Scholars and Rogues is pleased to introduce the first in a series of talking and speaking type Scrogues. This Scrogcast was presented by Gavin Chait at an informal interactive gathering of analysts at Frost & Sullivan. The seminar is about 11Mb, is in MP3 format, and is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License

Download the Scrogcast: The US dollar in Africa.

The Invasion and Occupation of Iraq Surpasses the American Civil War in Duration: The United States’ involvement in World War I lasted only 19 months and World War II lasted 44 months for the United States, even though the war itself was nearly six years long. The occupation of Iraq (aka the Iraq War) outlasted World War II in November of 2006, making the duration of U.S. involvement in Iraq the third longest foreign occupation in U.S. history. The American Civil War lasted 48 months, and the Iraq occupation surpassed that duration on March 20, 2007. This makes the Iraq occupation the third longest running period of continuous conflict in U.S. history, behind only the Vietnam War and its sister conflict in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

The United States invaded Iraq on March 18, 2003. By the end of 2007, the United States will have been involved in Iraq for 4 years, 9 months, and 14 days. (Brian Angliss)

Al Gore Takes the Heck Over: The big deal here isn’t the movie, the Oscar, or even the Nobel. No, the real reason Al is one of the citizens of the year is because he, more than anyone, has pushed concern for the environment close to, and perhaps over, the tipping point from “librul treehugger” issue to common sense bipartisan issue. You may have noticed recently that a lot more people seem to have accepted that Green is Good. Gore doesn’t deserve all the credit, of course, but he merits a lot.

The question now is whether he’s done more good as non-President than he could have had he not lost the 2000 election 5-4.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Releases its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): This year saw the release of the United Nations’ Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the state of the global climate since the inception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. Composed of the governments who make up the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and chartered “to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change,” the IPCC has independently assessed the best available climate science for the fourth time and concluded that there is over a 90% chance that human-created greenhouse gas emissions are driving up global mean temperature.

Starting in February, the IPCC released three massive reports, Working Group I’s “The Physical Science Basis”, Working Group II’s “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, and Working Group III’s “Mitigation of Climate Change” throughout the year. Two weeks before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, the IPCC released the AR4 Synthesis Report, the final AR4 document that distills all the detailed scientific an socio-economic conclusions and analyses to create a single document that is supposed to guide the entire world’s policy planning from now until the IPCC next addresses global heating.

The net result of the four reports was a softening of the U.S. position that global heating wasn’t occurring, although the Bush Administration continues to pursue a policy of voluntary reductions in CO₂ emissions in opposition to the centralized government regulations favored by most of the rest of the U.N. In addition, the IPCC reports triggered a sudden explosion of interest by mainstream and alternative media in the United States, the world’s largest CO₂ producer. As a result, the bulk of the U.S. Presidential candidates have detailed their positions on what the U.S. should do to combat global heating, many are on record supporting or co-sponsoring anti-global heating legislation of some form, and energy and global heating policies have been taken up by the U.S. federal government repeatedly, albeit without significant action. And in lieu of federal action on global heating, multiple states have formulated their own approaches to mitigating the effects of global heating.

The scientists and policymakers involved in crafting the various IPCC reports had their work validated with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in December. (Brian Angliss)

A Bridge Over In Troubled Waters: Thank goodness America is committed to rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq. Tragedy, sure, but your politicians are on it.

The First Nuclear Power Plant Construction Permit Since 1978 is Requested: In the late 1970s, public outcry against nuclear power, plant safety concerns, and high construction costs combined to make new nuclear power plants cost ineffective when compared to other sources of electricity, especially coal and natural gas. These concerns were proven in the public mind by the accident at Three Mile Island and then later reinforced by the Chernobyl accident. As a result, there were no new requests to the U.S. Department of Energy for new nuclear power plants since 1978 until NRG Energy of Princeton, New Jersey requested one on September 25, 2007.

Significant changes in two factors in opposition to new nuclear plant construction since the late 1970s have enabled NRG Energy to take the risk of adding two new reactors at an existing Texas plant. The first is a president friendly to nuclear power and a nuclear-friendly Republican Congress for President Bush’s first term. This resulted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which had significant government incentives designed to spur the development and construction of new nuclear power plants, mitigating much of the economic risk of constructing new nuclear reactors. The second is a rising number of scientists and environmentalists who have concluded that nuclear power is the lesser of evils when it comes to environmental damage vs. carbon dioxide-intensive fossil fuels like natural gas and coal. A third factor also plays a minor role in the timing of the new permit request – it’s been nearly 30 years since the last request and the public has lost some of its fear (for good or ill) of nuclear power and its risks. (Brian Angliss)

Tragedy at Virginia Tech: Horrible, unspeakable – there just aren’t words to describe it. Worst of all, I remain convinced that the toll could have been less than it was. Hopefully the tragedy got people on campuses across the country to thinking more concretely about what they can do if it happens where they work.

The iPhone: Don’t buy one until they make it available on all carrier platforms. That said, this is an innovation that’s eventually going to live up to and exceed all the hype.

The Minot to Barksdale Nuclear Express: At the end of August, the security blunder of this young century occurred when six nuclear warheads were flown from one US Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota to another in Barksdale, Louisiana. But Philip Coyle, a think tanker and former assistant secretary of defense, said, “This wasn’t just a mistake. I’ve counted, and at least 20 things had to have gone wrong for this to have occurred.”

Since Barksdale is an embarkation point for Middle East military operations, speculation inevitably arose that the nukes were intended for use in Iran. But a base commander lacks the authority to order the transport of nuclear weapons. Was the order issued by an alternate Cheney chain of command?

It’s been stated that the US military would never release data this sensitive to the public without authority from the White House. According to this line of thinking, the intent wasn’t to bomb, but, instead, to put the fear of God-Allah in Iran.

The disturbing nature of the story has only been compounded by a related Cheney chain of events. Immediately preceding and following the event, six personnel at the two bases died in apparent accidents or by suicide.

Especially unsettling was the unlikely death of a member of the Special Forces in the wild. (Dave Lindorff has been all over this.) Besides the ultimate destination of the nukes, one can’t help but wonder if the dead were whistleblowers.

Even though the US has become blanketed in secrecy, it’s still not PC to compare Bush & Co. to Nazi Germany. How about, with its all-pervasive Stasi, East Germany? (Russ Wellen)

The Jena 6: In July the NAACP buried “the N-word.” There was never racism in America again.

“Don’t tase me, bro!” High profile politician gives a public address. College students fill the building. Cast of Reno 911 hired to manage security. Hilarity ensues! It’s the feel-good hit of the summer! Starring Toby Maguire and John Kerry. (Dr. Sid Bonesparkle)

Sioux Sue for Sovereignty: In December, a Lakota (Sioux) delegation delivered a statement of “unilateral withdrawal” to the State Department. In other words, it plans to secede. Not all Lakota, just the delegation, which was led by Russell Means. He, of course, is famous for surviving the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973 and founding the American Indian Movement (AIM), as well as for his movie roles.

One can imagine the federal government’s response: “Go ahead, enjoy your little secession. Of course, we won’t be subsidizing your reservations anymore. Plus you have no chance whatsoever to change your mind about the $122 million in compensation the Supreme Court awarded you a couple of decades ago and which you refused.”

Means, however, also announced that his group planned to file liens on property in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. “The Missouri River is ours, and so are the Black Hills,” he said.

But while Means taketh away with one hand, he giveth with the other. He invites one and all to live in the Lakota Nation, tax-free, as long as they renounce their U.S. citizenship. Don’t worry: It will issue drivers’ licenses and passports.

Once Americans get it through their heads that this isn’t a reprise of the Confederacy, many might find the idea of a nation free of taxes, as well as war, appealing. After all, like Ron Paul, Means is a libertarian, under which guise, he too has run for president.

Still, the first person with whom I shared the Lakotas’ plans for secession said, “Oh great, it’s bad enough we have to worry about the terrorists. Now, this too.”

Primal frontier fears resurface: Will the redskins return to their renegade roots and take revenge — not to mention scalps? Not likely.

But Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, as well as Venezuela are following events closely. Those Americans bent out of shape about the “NAFTA Superhighway” from Mexico to Canada may as well start worrying now about One Indigenous Continent for All. (Russ Wellen)

Arkansas Couple Welcomes Their 16th Child: “It’s a blessing from the Lord,” who apparently wants to bless the world with rampant overcrowding. It would be wrong to ask the Lord to bless these people with some counseling, wouldn’t it? (Dr. Sid Bonesparkle)

Scott McClellan on the Road to Damascus: “So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.” Scotty, we’re looking forward to your book and we hope it helps put some richly deserving criminals where they belong. But there’s one little problem with your story. We knew you were lying. If you didn’t, you’re either a raging moron or a man of “tremendous faith.”

The Subprime Lending Crisis: For a few years now I’ve been watching the housing market and not fully understanding how you could have all that junk financing, spiraling housing prices, massive new construction and high used home inventory all at the same time. I mean, I’m no expert. But this year reality set in – in a big ugly way. And just when we thought we were going to be able to sell our house back in New York.

President Bush Commutes the Perjury Sentence for Scooter Libby: We learned in History of the World, Part 1 that it’s good to be da king. If you can’t be da king, we now know that next best thing is to be the guy who has evidence against da king.

Astronaut Lisa Nowak Allegedly Attacks Astronaut Colleen Shipman: Lisa, when your friends told you that you needed to “pamper” yourself, this isn’t what they meant. (Dr. Sid Bonesparkle)

Join us tomorrow for more of 2007 in review.

Credits: All items not attributed were written by Sam Smith.

Does Web 2.0 undermine net neutrality?

Gavin: I feel that net neutrality is being undermined by all the new upstarts; from Facebook to Digg to Wordpress. My issue is this: closed-standards, like all the Web 2.0 platforms, seem a step backwards rather than a step forwards. Try and imagine if Google declared that henceforth Gmail subscribers could only email other Gmail subscribers? They’d go bang in a week.

Yet, that is precisely how Facebook, Digg, Wordpress, etc all operate. I need new login addresses – new identities – for every single Web 2.0 ap. Yet I only need one email address to contact anyone via email anywhere in the world. Various initiatives (like Identity 2.0) aimed at reducing this complexity seem merely to reinforce it.

It is this very lack of open-standards that reduces the long-term power of all the new Web 2.0 companies. They make it a choice. You have to give up your old blog to come and use the new system. You have to give up your old friends on MySpace and make new ones on Facebook. I can change my service provider any time and keep my email address. No compromise necessary and it improves service levels and expands the market, since I don’t mind making a bad initial choice when I can change my mind later. Try changing your mind about S&R’s blog platform choice now …

This is so much like dotcom bubble 1 that I continue to be amazed that no-one notices.

Martin: I know that LJ, at least, utilizes OpenID, but I do agree that lack of compatibility across platforms is a severe hindrance for people that want to establish cohesive online identities for themselves all over “teh Intar wubs.” I’m on several different social networking hubs (LJ, Orkut, LinkedIn) and have different accounts for each, PLUS my various e-mail addresses and blogs I do. It’s a pain in the ass.

As a privacy advocate, I can understand the need for security that a walled garden approach supports, but I also think it has a lot to do with the incipient social stratification and layering between different sites. Did you read Danah Boyd’s article about the class distinctions between MySpace and Facebook, wherein the former is considered “gutter” and mostly for use by musicians, porn stars, and generally non-white, trashy types, and the latter is where the “good” people go? Fascinating stuff. Check out this Guardian article about it.

Gavin: I read Danah Boyd’s article a few weeks ago and got angry about it. The thing I enjoy about the internet is its flatness. So I am perturbed by indications of the creation of a classed society by all the miscreants who claim that this is precisely what they don’t want. I don’t believe them. Digg and Reddit are now owned by the same company yet, to read the missives between them, they’re on different continents.

Martin: I don’t think that it’s unwanted, per se, but more of the inevitable truth that human irrationality and tribalist impulses will create class distinctions even in the flattening, no-one-knows-you’re-a-cocker-spaniel world of the Internet. People will associate with whom they feel comfortable, and even in the delimiting world of the Internet, human nature is not so easily overcome.

There’s a positive side to this, however, individual communities can block out a unified identity, but it also frees you to create distinctive identities that fit each community. The Martin Bosworth who blogs on S&R is not quite the same person who blogs on Private Intelligence; we have different topic focuses and different approaches, so we present different identities to the reader (not consciously, but that’s the perception). Jim Harper of the CATO Institute very insightfully pointed out that Web 2.0 is simply the latest flowering of the Internet’s power to “decouple” your “meatspace” identity from your Internet presence; a concept as old as Gibson’s “Neuromancer.”

I had someone call me all kinds of names for getting into a flamewar with them over anti-gay comments they made in a public forum. To their perception, I was everything they said I was and worse, even if it was inaccurate in fact. They knew only what they saw, and even after I copiously pointed out that I was not a troll and a hypocrite for calling them out, they did not buy it. Perception is all.

Are multiple independent identities a security feature, or just schizophrenic?

Gavin: Oh, sure, it allows one to explore parts of oneself. You can even go completely psycho from the privacy of your own home if you wish. A friend of mine – in her 50s – enjoys playing a teen vamp and picking up boys all over Second Life. But having all sorts of different identities doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be able to co-ordinate them all from one place. That can’t be a privacy issue. Surely having numerous gates to the same place (i.e. me) is worse than one? It makes spam worse, for starters, since there is more than one way to get hold of me, more than one password (rather than a single, very robust system).

Martin: Security specialists go round and around about this. For me, a decentralized, localized, multilayered target is much harder to attack than a single centralized target. And spam is so easily dealt with these days that many people simply disregard it and move on. Believe it or not, not everyone necessarily wants the world to know they write Harry Potter/Jack Sparrow slash fic on their LJ. And that’s their right. It’s their personal space to share – and NOT share – as they wish.

Control is key. If I choose to share my lurid gossip with the world, making all of my journal entries public and unfiltered, I must accept that I will lose some expectations of privacy. But if I explicitly lock some content for certain viewers only, my expectation of privacy should be assured.

Gavin: And I’m in agreement. Your privacy should be entirely yours to control. But we do have to discuss convenience. The more services that come out, and the less they communicate across common standards and platforms, the harder it gets to keep track of which identity you’re using and where. When you go shopping do you prefer having a separate credit-card for each store, and carrying hundreds of them, or do you prefer to have one you can use everywhere? When you phone someone would you like to have a different phone for each network provider? One for Verizon so you can call your Verizon friends, another for AT&T, another for Vodafone.

Martin: The more credit cards you have, the more at risk you are for ID theft and fraud, but one of the downsides of the credit system is that “thin credit file” consumers sometimes have to apply for gas cards, boutique store cards, etc. just to build a history. Merely making that point.

Bear also in mind that wireless carriers in the United States regularly lock down and disable interoperable features of phones to ensure you cannot port your phone with you if you change providers. It’s a horrible state of affairs and completely anti-competitive, and it has had the side effect of conditioning people to accept “walled gardens” for many features of their technological life.

Gavin: Which means that there is clearly a competitive advantage in dropping those walls. Basic business strategy has always said that the easier one makes it to arrive or leave, then the lower the switching cost – that’s why your network carriers put up the walls in the first place. But there is a further set of analyses that says, if the walls are high, then people often behave in ways that go against your objectives. They fight you. So illegal immigrants in the US have such a hard time getting in that they choose not to go home at all. If it were easier to get work permits to get in, then more would be happier to go home in-between jobs. The same goes for switching costs. If it is really difficult to leave then, once a person makes the choice to leave your company, they will NEVER return.

But that misses the point about the web. It’s always easy to leave, but it is really hard to set up a new account and recreate your network. So why does every web 2.0 brand have a different, inherently dodgy, login system? Why are they all distinct from each other? Why can’t I link my LiveJournal, Wordpress, and Joomla blogs together? They’re all open-source projects? Why the hell don’t they communicate with each other?

Open-source might be free, but open-standards allows communication between competitors

Martin: I don’t think any of this was intentional by design, but each of the groups you mention is specifically out to ensure you stay within their community. The upside of decentralized closed communities is that it enables the user to create their own identity to fit each community, and enables them more control over their individual Internet identity footprint.

Sam started Scholars & Rogues because he was frustrated with LiveJournal’s detachment from the larger blog political community, which is completely valid and fair. Yet I find many a LiveJournal quoted and linked to in a wide variety of blogs and just as many topics. These users have enabled themselves to be found, and their communications have reached beyond LJ’s closed niche. For better AND worse.

Gavin: Blogging fits entirely within my point. It’s easy to link within blog platforms, but across platforms is harder. I’d like to keep a common identity across blogs I comment in of similar interest. I don’t want to have to create whole new identities to comment at Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or any of the other blogs I don’t necessarily write for but may comment on regularly. I want my comments to connect to my blog – to create a consistent personality.

My greatest gripe with the instinctive anti-business / anti-commercial edge of Web 2.0 is that they completely neglect that real market growth comes from open-standards not open-source technology. Open-standards ensure that everyone has access to a common understanding of how something should work. Phones would never have caught on if there hadn’t been a standard set of protocols that allow different brands of phone and different networks to interact. People would bitch like hell if they had to carry multiple phones to solve this issue. But multiple systems for social networking seems just fine. Of course I want to spend hours building up a network on one platform and then watch another one become popular and be unable to move my network across. Sounds like a great idea.

Martin: Think about this, Gavin: each network has a niche that it fills, and you build your identity footprint to fit in that niche. There’s been talk that Facebook (which was originally only for college students; as “walled garden” as you can get) is overtaking LinkedIn as the premier destination for business networking. Now, while Facebook may be the superior product when it comes to social networking that leads to business opportunities, LinkedIn is still the market leader when it comes to specific business networking. Why would I move my identity somewhere when I can build and define my niche in the locale that it’s best suited for?

Put more simply, if I want to find college friends, I’ll use Facebook (or MySpace, God forbid). If I want business connections, I’ll use LinkedIn. Each one serves a particular need, and the other is not – or should not – trying to be something it’s not. To all these rules, there are exceptions. I had a college buddy find me on LinkedIn, and I’ve found business interests in LiveJournal, but their prime design remains the same.

Gavin: How about simply a set of open-standards – plugs, if you like – that allow third party “bridges” to collect information you allow and you can choose what gets sent where. Then you can spend ages developing a comprehensive set of data on yourself and simply port it to the platform you want to use. So your business info goes to LinkedIn, your college info to Facebook, your curriculum vitae to Monster, and your mad fantasies about hair-nets and blue rinse to the granny forum on LJ. To me this would create a real “neutral” platform and make it easier for all.

Net-neutrality seems aimed at the standard “bad-guys”; people like AT&T or Microsoft but at least they signed up to open-standards. You can leave their platforms and still connect to your mates who stayed behind. But it works both ways. If they clean up their act it’s just as easy to go back.

Screaming from the public gallery

Martin: They only did this thanks to lots of regulation and screaming from the public, mind you. AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy were the same in the Internet’s early days. It took outside forces to push people beyond their particular networks, and many people STILL use AOL’s system alone for their Internet needs. More power to them if that’s what makes them happy.

Gavin: Of course it takes screaming from the public. Hi, everyone, I’m a member of the public and I’m screaming.

Anyone remember the Search Engine wars? How about SixDegrees? How many of the incumbents from Del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Simpy, Fark, Backflip, Wink, Spurl, LinkaGoGo, Mister Wong, Netvouz, Magnolia, Diigo, Blue Dot, Segnalo, Tailrank, RawSugar or any other I may have left out are going to survive? And what happens to all the effort to the one you put in if it fails?

Martin: Honestly, half of those names you mentioned will die on the vine if they have not already done so, or be bought by larger companies and instituted into the corporate approach. I don’t feel obligated to sign up to EVERY single search/social network/Web 2.0 gadget that comes down the pike, because I have crafted an individual identity that suits my needs. People will use the market to decide what they want and don’t want. Google is king because it was easy to use and free. FARK is king because the content is hysterical and user-contributed. del.icio.us is king because … well, actually, it got bought by Yahoo and now it’s not nearly as user-friendly and intuitive in the current iteration.

You have the power to decide where you want to build your online identity. I agree that the option for a cross-platform interoperable accessibility should exist; BUT this should only be an option, not the standard.