Phone Call from The Census

The US Census office in New York has had to fire workers due to fraud. The new folks there must still be learning the ropes. This actual telephone call to my friend Erik Gordon was transcribed immediately upon hanging up, so it's practically verbatim...

Ring. Ring.

ERIK: "Hello?"

CHARLOTTE: "Hello.  This is Charlotte calling from the 2010 United States Census.  We've left you a couple of messages over the past few weeks but you haven't returned our calls.  I'm calling to ask you some additional questions about the census form that you recently completed.  This should take only a few minutes."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "Can I start by verifying your address?"

ERIK: "Yes, it's the one you have on the form -- 68 East 78th Street in New York."

CHARLOTTE: "And is this the Gordon household?"

ERIK: "Yes."

CHARLOTTE: "And who completed the census form on behalf of the household?"

ERIK: "I did. I'm the only one who lives here."

CHARLOTTE: "And what is your name?"

ERIK: "Erik Gordon. Don't you have that on the form I filled out?"

CHARLOTTE: "Yes."

ERIK: "So why are you asking me again?"

CHARLOTTE (reading): "We need to make sure that the 2010 US Census is an accurate count of every person in the United States and that no person is double counted.  This should take only a few minutes."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "So Erik Gordon filled out the census form on behalf of your household?"

ERIK: "Yes, I did."

CHARLOTTE: "And am I speaking to Erik Gordon?"

ERIK: "Um, yes.  But I think we've covered this, no?"

CHARLOTTE: "Yes, but I need to ask the questions in the order they appear on my screen."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, how many people were living at your address on April 1, 2010?"

ERIK: "Just me.  I'm the only one who lives here."

CHARLOTTE: "So should I put 'One?'"

ERIK: "Probably."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, do you have children, babies or foster children living with you?"

ERIK (louder): "I'm the only one here."

CHARLOTTE: "It's a yes or no question, Mr. Gordon."

ERIK: "If I'm the only one here, then the answer is 'No,' right?"

CHARLOTTE: "Okay, I'm going to put 'No.'"

ERIK: "Good idea."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, do you have any other relatives living with you?"

ERIK: "I'm the only one here."

CHARLOTTE: "I can't put that."

ERIK: "I don't care."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, we need to make sure that the 2010 US Census is an accurate count of every person in the United States and that no person is double counted.  This should take only a few minutes."

ERIK: "But all of this is on the form I filled out."

CHARLOTTE: "I know.  I have it here."

ERIK: "So why are you asking me the same questions?"

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, this should take only a few minutes."

ERIK: "This should take no minutes."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, are you refusing to answer the questions?  Because if you're refusing to answer the questions, I'm going to have to call you back."

ERIK: "I'm not refusing to answer the questions, Charlotte.  I already answered them."

CHARLOTTE: "When?"

ERIK: "On the form you have in front of you."

CHARLOTTE: "Oh."

ERIK: "Yes."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, this should only take a few minutes.  Can I ask if you have any nonrelatives, such as roommates or babysitters living with you?"

ERIK: "I'm the only one here."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, you know I can't put that."

ERIK: "No, Charlotte, no. I don't have anyone else living here!"

CHARLOTTE: "No roomates or babysitters?"

ERIK: "No!"

CHARLOTTE: "I'm going to put 'No.'  Mr. Gordon, do you have anyone living with you temporarily?"

ERIK: "Charlotte, you know what I'm going to say, right?"

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, it's a yes or no question."

ERIK: "Charlotte, you've already asked me about relatives and nonrelatives.  Who else could be living with me?"

CHARLOTTE: "Anyone living with you temporarily, such as any illegal aliens."

ERIK: "Yes, Charlotte.  I forgot.  I do have illegal aliens living with me."

CHARLOTTE: "How many?"

ERIK: "I live with approximately twelve thousand illegal Mexican immigrants.  But please don't put that down, I don't want to get in trouble."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, I have to put it down."

ERIK: "Please don't put it down.  They're nice people.  They’ve traveled far."

CHARLOTTE: "I'm sorry, Mr. Gordon.  I have to put it down."

ERIK: "Okay, put it down."

CHARLOTTE: "Okay."

ERIK: "Charlotte, did you really just put down that I live with 12,000 illegal Mexican immigrants?"

CHARLOTTE: "No.  I just put twelve."

ERIK: "Why?"

CHARLOTTE: "I don't have enough room."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, were you away from this address anytime in March or April of 2010?"

ERIK: "What do you mean?"

CHARLOTTE: "What do *you* mean?"

ERIK: "Are you asking me if I left my apartment anytime in March or April?"

CHARLOTTE: "Yes."

ERIK: "Then 'Yes.'"

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, where did you go?"

ERIK: "Charlotte, I went a lot of places."

CHARLOTTE: "I only have one line."

ERIK: "That's too bad, Charlotte, because I went *a lot* of places."

CHARLOTTE: "But I only have one line."

ERIK: "So what do you want me to tell you?"

CHARLOTTE: "I don't know.  Do you want me to ask my supervisor?"

ERIK: "Actually, I think you should ask your supervisor."

CHARLOTTE (returning to the phone after putting me on hold for two or three minutes): "I think we should just put 'Don't Know.'"

ERIK: "Fine."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, in March and April of 2010 where did you spend most of your time: at your address in New York or in Don't Know?"

ERIK: "New York.  Don't Know isn't a real place."

CHARLOTTE: "Okay.  New York.  Is there any other place you spent most of your time?"

ERIK: "Charlotte, what does that mean?"

CHARLOTTE: "You said you spent most of your time in New York.  Is there any other place where you spent most of your time?"

ERIK: "Charlotte, how can I spend most of my time in more than one place?"

CHARLOTTE (after thinking it over): "I think we should put 'Don't Know.'"

ERIK: "Okay.  Let's put that."

CHARLOTTE: "Okay."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, other than New York and Don't Know, did you spend any time anywhere else?"

ERIK: "Pardon?"

CHARLOTTE: "Other than New York and Don't Know, did you spend any time anywhere else?"

ERIK: "Other than New York and Don't Know?"

CHARLOTTE: "Yes."

ERIK: "No.  I spent all of my time in New York and Don't Know."

CHARLOTTE: "How about prison?"

ERIK: "How about prison?"

CHARLOTTE: "Did you spend any time in prison in March or April of 2010?"

ERIK: "No, I was only in New York and Don't Know."

CHARLOTTE: "Okay."

ERIK: "Okay."

CHARLOTTE: "Okay.  Mr. Gordon, did you spend any time in the military?"

ERIK: "No."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, did you spend any time in a nursing home?"

ERIK: "Charlotte, can we just put 'Don't Know' for the rest of the questions so we can both get on with our lives?"

CHARLOTTE: "No, I can't do that.  You need to answer every question.  This should take only a few minutes."

ERIK: "It’s already been more than a few minutes."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, are you refusing to answer the questions? Because if you're refusing to answer the questions--"

ERIK: "I don't want you to call me back Charlotte.  I did not spend any time in a nursing home in March or April of 2010.  I was too busy in Don't Know."

CHARLOTTE: "What?"

ERIK: "No.  No time in a nursing home."

CHARLOTTE: "Mr. Gordon, that was the last question.  On behalf of the 2010 United States Census, thank you and have a good evening."

The New Flock on Chromium

Today Flock is launching a complete redesign of their social web browser based on Google's open source Chromium. Flock is now the fastest browser I've ever used, and the redesign is highly streamlined, with no extraneous chrome or buttons.

The social features are dead simple -- most prominently, a right-hand sidebar that streams Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds, made specifically for people active on those social networks. (The prior version of Flock is already the most popular desktop application in Facebook, with 7.5 million Facebook users, growing 600% in the last year; beyond Facebook we've delivered 17 million downloads with zero marketing spend thanks to word of mouth, and our users have already initiated billions of social transactions in Flock.)

With a rev share deal with Google, Flock now features Google as the default search engine. Flock is available in 34 languages, with users in 192 countries and territories. You can download it here.

New Flock from Flockstar on Vimeo.

"Not Terribly Disappointed!"

My a capella group's concert Saturday night with The Manhattan Transfer couldn't have gone better. We sold out the California Theatre and felt great about our performance. Lots of twitter love. Here's a segment from a review posted on AllAboutJazz.com:

The second group was a 60 man chorus called Voices in Harmony. They sang 5 or 6 numbers ranging from showtunes to a Sinatra medley to a beautiful version of Billy Joel's "And So It Goes". During their version of "Cruella DeVille" (yes, the song from Disney's "101 Dalmatians") they incorporated a lot of movement to really add to the comedic intent of the song. Not having known that either of these groups were going to be performing at this show, I was certainly impressed by both of them and not terribly disappointed that their performances left less time for TMT.

Thanks to all my friends who came out for the show, both on stage and in the audience. 

Performing with The Manhattan Transfer!

I'm thrilled to tell you that The Manhattan Transfer will be joining my a capella group Voices in Harmony for our June 12 concert at the California Theatre in San Jose. Really.



Buy your tickets here.

Another Year Without a Car

I'm getting used to carlessness. As Mark Twain once said, "Be carless in your dress, if you will, but keep a tidy soul." Or something like that.

It's all explained here.

Lifelock Settles with FTC

Today the FTC announced that Lifelock and the Commission settled claims related to the company's advertising. The action may sound serious and of course the press loves to sensationalize these types of stories. The truth, however, is far different than what the newspapers report. Obviously I'm biased, but judge for yourself...

The FTC claims that Lifelock deceived the public by guaranteeing that it could protect consumers from identity theft, even though Lifelock's protection is not 100% effective in preventing ID theft, since it fails to stop fraud on existing credit card accounts. According to Illinois state attorney Attorney General Lisa Madigan:

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do or purchase that will protect you 100 percent from identity theft,” Madigan said. “Don’t be scared into spending your hard earned money.” 

Now Lifelock has never claimed that it could prevent identity theft with 100% efficacy. What Lifelock has promised, and delivered, is a proactive identity theft protection service backed up by a guarantee that if the service fails (as any security mechanism will at times do), Lifelock will protect the subscriber's time and money by contributing the legal/accounting/forensic work necessary to set the record straight. And Lifelock's guarantee is 100% effective in protecting consumers from loss of time and money due to identity theft. (And no one even bothers filing claims about credit card fraud because the banks already cover those losses for the consumer.)

And even if the FTC were right that Lifelock is not 100% effective, does that really mean that the service has no value -- that consumers shouldn't spend their "hard-earned money" on it? That would mean that consumers should never buy ANY security product at all, since nothing is 100% effective.

Finally, the FTC thought that Lifelock's claims were too strong because we promised to "prevent" identity theft. And yet "prevention" is the promise of most every security product on the market: According to the Symantec Store, Norton Internt Security "prevents virus-infected emails and instant messages from spreading." According to McAfee, its Host Intrusion Prevention for Desktop product will "prevent loss of confidential data by securing desktops from targeted attacks." Experian (when they're not selling your data) also promises to "prevent fraud." This Google channel partner promises that Postini will "Stop Spam. Prevent Viruses."

The truth is that the FTC doesn't care whether consumers need protection from Lifelock's ads. The FTC has clear direction from President Obama to demonstrate its dominion over financial services as he campaigns to establish a consumer protection agency, and so the FTC is prepared to enforce and potentially litigate even in cases they know they can't win. Lifelock understood this, and so even though $12 million is a LOT of money, it's nothing compared to what the lawyers will charge over the next 5 years to successfully defend against an FTC crusade.

I'm proud of Lifelock's success, its team, and its technology. I'm a happy subscriber, along with 1.7 million other people. I know of no better way to protect my family from identity theft than Lifelock.

TED10 Saturday: Chaos, Lawyers and Avatars

<-- Friday Afternoon

Nathalie and I were really glad we had decided to stay to the end. Saturday was a great day.

Benoit Mandelbrot
Score: 4 balloons

I had so looked forward to hearing the inventor of fractals. Unfortunately, he did not deliver. He sat back and reflected on all his work, with a lot of jargon and an expectation that the audience was already familiar with chaos theory.

George Whitesides

Score: 6 balloons

The Harvard chemist, whose publications are the most cited in the field, presented a talk on the two kinds of complexity -- emergent and stacked. Emergent complexity arises out of systems with many simple parts interacting and a steady supply of energy (the most prominent example is human life, which emerged from the evolution of competing cells). Stacked complexity -- like the internet -- emerges from exploiting predictably functional parts in systems with more and more layers of functionality (e.g. transistors, ICs, computers, networks).

This talk should have preceded Mandelbrot's, which might have then made more sense.

Sir Ken Robinson

Score: 10 balloons

As with Raghava KK's talk, we'd have never guessed beforehand from the speaker's bio or the content that this TED talk would score 10 balloons. But Sir Robinson, whose recent book The Element presents his theories on education, elocuted a summary of those ideas with compelling humor and wit. His primary message is that educators should prioritize the campaign to help students identify and ignite their passions, rather than pushing standard, tedious work.

Philip Howard
Score: 5 balloons

Phil Howard, author of Life Without Lawyers, delivered a rousing rally against litigators. It was very well received (way more than my 5 balloons would suggest) but I think it lacked substance and instead merely tapped into mob psychology.

Phil provoked anger at trial lawyers by illustrating examples of trivial litigation. But in my opinion he did not provide a balanced view -- even after cherry picking his examples, I think that they crumbled beneath some critical thought. For example, his flagship example was a schoolteacher he met in the woods one day who complained that she was under legal pressure to reverse her late penalty on a particular student's grade. Furthermore, when she wanted to drive two students to an extracurricular activity, the school prohibited it because of The Lawyers, insisting instead that they use a school bus.

Imagine that! How shocking that parents will sue an earnest, hard-working schoolmum for teaching discipline, and prevent her from simply driving a couple of kids to a scholastic opportunity. Those lawyers are OUT OF CONTROL!!

I don't know the details of the schoolteacher's case -- Howard did not share them. But I do know that in most of these cases where parents seek legal advocates relating to grades, the situation arose because the student -- usually a child on the autism spectrum -- has some learning difference that warrants accommodations in the classroom (such as extra time for homework). These accommodations are exactly the kind that Temple Gardin and Ken Robinson prescribed to standing ovations, not to mention that such accommodations are legally enforceable under federal law. But sadly, teachers who lack experience with learning disabilities sometimes see these accommodations as unfair, coddling, or inconvenient, and choose to ignore them, forcing the parents to either seek legal help or else watch their children unnecessarily fail at school.

As for the school bus, I do not want teachers driving my kids around when a trained, licensed school bus driver is available. Do you?

I am all for legal reform but let's approach it with balance and reason, rather than pitchforks and nooses. Anyway, here's the talk so you can decide for yourself...



Alan Siegel
Score: 9 balloons

If by some chance this TED Member's 3-minute talk makes it into a video, watch it! It was a very compelling description of how this guy makes the world better by simplifying complicated forms. The world is too complex, Alan complains, with too much fine print. But instead of organizing a posse like Philip Howard, Alan does something practical -- he redesigns forms to be much simpler. This kind of transparency is not only good for avoiding legal disputes, but it's also good for business. The examples he showed were a clear, streamlined, one-page credit card agreement that every lender should use, and the second was a streamlined, easy-to-understand IRS form that will replace a gobbledygook 9-page notice that millions of taxpayers get today.

Adora Svitak
Score: 8 balloons

Incredibly impressive 12 year old girl talks about her views on education. The content is secondary -- her charm, confidence, and eloquence are eery.



John Kasaona
Score: 9 balloons

For many decades in John's homeland Namibia, the local "poachers" like John's father were prohibited from the wild game preserves ("This Land For Use Only By White Persons" read the signs) at the punishment of death. But the locals had lived alongside the wildlife for millennia, sharing a sustainable ecosystem. Under white rule, the game was hunted for trophy and profit, and the animals dwindled to the point where only 20 lions remained in northwest Namibia. Finally the Prime Minister overruled the colonialists and charged the local poachers with protecting the wildlife. John's father, and later John, were among the newly deputized conservators. According to John, they succeeded in restoring the animal populations, with 60 conservancies now operating across the nation. The program is funded by the newly enabled tourism, with surplus profits funding a thriving new school system. The call to action here was to learn from Namibia's example of how important it is to support the local human populations when trying to conserve ecosystems.


James Cameron
Score: 8 balloons

The director of blockbuster films like Titanic and Avatar shared some great stories about his life and motivations. James described his younger self as an introverted sci-fi nerd who, for lack of access to space, resolved to learn scuba diving after seeing such alien life forms on the Jacques Cousteau programs. This was the inspiration for The Abyss, the first film to feature a character completely rendered by computer graphics. Cameron also confessed that he agreed to direct Titanic solely because he knew he could thus compel the studio to send him down to tour the real thing, which he did in a Russian submersible. It was on that trip, as he remotely controlled a video robot through the wreckage, that he first became interested in virtual agents and avatars.

Cameron's message was that the most important ingredient for success -- at least in budding filmmakers -- is imagination. And that's what the world needs now.