Another Rumor Verified

But this time, it's actually a good rumor. Some of you might be familiar with The Forever War and might be interested to hear it's being made into a movie. Finally.

Falling water images

Same video as Steve sent around ...

http://gizmodo.com/5036399/inkjet+like-smart-waterfall-makes-animated-falling-water-show

In use in Jeep auto show, 2007(?) ... (looks like it was in use since 2001)

http://www.core77.com/blog/videos/jeep_waterfall_5379.asp

More video clips and bio of the innovator here, Steven Pevnick ... he's been doign these since the mid 80's .. almost as long as Deskjets have been around.

http://www.uwm.edu/~pevnick/index1.html

A different kind of holiday pagent?

I know I talk about things i hear in church here a lot ... hopefully you guys are willing to put up with that from me as the group's token religious wacko. :) Anyway ...

The Unitarian church we’ve been going to is putting on a holiday pageant. The theme is “Life from Darkness”. This is in keeping with the recent theme in their class each Sunday … but it’s not exactly what I learned in Sunday school.

When I picked up Daniel after church last weekend, he showed me a picture of how universe was created. No Adam and Eve, no garden of paradise or seven days parable. It was a picture of the big bang that he had drawn, after talking about it in class.

So instead of dressing up like shepherds and wise me, my son will probably be Pluto, or mabye a neutrino, or maybe even a strand of DNA in his holiday pageant (note: this is my wild speculation ... I know there will be costumes, I don't know what they will be yet). It almost feels like something that could be in a Ben Stiller movie making fun of new age churches. Part of me think this is really cool, but the old traditional Catholic in me is a little unnerved at the same time …

… in a good way, I think.

p0wned

Former UBS executive Mitchel Guttenberg was sentenced to six and a half years in prison today for his involvement in illegal insider trading. source

Perhaps more importantly, four former General Re executives and one former AIG executive ( Christopher Garand, Ronald Ferguson, Elizabeth Monrad, Robert Graham and Christian Milton) were convicted of defrauding shareholders of somewhere between $544 million and $597 million. These crooks could face a life sentence. source

Whassuupp? (Updated for 2008)

See it at YouTube (Embedding videos doesn't seem to work anymore?!)

First passed around by Ranjit.

Apple

I purchased some Apple (AAPL) stock yesterday. In part I purchased it because it was under $100/share and I thought it would appreciate in value. In part I purchased it because I watched the video of Jony Ive, Senior Vice President of Design, at Apple talking about the new 13.3" MacBook (go here, then click "Watch the video"). While watching the video I realized that he was proud of it. It also occurs to me that in an era of never ending cost reductions, Apple just increased the cost of manufacturing the MacBook for an incremental increase in quality. I don't see other companies doing that. I think I will hold on to my Apple stock.

CDO's and Credit Default Swaps

I know this is so 2 weeks ago, but I found these video primers on the web about what collateralized debt obligation's (CDO) and Credit Default Swaps are:
http://vimeo.com/1876936

I also watched his video on Naked Shorts, but found that less illuminating.

9lbs 2oz

I apologize for not posting sooner. All the days run together when you are at the hospital. I honestly thought it was Monday today until I talked to QuasiPfred on the phone. The good news is that Jacob was born at 5:02pm on 10/17/2008. The bad news is that he will have to stay at the hospital for a while. When he nurses he stops breathing for far too long and his blood-oxygen saturation gets far too low. I guess this is common in premature babies but rare in full term babies like Jacob. Anyway, the part of his brain that forces him to breath when there is not enough oxygen in his blood is not fully developed yet and he will need to stay in the hospital until it is. The good news is that as long as he is in the hospital and hooked up to a blood-oxygen saturation monitor he is not in any danger. Also, there is no reason to believe that he won't get to go home fairly soon. But enough about that, here are the pictures:

Dow at 10,000

I just wanted to share this blast from the past with you:



This video is from 1999.

the politics of homogeneity - why we fail

I thought this was a beautiful illustration of why our congress doesn't reach across the aisle to achieve compromise. We've gone from a primarily moderate House to a wholly partisan one. It harkens me back to the "Why We Fight" documentary about why our politicians have evolved completely to reside in the back pocket of the military-industrial complex (these companies make sure they have investment in all the states.) What results, without tacit, real differences in dealing with all-powerful lobbyist groups, is that Congress instead reflects the increasingly partisan social agendas common to the community which they represent. It's the worst of all worlds - no compromise on social agendas that divide the country but lots of compromise to appease our corporate masters. No wonder people are angry - they just haven't been able to internalize what it is they're really angry about.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/bigsort/archive/2008/09/30/30-years-and-three-reasons-congress-imploded.aspx

No slowdown for Nintendo

So what if the Dow has lost over 700 points two times in as many weeks. Nintendo is selling game consoles like hot cakes. That is, at least according to this article on CNN's site.

I guess game consoles typically do alright in recessions:

Fils-Aime says he’s confident that both the DS and Wii will do well even in a depressed U.S. economy. “The video game industry has weathered recessionary times fairly well,” he notes. “I think a $130 DS as the big holiday gift for a child is something a parent can feel good about.” Nintendo will debut more than 200 games for both gaming platforms this fall, such as Personal Trainer Cooking for the DS and Ubisoft’s Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party for the Wii.

Who knew?

What is Money?

In trying to wrap my head around the financial crisis I stumbled on this series of YouTube videos that describe exactly what money is. (It’s basically debt…) It’s a bit pedantic and school-house rock-ey, but I was pretty fuzzy about what exactly money represented post-gold standard and this address that question:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

The blunders that led to the banking crisis

I always like to see what NewScientist has to says about different issues. Because of this, I was happy to stumble across The blunders that led to the banking crisis.

The article talks about the way that banks and/or financial institutions go about measuring their risk. It also talks about how their models completely failed to represent complex financial instruments such as bundled home loans.

Anyway, I thought it was a good read.

Can it really be that bad? Seriously?

Someone at the call asked if I really thought these investment banks were only backed 5% by actual assets. My answer is "yes," and to understand why, I point to a rather long but easy-to-understand article over here. But here's the start:

1. People like buying safe investments.

2. Historically, mortgages are very safe investments: people will go to incredible lengths not to lose their homes.

3. Banks realized that they could make lots of money by taking groups of mortgages, and turning them into bonds that they could sell, earning a commission, and passing the risk to whoever bought the bonds.

4. These bonds became incredibly popular. Lots and lots of people and organizations wanted to buy them.

5. There aren't enough good mortgages to put together the number of bonds that people wanted to buy.

6. So banks started giving out mortgages to people who couldn't repay them, using elaborate and dishonest schemes to pretend that they were actually not bad mortgages.

7. The people who got mortgages that they couldn't repay didn't repay them.

8. The banks act surprised: "My god, no one could have predicted that so many loans would default! Whine, whinge, moan, someone come help us!

The article goes on to describe how this gets tied into insurance and how that helped people convince investors that this big steaming pile of crap was really a "safe" investment. I will concede that at the bottom is still a bunch of actual assets, but the amount of money promised far exceeds a responsible broker's limit. By an order of magnitude or so. Buying up all those obligations frees up the broker to lend money again, but doesn't fix the underlying problem: the assets are still overvalued and backing too many unpayable debts.

In any pyramid scheme, the last buyer is the one who loses the most. That shouldn't be the US Tax-payer. It's one thing for a private bank to welsh on it's debt. It's something else when it's all been transferred to the US Treasury and it has to welsh on its obligations. I say, let a few more banks go under and then get a good price for the actual assets. Find some way to inject liquidity into the system without just paying off the banks. (Is this one serious?)

That's my $.02.

More on fun and games

A post I've been wanting to send for a while ...

www.kongregate.com

A website to play and rate games from independant developers, offering monthly prizes to the top played and rated games, and a simple badge and point pased reward system for players to keep them coming back for more.

Looks like Time magazine recently cited it as one of their top 50 websites for 2008 ... so much for passign you guys a scoop.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1809858_1809954_1811334,00.html

What good is Chrome?

Google made an announcement a couple weeks ago that they were developing and releasing a new web browser. Considering that they've been pretty active in Firefox development, I wasn't really sure what to make of Chrome, the name they're giving it. Also, the fact that they only have a windows beta, while I've been using my mac exclusively, left me uninterested.

I finally gave it another look this week though, and my opinion has shifted into the "maybe-this-isn't-such-a-bad-idea" category.

After going through a number of the new features, many (but not all) requiring deep architectural considerations, I remembered the reason Microsoft got into the browser war to begin with: there was a risk that Netscape would become the new platform, and the OS would become a much less-important commodity. Application developers (and not just web applications) would target the browser as a solid and flexible base instead of needing to learn how to port to different OS'es and machines. That vision has stalled for a few years (I think) because MS won the browser war, and stopped pushing. But with AJAX, flash, JavaFX, Silverlight, etc all promising full rich content applications using the browser as a base, I think there's an updated showdown brewing.

And the thing I like about Chrome is that it does a lot of things to give the user control over the browser as a platform. Between the builtin javascript debugger, the ability to start and stop running scripts, inspect variables, and even tell me which pages and scripts are hogging all the memory or CPU cycles, it gives the user the most control over the pages they view since GreaseMonkey*

Interesting side note, it looks like Google commissioned Scott McCloud to summarize the major changes going into Chrome, which he does in 5 chapters. He's a fairly well known cartoonist on the web who's blogged about micro-payments and comic theory. Michael should recognize him.

So I finally fired up a virtual windows machine and installed it, and it seems to run just fine. But with a 400+ MB source tree, I'm still hesitant to try and help with the mac port... :(

*Greasemonkey is a really cool plugin for Firefox that lets you rewrite pages before they get rendered. People have used this to, say, block (delete) the really noisy ads, or skip the scripts that want to send up pop-ups. Others have written greasemonkey scripts to add subdirectories in gmail, or mashup gmail and gcal. You can inspect the script before you install it and control which scripts run on which pages.

easterbrook and the miles per gallon debate

One of my favorite columnists, Greg Easterbrook, who wrote that semi-scathing review of Friedman's book last week, had this to say about Congress' latest vacillation on fuel efficiency mandates:

Last fall, after 20 years of strident inaction, Congress finally passed a bill to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. There was a lot self-congratulation on Capitol Hill. The law seemed to mandate roughly a one-third increase in new-vehicle MPG by 2020 - enough to eliminate the oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf. Sounds great! But as your columnist wrote in December 2007, "TMQ is hugely suspicious … [there is] a waiver provision that says that if the new standards prove too onerous, automakers can ask they be waived. That is a formula for what Washington specializes in: the appearance of dramatic action while nothing actually happens." So what's going on in Washington right now? Pleading poormouth, the big three automakers are already asking for a waiver from the 2015 interim standard, which requires roughly a 15 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. That standard does not take effect for seven years, and already Detroit automakers are saying they can't meet it.
Or perhaps, they don't want to try. Lee Hyun-Soon, president of Hyundai, told the Wall Street Journal last week his company will meet the entire 2020 standard by 2015, and will do so entirely with conventional vehicles -- no complex plug-in hybrids, just sensible engineering using existing technology. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Subaru put their engineers to work -- then build, at American factories staffed by American workers, vehicles that comply with MPG rules. Whenever Washington seems to get serious about oil waste, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors put their lobbyists at work to dilute or evade the standards. There are only 535 people in the United States so gullible they would believe Korean engineers can meet a technical standard, yet American engineers cannot. Unfortunately, those 535 people are the members of the United States Congress.

Are they the 535 most gullible people in America?
Has anyone from the mainstream media followed up on how last year's seemingly strict MPG bill is being watered down? As Eric Patashnik of the University of Virginia details in his powerful and timely new book "Reforms at Risk," reporters are often present when "dramatic" legislation passes, then treat the enactment as the end of the story -- paying no attention as lobbyists later water down a bill. As Thomas Friedman points out in his important new book "Hot, Flat and Crowded," the refusal of Congress and the White House to take any real action against oil waste has had the effect of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to Moscow, and to the oil sheiks who support anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism. If MPG standards were higher, oil demand would fall. Instead, high demand holds up barrel prices, enriching Persian Gulf dictatorships and Vladimir Putin. Why, Friedman asks, is Russia suddenly confrontational? Because in the past two years, Russian elites have gotten super-rich, owing to rising oil prices brought on at least in part by U.S. stupidity regarding petroleum waste. If Congress grants Detroit the MPG waivers it seeks, the stupidity will march on.
Meanwhile, back at the federal budget: In 1976, the entire U.S. national debt was about $800 billion, converted to today's dollars. Last summer, Congress without debate and with barely any notice added $800 billion to the national debt ceiling -- raising that ceiling by an amount equal to the entire debt a generation ago. With no debate! The U.S. national debt was $5 trillion in 1997, and has doubled to almost $10 trillion since. Why aren't the young outraged? The old are acting irresponsibly -- spending like crazy but unwilling to tax themselves, then handing the bill to the young. If the young were spending borrowed money like crazy, the old would be lecturing them. How come in Washington, the old can get away with behavior that would be called reckless for the young?
At any rate, the moment another $800 billion worth of borrowing was authorized, supposedly for "emergency" purposes, lobbyists got to work trying to seize every penny now. The big three automakers are now asking Congress for $50 billion of that $800 billion, supposedly to retool to build the fuel-efficient vehicles they had no way -- just no way on Earth -- of knowing they would ever be required to build. As Paul Ingrassia pointed out in last week's Wall Street Journal, when Congress bailed out Chrysler in 1980, the deal was structured so that if the company recovered, taxpayers got most of their money back. But what's being asked for now is pure subsidy -- money taxpayers will never see again, and that will be used in part to fund the bonuses of overpaid auto executives who got their companies into trouble in the first place. (The Journal opposes the bailout, though the $50 billion would go to Corporate America.) Ingrassia further notes that when Chrysler's Lee Iacocca tried to weasel out of the deal and keep the money that was promised back to taxpayers, Ronald Reagan stood firm and would not budge. Contrast Reagan's sense of civic responsibility to the current president and Congress, both of which just cannot wait to give away other people's money.
Now connect the dots! The automakers are asking for $50 billion in handouts to meet new fuel economy requirements -- at the very time they are also asking for waivers from those requirements. If the past is any guide, they will get both the subsidies and the waivers. The net will be zero progress, more billions of dollars for oil shipped to anti-American forces in the Persian Gulf, and more debt handed to everyone under the age of 30.

Google now in yer FACE!

Picasa 3 was just released and supports "automatically tagging" your photos when it recognizes your face in them. View the video with all the features on youtube:


Can't help but think of a recent fail blog post about google and face recognition:

Periodic Link Dump, number 1

The list of links in my RSS feed that I keep wanting to follow-up on is getting too long. Time to dump them somewhere more permanent before they expire. Maybe someone else will find them interesting too.

Energy

• MIT scientists discover new efficient way to store solar energy. (Or is it Monash U?)
  
• From the cynical department of nothing's ever as good as it sounds: Picken's plan is actually more of a "political play where he uses the media attention that comes from an energy executive promoting a clean energy plan as cover to convince Texas and California to give him billions in government handouts. In other words, the guy's a fraud running an innovative corporate welfare scheme, but a corporate welfare scheme nevertheless." (says Ezra Klein)
• Some other liberal commentary on Pickens. He also made a presentation at the Democratic convention, but didn't take any questions.
• And ethanol isn't all it's cracked up to be either? It's so confusing!
  
• Better windmills with designs based on whale fins? I can never tell if stories on io9 are just speculative or not.
• The problem with wind energy may be getting it on the grid.
  
• On slashdot a while back: capture energy from water waves.
• This 30-year old energy policy proposal was spot on. Too bad, huh?
  
• Unfortunately, HP is sometimes notoriously bad at being wasteful.

Climate

• I keep meaning to post this: a list of 500 climate change deniers, most of whom do NOT actually deny climate change! This is the type of crap that damages the credibility of people who might have actual doubts, and deserves all the scorn people can heap on them.
• China is going to build a zero-Carbon city? (After clearing the nature reserve that's currently there...)
  

Economics

• Book Review: Love the work, Hate the job. Apparently the American worker isn't satisfied. Ungrateful serfs.
• Economy predictions, from some blogger who's common sense predictions have a pretty good record so far.
  
• The Class War is real. The rich rigged it and won everything already.
• Krugman proves it with charts here.
• I haven't found the patience to figure out if this guy is on to something here or not.
• An example of a non-capitalist economy.
• Reading things like this make it difficult for me to decide how much our corn subsidies are screwing everything up.

Security

• Vista may have some unfixable security flaws. Schneier talked about this not too long ago too.
• "War on Terror" board game confiscated in UK.
  

Politics

• Lawrence Lessig, the professor who's been at the forefront trying to reform digital copyright law (even arguing before the Supreme Court against the extension of Micky Mouse's protection) has now turned his focus to the nature and elimination of corruption. Here's a summary of his plan for reforming congress (first his diagnosis, and then his recommendation)
• Book review: the wrecking crew. How conservatives got us where we are.
• A careful article laying out the argument that corruption this bad was not an accident.
  
• Can you tell the difference between Bush and the old 50's era Batman from reading quotes?
• Does selecting Biden make Obama seem more like the candidate of change again?
• Alternatively, does it mean Obama is acknowledging that the "change" argument hasn't been made yet?
  

World

• China's policy is less "communism" and more Chinese nationalism.
  
• I've long assumed growth would lead to capitalism in China, but not everyone agrees.
  

Animals Plus Fermentation

Campy as all hell, but, I couldn't resist. They're drunken animals!!

“read Kant, JS Mill, Bentham, Singer, etc. Noobs.”

I know I'm sometimes draggin' down the party here with serious moral questions, most of them geeky in some form or fashion, but this one was just too good to pass up.

An excellent article from the NYT on a modern techo-moral topic I've thought about a lot the more time I've spent with online "communities". It concerns the practice and eithics of "Trolling", defined by Wikipedia as "someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

Harmless fun, or the sign that anonymity brings out the worst in human nature? And if so, why? For the lulz, of course ... but is there more to it then that?

Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html

Three Finalists for "Man of the Year"

Via RB, in one of those email forwards:

(Didn't want to delete them, but didn't want them in my inbox either)

So, was Immunity Really Granted?

As pissed as I am about the FISA update right now, at least one lawyer (or legal aid, or something) is maintaining that the bill does not preclude accountability. If I'm following this correctly,

• Civil cases will be dismissed, but it says nothing possible criminal prosecutions.
• Obama has indicated that he would still hold lawbreakers accountable. (Differing from informal tradition of just pardoning everyone so the country can "move on")
• Bush is unlikely to issue a pardon, because it would be an admission of guilt.

If so, things might not be so bad. On the other hand, I think that last point is a bit weak, and I've grown suspicious of simply trusting Obama. (And yes, I feel that he did break his promise from the primaries to filibuster any bill containing retroactive immunity. He may be making a political calculation, but if so, I believe it is a poor one.) So, in the end, probably nothing will happen, nothing will be fixed, and all these assholes will get away scott-free.

Sigh.

Buy-N-Large

Part of me wants Pixar to fail. The really evil, jealous part of me.

I went to see WALL-E on opening weekend with my wife and two boys half expecting to be overjoyed, but ... also somewhat suspicious with a different type of twisted anticipation. I mean their latest concept ... movie about robot ... couldn't really be that creative or good, could it? I mean, eventually, these Pixar guys have to start phoning it in, right? That much success that many times in a row CAN'T be good for quality control.

Not only was I happily surprised at how good it was ... the movie sort of transcended my every expectation. Visually stunning, heartwarming, with interesting background thems on everythign from consumerism vs. the enviorment with what it means to be human.

And the kids really liked it, too.

Now, I'm left with both the joy you get after seeing a really good piece of art that stays with you ... and the sadness I get from realizing I will probably never work for a company that is as creative and amazingly successful as Pixar.

If you haven't yet, go see the movie, with or without kids. I can't recommend it highly enough.

And then, go check out the website for buy-n-large, the fictional mega corp in the movie.

http://www.buynlarge.com/

Their EULA is particularly entertaining.

Solar-sooner than you think

Arcticle about the dropping cost of Solar Power cells:

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/06/23/grid_parity/index.html?source=rss&aim=/tech/htww

-m

Tank Man

Can't make beer today, but wanted to post a tidbit for discussion to the blog, anyway, that was fascinating to me on multiple fronts.

China is obviously on a lot of people's minds these days, and not just the people in China. I happened upon an excellent film on PBS program Frontline last night entitled "Tank Man", which explored the history of the Tienanman massacre, and speculated on the fate and whereabouts of the man in the famous images from that event ... not only in terms of personal history, but in terms of China's current economic and political state.

There was a very interesting contrast drawn in the fim between the student uprisings of 1989 and the response of the government since then, focused around mostly economic reforms. When you really examine the impact of these reforms upon the average worker, though, the contast with what life is like for the average citzen or worker really contrasts with the original spirit of "Communism" and workers rights, to say the least.

The other fascinating topic here, tied to this theme, was the censorship of media present in China today. Probalby not suprising to anyone, I know ... but it's effectiveness was astounding in an interview with a group of students from the same Bejing university that formed the heart of the Tienenman protest group just 20 years before. The fimmaker showed these modern students a copy of the infamous "Tank Man" picture, and not one of them recognized it or had much idea what it was about ... or professed to, at least. Helps you appreciate how much we take for granted what we can Google, vs what they can't.

Some interesting examination of the role American complies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google played and continue to play, which is probably old news to many of you.

Here is a link to an interview with the filmmaker, which should give you a pretty good feel for the topics discussed, including trying to balance fair and truthful journalism with Chinese handlers while filming over there.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/etc/thomas.html

You can also watch the full movie from that PBS site, if you are so inclined. It was over an hour and a half long, but very interesting bit of recent history and perspective on China.

One final topic just briefly touched on in the documentary ... to many in the West, the image above exemplifies resistance against military force against all odds ... but very briefly, the Chinese government itself used the images on broadcasts to make the case of restraint on it's part ... after all ... they did NOT run over Tank Man ... and they certainly could have. Wheter or not he was executed afterward is a matter of open debate.

Still ... would coallition forces in Iraq show such restraint if a "peaceful citizen" stood in front of a US tank?

Plan B (Wii Ware Game Developer)

I was telling some of you guys about Wii-Ware, the Nintendo downloadable mini-game service they launched last week to compliment Virtual Console. This looks like a way to develop and distribute (small) games with a low barrier to entry.

I am sure we have all fantasized in some way about developing games...but all accounts of the industry is that it's a real grind. Wii-Ware, and the Xbox/Playstation equivalents, seem like the ‘indy-film’ version of gaming.

I downloaded a couple of the Wii-Ware launch games for between $5-$7 and thought they weren’t bad. Here is the web site to one of the developers:
http://www.nnooo.com/home/nnooo.html

I read his story in a blog, and it is literally a 2-3 man operation out of Australia. He has a history in the gaming biz, so he wasn’t exactly starting from scratch, but it’s doable. He had good things to say about the Wii Ware development tools, especially in comparison the Xbox equivalents. He said he has to sell 30k copies to break even, and that the split with Nintendo is %65-%35 (that him-Nintendo). This is about $137k Australian dollars, but I think AU$ is within 5% of US$ right now… There are many millions of Wii’s out there, so I think he shouldn’t have a problem breaking even. (Being a launch title has to be a huge boost!)

I have an (admittedly lame) idea for a game along these lines. I'm sure we could come up with half a dozen other idea's over beers in one afternoon. We all know how to code and we have a built-in supply of beta testing in our all our gamer teens (andrew, neil, sean, little big jay etc...)

-Morgan

Death of an Artist

The famous american artist, and my distant cousin (actually, the 1st cousin of my Grandfather, I'm told), Robert Rauschenberg, died on Monday at the age of 82.

I never met him, but have seen his works in art museums before. They even have a few of his works at the Portland Art Musuem. And like much modern art, it is rather ... different.

This is one of his breakout works, "Monogram", a "composite" work done in oil, canvas, tire, traffic barriacde, and stuffed goat.



Supposedly he was groundbreaking in coming up with ways of transferring photos and images to the surfaces of odd objects. For example, I'd like to see a Kong print on a BMW 635 Csi.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-05-2004/0002225658&EDATE=

Very interesting ... But is it art? Discuss. Preferrably over lots of beer.

Solar power without photovoltaics

Sometimes, someone will come up with a brilliant yet simple idea, and it will just make me feel like an idiot. One such idea is to use water and mirrors (inexpensive) instead of expensive photovoltaics. Why didn't I think of that?

BrightSource Energy, started by American-Israeli solar pioneer Arnold Goldman, has contracts to supply California utility PG&E (PCG) with up to 900 megawatts of solar electricity from power plants to be built in the Mojave Desert on the California-Nevada border. BrightSource has developed a new solar technology, dubbed distributed power tower, that focuses fields of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats on a tower containing a water-filled boiler. The sun’s rays superheat the water and the resulting steam drives an electricity-generating turbine.

This technology is currently ~90% cheaper than photovoltaics,

You are losing your job because you are a dumbass engineer!

Check out this speech by Hurd:

He says there aren't enough talented technical people in the US and that's why they are going elsewhere. Coupled with the fact that HP is laying off HP engineers in the US one can only conclude that it's becuase we are a bunch of dumb-asses, unlike those smarty-pants overseas.

I understand now... I really do...

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/05/hp-ceo-dwindlin.html

HP CEO: Dwindling Tech Talent Could Hurt the U.S.
By Betsy Schiffman May 06, 2008 1:14:53 PMCategories: Hewlett-Packard
Americans are getting dumb, and it's difficult to attract top tech talent to the U.S. now. Or so says Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
Speaking at an event at Castilleja, a private girls school in Palo Alto, where his daughter attends, Hurd lamented the sorry state of technical research in the U.S.
"In this country, we have a problem," Hurd says. "The source of this country's greatness has been its technical talent . . . But you have to go where the tech talent is, and right now the tech talent is in Asia."
Hurd says that only 40 percent of HPs 40,000 engineers are now based in the U.S., where it had previously employed about two-thirds of its engineering force domestically.
"We often can't keep [engineers] in the country even after they've graduated from U.S. universities like Stanford," Hurd said.
If it sounds like a politically conservative, alarmist statement, it's worth noting that Hurd sits on the board of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (a notoriously conservative organization). He also says he gets all his news from Fox News. (We think he was joking . . . Sort of.)
Photo: Courtesy Hewlett-Packard

You don't always have to race the competition to the bottom...

Apple's average selling price for Ipods and Macs have actually gone up:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/76115-apple-links-higher-sales-with-higher-prices?source=yahoo

That's impossible, how do they do it?
By making cool shit, not just cheap shit.
Wow, never heard of that before....

Obama flounders on energy policy

I was listening to Obama's North Carolina victory speech last night when he said some things that made him sound particularly stupid. You can find the complete text of that speech here. I will focus on this paragraph:

The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one -- he can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that's not only keeping gas at record prices, but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet in the process. He doesn't need four more years of Washington policies that sound good, but don't solve the problem. He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our oil addiction by making the automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That's the change we need. And that's why I'm running for president.

In this paragraph I really get pissed off for a number of reasons. If we didn't have "an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies" we would have a reasonable (100%+) gas tax like the rest of the world. That would be a reasonable energy policy, but it would be less profitable for the oil companies. However, none of this would help you drive around and look for a job. Gas prices are higher than they used to be for economic reasons, not political ones.

Next we get to the assertion that we need "a permanent holiday from our oil addiction by making the automakers raise their fuel standards." WTF Mate? Because Obama can force auto manufacturers to make more fuel efficient cars when decades of market pressures couldn't? Because, you know, the EU is full of tiny cars that get good mileage for some reason other than market pressure? The best thing that could happen (in the realm of fuel efficient cars) is for our gas prices to continue to rise. Soccer moms across America need to realize that yes, a ginormous SUV does use a ton of gasoline. Also, that Urban sprawl has been a bad idea since the get-go and that eventually we will have to pay the price for decades of bad civic planning.

I am not even going to touch his statement about "oil companies invest[ing] their record profits in a clean energy future." This is an obvious allusion to his previous calls for a windfall tax on oil companies (completely reasonable) 10% profit margin. What I will take the time to touch on is what he didn't say. He didn't touch on our atrocious agricultural policy and how it drives up the cost of gasoline by diverting petroleum to be made into fertilizer. He didn't say that we should take the $47 Billion (as of 2004, source) we spend on farm subsidies each year and direct that money toward clean energy research. He didn't mention how most of the US Governments farm subsides eventually end up in the belly of a cow so that US consumers can consume larger and larger amounts of beef every year. He didn't propose a windfall tax on farmers, or ranchers, which in the end would make much more sense than a windfall tax on oil...

I am not sure what my conclusion is, other than that I like Obama way less than before I heard this speech. So much for being a great orator.

Chrysler subsidizes gas for new car buyers

I guess I don't have much to say about this, I just wanted to point out that it is hilarious. Here is a quote from one article discussing Chrysler's plan:

Chrysler also announced an offer that caps the price of gasoline at $2.99 a gallon for three years for people who buy or lease new vehicles from Wednesday through June 2. The offer is based on 12,000 miles of driving per year at the vehicle's rated fuel economy.

Customers will get a card for buying gas that is linked to their own charge account, Chrysler said. The customer will be billed $2.99 a gallon, and Chrysler will pay the rest.

Actual savings depend on what happens to gas prices over the next three years, but based on the $3.61 a gallon average price reported Monday by AAA, someone buying a 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser, which gets an estimated 21 miles per gallon in city driving, would save $355 a year.

source.

Another Example

SMiller via email:

At "the call" last week we were talking about how the US is losing relevance because it refuses to lead the world on various initiatives (environment, health, human rights, etc...).

Here is another example: I was taking one of the required HP SBC web courses and found out that the standard for personal data privacy is being driven by the EU standards:

"We place strong emphasis on the EU Data Protection Directives because all countries must provide an equivalent level of privacy protection, either through laws or contractual obligations, if they want to do business with the EU. Many countries have enacted data privacy laws (or are developing them) based on EU Data Protection Directives requirements."

The current administration thinks that if it can drag it's feet then it "protects" US companies from having to do anything, but it's really just handing the baton to other governments.

- S

Of course, this led some to wonder (and bust some balls) why it was posted via email instead of as a post. Whatever. If I have to post the stuff other people write but which I want to save off somewhere like here, I will, as long as it's convenient for me.

Naturally, this means we HAVE to have a call again today. 3:45pm. Normal McMenamins.

A Creationist's View of Evolution

South Park at its funniest

Are the ethics of the Ten Commandments the ethics of genocide?

Below is an excerpt from a "Weekly Message" I enjoyed from a Unitarian serivce here in Vancouver a few weeks back, by the Rev. Mark Gallagher. His talk was entitled "Ten Better Commandments".

A very enjoyable and thought provoking viewpoint, I thought. Perhaps it's just the sort of thign that will one day come up and haunt my presedential campaign, though ...

Full test available at the link below.

http://msuuf.org/phpwcms2/download.php?86da49d8c56f64ef3fac0e5e35ba8bb9

The Ten Commandments. Everybody knows the Ten Commandments,
right? They are the foundation of law and ethics, at least in Western civilization. Everybody knows that.

Well, not everybody actually knows the Ten Commandments anymore, but that’s part of what’s wrong with our society isn’t it?

Far too many people today have lost their ethical and moral compass, and if the Ten Commandments were more a part of our public and private lives, that would surely be a step in the right direction.

According to Robert Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council: “The problems we face in America are moral problems, which cannot be solved legislatively or judicially. We need a moral code to address them. There is no better educational and moral code than the Ten Commandments.” You hear this sort of thing a fair amount these days.

In reply, liberal folk are likely to say something like, “Well, the Ten Commandments are a good moral guide, and pretty much everyone agrees with them. But they are religious so it’s not right to put them up in government buildings.”

Sometimes I feel like I have wandered into a maze of fun-house mirrors.

In the first place, when people talk about the Ten Commandments, they are seldom talking about them as found in the Bible. Many of us may think we know the Ten Commandments – we were raised Christian or Jewish, after all. We know we can’t rattle them off quickly and in order, but I’ll bet many of us think we could get all ten, given a little time. Or at least nine or eight of them.

We’d say: Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, No other gods before me, No adultery, and so forth. That is not the Ten Commandments. That is a list of key words from the Ten Commandments.

But I’ll bet there is not a single person here (and very few in most Christian churches) who really knows the whole Ten Commandments. And I am not just making a quibble about not having it memorized it word for word, as we shall see.

In the second place, the Ten Commandments are not a good moral or ethical guide. They hardly provide any moral or ethical guidance at all. Nearly everyone who would supposedly be uplifted by exposure to the Ten Commandments is actually far beyond them, morally and ethically.

And in the third place, they are in some ways morally reprehensible.

Just this week I discovered this is far more true than I had realized.

Rule of Thumb: Ignore Stock Tips from the Drunk Table

Makes sense in retrospect, right? And yet, it's happened in the past. Somehow, the topic came up again this week, and by and large the "safest" bet appeared to be GE. It was like a bank account, but with better dividends.

And then a story like this shows up:

The second-largest U.S. company by market capitalization said profit fell about 20 percent at its financial services arms, which accounted for more than a third of GE's total revenue in the quarter. But weakness in health care and industrial divisions also weighed on results.

The news sent GE shares down more than 11 percent in early trade on the New York Stock Exchange, the sharpest drop in two decades, dragging down global markets.

The other company we talked about was AMD, which everyone assured us would never fail... but you might want to take that with a grain of salt now.

(original article caught by SMiller)

Fact Check. A Beer's On the Line

More than once, people have mentioned articles or referenced things they saw online that I wish I could follow-up on. Or the discussion just gets cut short and isn't continued the following week. Occasionally people remember to send an email with details the next day. More often than not I just forget about it by the next time the call rolls around.

This time, there's at least a wager on the line (as well as a certain amount of credibility), and it involved a claim nobody seemed to believe: that manufacturing is still one-third of the US' GDP, and that that percentage is roughly the same as it was after WWII. (Okay, I guess that's two claims.) Everyone else seemed to believe we just consume stuff now, export brands and services, or simply place online bets in the stock market with our money.

In a week, we shall see...