One of the well-understood issues in writing fiction is maintaining the reader’s, or viewer’s, “willing suspension of disbelief”. We read The Count of Monte Cristo and happily go along with Edmond Dantes finding a staggering treasure, then returning first to Marseilles and then Paris, living his grand life while only one of those who knew him as a poor sailor recognize him. Or we watch Burn Notice, knowing that you can’t actually wreak such havoc with a few household chemicals and an endless supply of cheap cell phones. (We know this because in real life, even well-planned terrorist attacks seem to rarely work as well as if Michael and Fiona were behind them.) The opposite problem is true with Dexter. It’s way too easy to believe that the quiet neighbor across the street, the one that seems to rarely be at home, is calmly eliminating unwanted members of the community.

As is my wont after seeing something new, I went straight to Wikipedia’s coverage. I was annoyed to learn that Parents Television Council protested the decision by CBS to air the first season during the writers’ strike, on the grounds that a show that aroused empathy for a killer would lead to additional violence in society. Well, that’s nonsense, the media doesn’t have that kind of impact. Television is full of comedy, yet our society is hardly mirthful and more little boys want to grow up to be firemen than comics. Radio is full of pop music, which is rife with “Silly Love Songs” as Sir Paul sang. We would be facing incredible population growth if radio guided life, everyone would be making babies at a rate not seen in history.

The next night I watched a movie that I had been meaning to see for a long time: Silkwood. Yes, Meryl Streep is great. The issue of violence in the media suddenly made sense. Here’s a movie that does inspire violence. You see how Kerr-McGee, the corporation that Karen Silkwood worked for, was probably responsible for killing and silencing her. It makes you want to get back at them, but it was long ago and far away so you can’t. But you can watch an episode of Burn Notice and see Fiona detonating bad guys, or get out an old episode of Walker: Texas Ranger and watch Cordell kick some bad guys until they stay down. (Bad guys on that show stupidly kept getting up to get whacked again.) Or reread Dumas and vicariously participate in Edmond’s revenge. Or, if you aren’t troubled by nightmares, you can watch Dexter.  Violence on screen, or in a book, does not drive us to acting out violently in real life. Quite the opposite, it satisfies our need for a dramatic response to the frustration we encounter.

If I Were King, Parents Television Council would still be able to petition networks to change their schedules. I’m fundamentally against limiting free speech and morons have rights.

This is curious. In fact, this is nonsense. The issue is that the press is constantly comparing Apple to Dell or HP in this regard, but the comparison is silly. What they are overlooking is that Apple’s margin includes both the margin on the hardware, which is probably better than Dell’s but probably not all that much better, and its margin on the operating system, which is probably not as high as Microsoft’s margin on Windows. When Microsoft reports their margin, it’s closer to 85% on Windows. I have no idea what Dell pays Microsoft for an OEM copy of Windows Vista, but though it isn’t anything like the retail price, it isn’t trivial.

On server products, the advantage probably goes to Dell/MS or HP/MS. When a Windows server is sold, the base operating system is in the total to the tune of $500 and up, for five users, on which MS earns their 85%. But there isn’t much reason to buy a real server for five users, so the client buys sets of CALs – Client Access Licenses. Five additional CALs cost about $150, on which the MS margin has to be on the order of 99%.

In other words, the constantly repeated theme that Apple is making dramatically higher margins than their competitors is the result of poor logic and arithmetic skills on the part of the media. As has been said before on these pages, If I Were King, education would be focused on addressing this, and nobody with a high school diploma would be likely to make such an error. We assume that the media would continue to hire only those who have at least that level of education.

In general I make sure the themes for QOTD change regularly, but there are exceptions. I always feature Christmas quotes on 25 December and Jefferson and Shakespeare quotes on their natal anniversaries. Never before had readers complained. The proximate cause turned out to be an HBO miniseries on Adams, based on David McCullough’s biography, which a lot of folks apparently watched. I’m not about to sign up for cable so I could watch the series, but I did buy the book, finishing it last night.

I feared I was reading a hagiography in the early parts of the book, but by the time McCullough covered the ineffective efforts to secure support from France and Holland for the American Revolution, during which Adams and Franklin were squabbling with each other at Paris, it was clear that the history was being played straight. Alas, the story is not told with any enthusiasm and relies too heavily on long extracts from letters between John and Abigail. Interesting details emerge, and the character of Mr Adams is certainly clear, but the story deserved more narrative elan. I don’t think it will spoil it for you to say that Adams and Jefferson had completely reconciled with each other and were the best of friends by the time both of them died on the same day, the putative 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence which Jefferson wrote and Adams pushed through the convention. (According to McCullough, Adams considers the second of July the proper date, not the fourth, but both Adams and Jefferson routinely appeared at celebrations on 4 July for many years.)

I hesitantly recommend the book. I’m glad to have read it, but it’s no page turner.

Exponential is not a synonym for really, really, big. No one-time change can possibly be exponential, no matter how dramatic. If the proportion changes from one period to another (as in your assets being eroded by inflation) it isn’t exponential. That passbook savings rates are at absurdly low levels doesn’t change the fact that the pathetic balance is the result of exponential growth. If I Were King, educators who fostered the error would be picking lettuce and students would learn to use the word correctly, incidents like the ones I encountered this weekend would decline exponentially. Slowly, to be sure, but exponentially.