NY Times Teaches You How to Speak to Your Nanny

In yet another example of the New York Times pitching a story of interest to their most desired demographic - rich folks - Hilary Stout details the challenges involved when moms try to talk to the nanny.

For as long as she has employed a nanny (almost 10 years now), Eileen Hershenov, a lawyer from Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., has had day jobs running the legal departments of large nonprofit groups. “I’m really used to having employees,” she said. “I’ve hired people, I’ve fired people. I’ve gone through on-the-job training and formal training on how to communicate with your reports.”

But, she said, the corporate training “didn’t translate over” to talking with her nanny. 

There's no mention of how dads should talk to the nanny, because the old man doesn't have time for that shit.

Remember - the nanny is an employee, not a family member, even though she's providing the nurturing environment and daily care that mom & dad don't have the time or inclination to dispense, so tell her exactly what you want, and how you want it, and fire her insubordinate ass when she fails to meet the standards that you won't even attempt to undertake.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Dick of the Week

Ross Douthat.

On Barack Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

But by accepting the prize, he’s made failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear. What’s more, he’s etched in stone the phrase with which critics will dismiss his presidency.

Slick Willie. Tricky Dick. Jimmy “Malaise” Carter. Dubya the Incompetent.

And now Barack Obama, Nobel laureate.

NY Times Maybe, Possibly Infected Your Computer

Reports are circulating that the New York Times is attempting to understand and rectify problems caused by "an authorized advertisement" that had popped up on its web site.

Initial word is that a pop-up ad advises viewers that their machine might be infected with a virus, and directs them to a site that attempts to convince them to download and install fake antivirus software that almost certainly contains malware components.

From a note on the Times site:

Some NYTimes.com readers have seen a pop-up box warning them about a virus and directing them to a site that claims to offer antivirus software. We believe this was generated by an unauthorized advertisement and are working to prevent the problem from recurring. If you see such a warning, we suggest that you not click on it. Instead, quit and restart your Web browser.

Such attacks typically hijack the web browser, so even if you try to escape from the rogue AV site, your browser continues to return you to the site until you force-quit the application.

Still unknown is whether the NY Times site itself was compromised, or whether an compromised ad server piped in the malicious advertisement.

I've helped a couple of folks in recent weeks recover from similar fake antivirus outbreaks, some of which burrow deep into the Windows registry and require some technical expertise and understanding of how they work to eradicate completely.

As always, you can help protect yourself by following these handy tips:

1. Keep your computer fully patched for security vulnerabilities, not only for the operating system and Office components, but also frequently targeted applications like Flash, Shockwave, Adobe Reader, and the various instant messenger and file sharing programs floating around. If you find this difficult to do, consider installing and running the free version of Secunia PSI to help automate the tasks.
2. Don't use Internet Explorer as your primary browser. Switch to Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, or some other less-targeted, less-vulnerable browser. If you're using Firefox, the NoScript and AdBlock add-ons are a must, as is WOT, which helps alert you to suspicious or fraudulent web sites.
3. Don't click links that come via email or over IM. Often times the link that shows up in blue text isn't where you actually end up going if you click on it. In most browers, if you hover over the link, the bottom of your browser will show you the real web address hiding withing the embedded url.
4. Run a good antivirus program, and keep the virus definitions up to date. AVG makes a decent free AV program, and I've always had good success with Kapersky's paid offerings. But understand that antivirus systems are signature-based, meaning that the vendor needs to know about a virus' characteristics in advance to design a way to detect it, so it's not a foolproof way to protect yourself from new viruses or variants of older ones.
5. Don't use Microsoft products. I know, that's a hopeless request, but the security professional in me forces me to say it. If you keep driving your car with the windows down, eventually you'll get wet when it rains.

In the words of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, "Let's be careful out there."

Ross Douthat - Crazy Windbag

The current health care reform proposals have nothing to do with euthanizing old folks, and saying that they do, even in the New York Times, doesn't make it so.

Paul Krugman - A Strange Madness

Paul Krugman weighs in on what he sees as a strange madness sweeping America.

The point is that whatever is driving all this doesn’t have anything to do with the realities of what I, or, much more important of course, Obama say or do. Obama could have come in proposing to pursue an agenda identical to Bush, and he would still be a socialist/Commie/fascist, with those of us who don’t see it that way lying Nazis ourselves. 

Something is going very wrong in the heads of a substantial number of Americans.

Technology: It's What's for Breakfast

Brad Stone penned an expose in the New York Times about how technology is changing the family dynamic in ways great and small.

Several of the examples appear to be normal downstream effects of a tech push supplanting what used to be with what now is - using cell phones as alarm clocks, and laptops for video games and chat instead of the kids parking in front of the television to watch cartoons before school.

But the larger message I took from the article was that parents setting and enforcing boundaries in these areas has fallen significantly behind the technology advances themselves. For example, one dad noted that he sent text messages to his children's cell phones to wake them up in the morning, even though he could walk upstairs and personally jostle the little buggers out of their dreams. That's not the fault of technology - that's a lazy father.

A mother laments that since purchasing a laptop for her daughter, things have changed dramatically. The offspring has missed the bus three times because she's noodling around on her Mac, and where she used to take the dog out each morning for a 20-minute constitutional, the daughter now runs the pup in and out quickly to get back to her Facebook updates.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Before the advent of computers and cell phones, parents struggled with their children when it came to the technology of that era, too. We set strict limits on how long our kids were allowed to use the telephone, and cut off usage at 10 PM. My wife and I used to lay in bed giggling after we would take the phone extension off the hook in our room and then listen to our teen son pick up the downstairs phone and try to make calls, swearing and bitching because it wouldn't work.

Of course, he eventually outsmarted us by switching to the phone that was built in to the fax machine, but the moral of the story is that we had boundaries and we diligently attempted to enforce them. Kids refer to that as "you're ruining my life!" parenting.

Whether it's using the phone or reading a comic book under the blanket by using a flashlight, it's how technology is integrated into the family dynamic that's the key. If parents are setting a poor example by checking their Blackberry devices every five minutes, or by waking up their children via SMS, then they shouldn't blame technology.

If you think things are bad now, wait until we all have chips implanted in our heads.

Image via howtosplitanatom.com

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Resentment

In his weekly New York Times column, Frank Rich weighs in on Sarah Palin in light of her recent decision to "drop out and cash in" and what that might mean for the future of the GOP.

While it's true that Palin has broad appeal among right-wingers, the crux of the problem is outlined quite nicely by Rich. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin supporters responded en masse to her message, delivered overtly and other times in a more nuanced fashion, that the state she governed represented the "real America", not-so-secret code for white working folk, unlike that fancy Negro community organizer from the city of big shoulders.

That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.

And that, my friends, is the GOP problem in a nutshell. While coalescing around a movement, angry whites are on the wrong side of the demographic slope. As this country becomes more racially blended, and as formerly powerless minorities being to make headway into roles held predominantly by white males since 1776, it will be easier to rally those who believe their time has passed. When an African-American can win the highest office in the land, and when a Hispanic female is on her way to the Supreme Court, it's no longer hyperbole on white supremacist web sites or back-room gatherings. The proof these racists need is there for all to witness.

In the absence of strong, highly-regarded Republican candidates, the core of the shrinking conservative movement has very few choices, and Palin revs up the base, draws a crowd, and is a photogenic example of the new hope for America. Never mind that it wasn't that long ago that conservatives openly trumpeted that a woman belonged not in the work force, but home raising their kids so they didn't get turned into homosexuals by being placed in daycare, or that women have been able to vote for only 89 of our 233 years of existence as a nation.

As Rich explains:

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

I wouldn't expect this shrinking group of resentful bigots to go away quietly anytime soon. The natural reaction of the animal kingdom is to fight back ferociously when placed in the corner, and that's exactly where the resentful racists find themselves.

image by sean dreilinger / flickr

Goodbye, New York Times

With reports that the New York Times is leaning toward charging $5 to view their stories online, let's examine what that will mean to me.

I'll miss them when they go behind the paywall (again), but not like I would miss my dog. There will be a gap in my online news habit, but nothing like the chasm that existed when Seinfeld ended its run.

Sad tales of how the formerly comfortable can no longer have a summer place in Martha's Vineyard or keep three kids in private school? Not so much.

Things like this are actually good. They make me examine the value proposition involved, which can be difficult when the content is free. Even if the offering is crappy, it's hard not to tell myself that I get what I pay for, so it's my own damn fault. And if I want to continue freeloading, shouldn't I pick a better product for my non-dollar?

That's when it became clear that over the last several years, the value of the New York Times online content has dropped to the point where $5 seems like highway robbery. If honest examination of the free model provided data to support the position that I was using the site far less than ever before, when it was cost-free, how in the world could I cost-justify a fiver?

The short answer is that I can't. Frank Rich is worth maybe thirty cents, but they should pay me to read Ross Douthat, MoDo, and Tom Friedman. I'm more entertained digesting what others think after they've read some of the Times Op-Ed columnists than I am reading the columns themselves. And the general news and business coverage is solid, if unremarkable, but certainly nothing that I can't find from a myriad of sources.

These guys employed Bill Kristol for year. I should get a year free as restitution.

I was part of that tiny group that tested the waters with Times Select, the last attempt to generate some revenue by putting their most popular content in Al Capone's vault. I soon dropped it, for essentially the same reason - value.

In a distributed media model, gathering little morsels from a variety of locations helps me see different perspectives, which allows me to bounce ideas off of myself. The allure and gravitas associated with the Old Gray Lady doesn't hold much sway when compared to a veritable army of newsers all digging for details. Perhaps the folks who put out the Times will feel insulted by this, but that's their problem, not mine.

The minute they added fees into the equation, this became a business deal. Micropayments might salvage the relationship - I can see dropping .02 each week to ponder Rich, or an article that someone else perused and trumpets as a must-read, but with all the anti-Google threats being bandied about, who knows if that model will be broken. I know that I've found thousands of offerings via Google Reader that I would never have known about if I had to visit the sites personally and tromp through the forest to find that one well-versed tree.

Goodbye, New York Times. You've been a steady, if somewhat needy, friend, but when asked to choose, you don't make it into the regular rotation.

Let me know if you change your mind.

Image by Renzo Piane

Dog Food & Pâté: What Am I, Chopped Liver?

Via Freakonomics, a lesson of hope for those who have found their culinary excesses hampered in these recessionary times. As it turns out, dog food is a tasty morsel.

Economists at the American Association of Wine Economists (the Fightin' Corkscrews!) tested five blended meat products, including dog food.

Tasters could not differentiate between the Newman's Own pet food and pâté.

I think that says more about pâté than it does Newman's Own.

Recession Relief forPâté Lovers