A musing Beam

I have not put much effort into following the Ferguson, MO, crisis.  For anyone remotely connected to U.S. news, though, it jumps in your face. And it should.  As far as I can tell, the majority of the main actors in this farce (that would be funny were it not real) have behaved poorly.  Michael Brown, the "unarmed black man" (as he is unwaveringly described), appears to have been robbing a store shortly before the event. Darren Wilson somehow found himself in a situation where he shot an "unarmed black man" six times, killing him.  This may or may not have been in complete self defense, and it may or may not eventually reveal poor decision making, poor training, or poor execution of protocol.  Having known cops that killed in the line of duty, I suspect (were the whole world not watching) that he would be the first to say that something went wrong here. The rioters who have destroyed property and assaulted civilians and police alike. The protestors who did no

Yeah, sometimes the feds overreach.  Does power corrupt?  Of course.  The NSA's unconstrained surveillance is an obvious example, as is the IRS targeting of specific groups based on their political allegiances.  Those should be dealt with. Before I get into the rest of this post, I want to note that I sometimes tire of the recent conversation being so stilted.  Tea Party-esque people have taken over the dialogue.  I would love to see real discussions about trade-offs in the war on drugs, on Department of Education overreach, of our goals with the EPA, of how current IP law stifles growth in the fastest growing areas of our economy, etc.  Instead, we fight over whether to repave our crumbling highways or even whether we should pay our national bills.  The self-righteous feel of many making the (obviously) fallacious arguments is also taxing. The point of this post, though, is to respond to many postings I see about how the federal government is constantly overreaching and contro

Long time without a post -- been a busy several months. I'll start posting a few ideas I've had in the hopper.  This one is a request from a friend who had a bad travel experience.  It's a case study in problem solving skills, incentives, and thinking of people as human beings. As a consumer of the airline industry's products, it certainly feels like their customer-facing employees rarely have any incentive or desire to be helpful, efficient, or even to solve a problem.  Everyone is annoyed with the passengers when a flight is cancelled.  How was that their fault? The annoyance is even worse if the first airline transfers you to another airline. A woman stands in a long line, sobbing, because she won't make it to her daughter's wedding.  She is mad at the person at the desk, who of course didn't make the decisions leading to the flight cancellation.  Neither side shows empathy.  Passengers who don't fly often are in a strange, emotionally charged w