (משגיח רוחני)” — apparently carried some weight). My ex, on the other hand, had to bring proof that both her parents were Jewish. {blink} Fortunately for her, the Orthodox rabbi who’d married her parents was still alive, so he shot off a letter. If they’d been married conservative, even if they were both Jewish and could trace their Jewish roots back to Europe, they’d have required who knows what: maybe a full conversion.

We wanted a tiny modification to the wedding ceremony: two rings. Motion denied. Having gone through probably more useful years of learning than the government-issued rabbi, I pointed out that the halachic (legal) requirement for marriage was a man giving a woman something of value and saying a certain phrase, in front of two legit (i.e., Jewish, Orthodox, male, 13+ year old) witnesses, and that everything else was optional. (N.B., Orthodox rabbis have to annul dozens of inadvertent marriages world-wide each year, when 14-year-olds say the phrase and give something (a cheap pen is enough) to a Jewish girl in front of their schoolmates.)

Any and all explanation of what we were trying to do was ignored. I’d wanted to have our own K’tuba — marriage license. My mother in law was an artist, and was eager to illustrate and write (even though she’d need to treat Hebrew characters as Egyptian runes — she didn’t know Hebrew) a document my ex and I felt was an important symbol of our life. Nope: there was one standard for Ashkenazi (European) Jews, and another for the Sepharadi (Middle Eastern) Jews. No changes allowed. Ditto for the “bill of sale” document (since the father of the bride and the groom sign off the latter’s receipt of the bride, including her virginal condition). No, no, don’t get me started.

I turned to a cousin, and asked him to consider doing the ceremony in his capacity as a rabbi in a Northern Israeli town. He’d been a wonderful, gentle resource for my ex and me. He agreed to try and get the Rabbinate in his city to talk to the Rabbinate in Karmiel to get him to do the ceremony. But it quickly turned out that he was no more willing to make any changes whatsoever than our local boy wonder.

Eventually, we made it our own way. My ex’s mom created an AMAZING document, fully illuminated and beautifully written. The Rabbinate laws didn’t state where the marriage had to take place, other than it had to be after sunrise. So we told the “European” flavor rabbi to appear in his counterpart’s synagogue at dawn. Oh, the two didn’t like each other one bit. We had a ceremony before the congregants, with some family on both sides attending. Then, having received and promptly tossed the “official” papers into a binder and from there into a drawer, we had a really great wedding celebration, complete with Reconstructionist rabbi, two ring ceremony, and a reading of the K’tuba of our making before family (happy on her side, bemused and disoriented on mine) and friends. A gorgeous day with a few of the Lower Galilee and the Med.

The Rabbinate made the most important and joyous ceremony of our marriage an event that strained us and our families. May those institutions wither and rot, as an overwatered grapevine whose grapes were Blake-ly poisoned.

As an apparently pigeonholed ‘ritual atheist,’ the god-belief part of Judaism holds nothing for me. But the rituals, and the care the Jewish community takes of its own, dictates the future of my clan, my children, and their children (sometime in the future, please!).

P.S. When my ex and I got our official divorce (‘get’), I wanted a religious one. I called up one who did it for a living (wow!), and he said it would cost $900, and not to call him until I had the money; he didn’t have time for any price wrangling or discussions. Way to go. We finally got one to do the deed for less, and he was respectful, honest and diligently and with sensitivity executed the task of burying a marriage long since expired. I got more out of the divorce ritual than our marriage. Which is truly sad.

Small Piece on CNN

shlomi on July 24, 2013

CNN was looking for baby naming stories. They liked my submission and interviewed me. Click the pic to jump to the story!

Kill the Owls, Don’t Kill the Owls… or Apply “Limited Experimental Removal”

shlomi on July 24, 2013

Which means: kill them. It’s amazing how many words and phrases in English translate to kill. We euthanize animals, or ‘put them to sleep.’ Mobsters ‘rub out,’ ‘hit,’ ‘take out’ and ‘take care of’ “problems.”

We starve the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the EPA, the BLM and private organizations of funding through congressional stupidity and sequester (sorry, that’s also congredumb) so that human interference destroys native species’ habitats. Then come up with essentially last-ditch, people-intensive ways of ‘saving’ the impacted species.

Owls are top avian predators as well. Give them back their mice, rats, frogs, toads, lizards, snakes and slow birds and we won’t have to shoot them: they’ll be competing for a larger food base.

We can accomplish that fairly cheaply: kill all feral cats and make owners either keep theirs indoors, or pay hefty ‘hunter’ fees. Cats are top-level predators of a wide variety of animals, with few natural predators. They spread taxoplasmosis gondii for better protection, and to hunt more effectively. Their feces causes birth defects.

Maine Coon cat held by owner Please don’t hurt me: I’ve owned some wonderful cats. I’ll probably own one in the future (hopefully a Maine Coon as shown on right). Heck, I would pay a large fee to allow my (neutered) cat outdoors. But their impact on the local biome is horrendous, far larger (and more painful) than a few ‘specialists’ performing limited experimental removal with Hevi-shot™ pest control devices set to full-choke.

A new word: Augre

shlomi on May 9, 2013

To use one of wikipedia’s favorite words, this is a portmanteau of “augmented” and “reality.” With Google’s Google Glass finally becoming a human-portable heads-up display (something done by IBM in the late 90s with their portable computing initiative), we need a name instead of a phrase to describe “google glassing.” I’m sure the lawyers at Google gnash their teeth over the use of googling in the same way we xerox things and buy kleenex at the store.

augre aug·re [auhg-ree] verb, augred, augring, augres

the act or power of viewing one’s environment with the aid of technology providing additional information related to objects
To discern information gathered by scanning an area with augmented reality vision.
the act of visually looking about in order to glean additional, computer-generated information about one’s surroundings.

synonyms
computer vision, machine vision

Examples:

“Joan augred the ballroom, then headed towards the bobbing icon above her waiting friend.”

“I can’t augre any wifi around here.”

“I can’t augre that guy over there; he’s wearing viewcamo.”

“Go left at the next intersection, my augre’s reporting patterns of infrared activity there over the past week.”

On Slash as a

shlomi on April 25, 2013

Professor Anne Curzan, in her blog piece entitled “Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore,” hails the use of “slash” in a sentence as an “innovative conjunction” or “conjunctive adverb.” She sites examples such as “Does anyone care if my cousin comes and visits slash stays with us Friday night?” Or “I went to class slash caught up on Game of Thrones…” [emphasis mine].

As a poet I play with words and usage all the time. However, I see “slash,” IMHO, as a form of grammatical laziness. Of course, YMMV. One can make the same case for Internet acronyms as for slash — with identical, in my opinion, results. Leave the slashing to the slashers. And/or poets.