Quote of the day: From Edwin P. Elliott via UCC Chatter

"Make the most of your natural assets – mine is incompetence."

Crushed Glass to Be Spread on Beaches

By BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press Writer

AP Photo

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- Picture a beautiful beach spanning miles of coastline, gently lapped by aqua-colored water - and sprinkled with glass.

Ouch? Think again. It feels just like sand, but with granules that sparkle in the sunlight.

Faced with the constant erosion of Florida's beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass - crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand - to help fill gaps.

It's only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass.

"Basically, what we're doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state," said Phil Bresee, Broward's recycling manager.

The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said.

"You reduce waste stream that goes to our landfills and you generate materials that could be available for our beaches," said Paden Woodruff of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The incorrect way to fire a mortar
via Military.com website

Stage Fright?
...not Miss South Carolina 2007's best moment
courtesy of Doug Franks

Disinvited to the Party

Why Giuliani's candidacy could be a good thing for the GOP.

By Anna Quindlen

Newsweek

Sept. 3, 2007 issue - One of the complaints you hear a lot from readers when you're in my line of work and live in my part of the country is that you can't understand America from the vantage point of New York City. I'm beginning to think there's some truth to that, and it's all because of the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.

Ever since the presidency was a mere gleam in his eye, lots of New Yorkers have been predicting that Rudy, like a toddler or a genuine bagel, would not travel well across the country. It wasn't just the quasi-liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control: he could massage those, and sometimes has. It was his private life, which his former constituents have watched with all the avidity of a soaps addict tuning in to "All My Children." There was the annulment from the first wife, who was his second cousin, the press conference he used to inform the second wife that she was history, the girlfriend he met in the cigar bar who became wife number three, and the very public estrangement from his children, both of whom have suggested that they won't be stumping for Dad. To which the candidate recently responded at a town-hall meeting, "Leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone."

This would be a reasonable response were Giuliani not a member of the Republican Party, which in the last three decades has often been less about public policy and more about moral judgment. It wasn't always so. Once the GOP was moderate and secular. But then the '60s arrived. Society divided itself neatly into the button-down and the tie-dyed, and the Republican Party rallied around something called "family values." It's a phrase that has appeared in every party platform since 1976 and is often accompanied by the adjective "traditional," which translated means that if you don't have a stay-at-home mommy, a dominant daddy, some kids, a marriage license and a church membership, you're disinvited to the party.

Combined with the ascendancy of the religious right, which had the distinct political advantage of insisting that even its most uncharitable positions were beamed down from above, what developed was a neat political dichotomy. The Democrats were godless liberals—"contemporary socialism" was how the 1992 GOP platform put it—no matter how often they went to church or voted for war. And the Republicans were the party of old-fashioned values, less constitutional than canonical. Barry Goldwater, once known as Mr. Conservative, decried this shift before he died: Christian conservatives were, he said, "trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it."

It took some sleight of hand to reinforce this positioning. You have to give credit to the spin-sters who portrayed Ronald Reagan as a paterfamilias (although he had distant relationships with his children) guided by God (although he scarcely ever went to church). By contrast, while the Clintons were inveterate churchgoers and involved parents, and decided to keep their marriage together after consulting with Billy Graham, it was easy in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal to demonize their personal lives. Bill Clinton alone helped to keep the Republican Church of Moral Certainty alive longer than it might have been, and Hillary Clinton's candidacy has given its fringes a second wind.

But a shift has slowly been brewing. The Republican platform of 1992 had the family-values section at its very beginning; by 2004 it appeared at the end. National security had trumped the wacky emphasis on whether kids can sue their parents. Perhaps in part this was because even Republican families have changed in the last 30 years. The vice president became enraged when he was asked by a reporter about his daughter, a lesbian with a longtime partner, who gave birth to their first child not long ago. Maybe Dick Cheney genuinely thinks there is no conflict between being the standard-bearer of a party that has been hostile to gay rights and the father of a person who might need them. But if you run on family values, both your values and your family will inevitably be subject to scrutiny. Be careful what you wish for: it might get you.

A Giuliani victory wouldn't be a good thing for this country, but his candidacy may wind up being a very good thing for his party. The poll numbers that show him consistently ahead come as a surprise to many of us in the city where he was once mayor—and where he once bunked with a gay couple after leaving his second wife. But perhaps they indicate that the end is nigh for the stranglehold the Leviticus lobby has had on the GOP. All those who joined the Republican Party for smaller government, not fire and brimstone, may be ready to take back the power, to say that health care is more important than creationism, that the disintegration of Social Security is more critical than a ban on gay marriage. Maybe Republicans are finally ready to be members of a political party again, the kind Barry Goldwater could embrace, one that knows the difference between a podium and a pulpit.

Facebook Users Hijack Wal-Mart's Roommate Style Page

Wired News: By Bryan Gardiner August 27, 2007 | 7:33:31 PMCategories: Web Apps

A third attempt by Wal-Mart to be Web 2.0 savvy hasn't turned out much better than the first two. Slashdot notes that angry Facebook users have hijacked a page aimed at selling back-to-school supplies to college kids and turned it into a missive on the evils of Wal-Mart's labor and business practices.

Of the more than 200 posts, only a handful relate directly to dorm decorating. And instead of color coordinating with roommates, users seem to prefer talking about how the retail giant "destroys communities" and prevents unionization. To be fair, there was one comment on a 4-pack of men's environmentally friendly organic socks for $4.

Last year, the company set up a blog "written by two independent consumers" that was later revealed to be backed by an Wal-Mart PR initiative. The company then tried its hand at its own social network, The Hub. It was closed after 10 weeks.

Seeking Willie Horton, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:

So now Mitt Romney is trying to Willie Hortonize Rudy Giuliani. And thereby hangs a tale — the tale, in fact, of American politics past and future, and the ultimate reason Karl Rove’s vision of a permanent Republican majority was a foolish fantasy.

Willie Horton, for those who don’t remember the 1988 election, ... committed armed robbery and rape after being released from prison on a weekend furlough program. He was made famous by an attack ad ... that played into racial fears. Many believe that the ad played an important role in George H.W. Bush’s victory over Michael Dukakis.

Now some Republicans are trying to make similar use of the recent murder of three college students in Newark, a crime in which two of the suspects are Hispanic illegal immigrants. ...

Mr. Romney, who pretends to be whatever he thinks the G.O.P. base wants him to be, is running a radio ad denouncing New York as a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants, an implicit attack on Mr. Giuliani.

Strangely, nobody seems to be trying to make a national political issue out of other horrifying crimes, like the Connecticut home invasion in which two paroled convicts, both white, are accused of killing a mother and her two daughters. ...

To appreciate what’s going on here you need to understand the ... strategy [the G.O.P.] uses to win elections. ... [R]ight-wing economic ideology has never been a vote-winner. Instead, the party’s electoral strategy has depended largely on exploiting racial fear and animosity.

Ronald Reagan didn’t become governor of California by preaching the wonders of free enterprise; he did it by attacking the state’s fair housing law, denouncing welfare cheats and associating liberals with urban riots. Reagan ..[began] his 1980 campaign with a speech ... supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

And if you look at the political successes of the G.O.P. since it was taken over by movement conservatives, they had very little to do with public opposition to taxes, moral values, perceived strength on national security, or any of the other explanations usually offered. To an almost embarrassing extent, they all come down to just five words: southern whites starting voting Republican. ...

But Republicans have a problem: ... America is becoming less white, mainly because of immigration. Hispanic and Asian voters were only 4 percent of the electorate in 1980, but they were 11 percent of voters in 2004 — and that number will keep rising...

Those numbers are the reason Karl Rove was so eager to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the whites the G.O.P. has counted on to vote their color, not their economic interests, are having none of it. From their point of view, it’s us versus them — and everyone who looks different is one of them.

So now we have the spectacle of Republicans competing over who can be most convincingly anti-Hispanic. I know, officially they’re not hostile to Hispanics in general, only to illegal immigrants, but that’s a distinction neither the G.O.P. base nor Hispanic voters takes seriously.

Today’s G.O.P., in short, is trapped by its history of cynicism. For decades it has exploited racial animosity to win over white voters — and now, when Republican politicians need to reach out to an increasingly diverse country, the base won’t let them.

A Socialist Plot, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:

Suppose, for a moment, that the Heritage Foundation were to put out a press release attacking the liberal view that even children whose parents could afford to send them to private school should be entitled to free government-run education.

They’d have a point: many American families with middle-class incomes do send their kids to school at public expense, so taxpayers without school-age children subsidize families that do. And the effect is to displace the private sector: if public schools weren’t available, many families would pay for private schools instead.

So let’s end this un-American system and make education what it should be — a matter of individual responsibility and private enterprise. Oh, and we shouldn’t have any government mandates that force children to get educated, either. As a Republican presidential candidate might say, the future of America’s education system lies in free-market solutions, not socialist models.

O.K., in case you’re wondering, I haven’t lost my mind, I’m drawing an analogy. The real Heritage press release, titled “The Middle-Class Welfare Kid Next Door,” is an attack on proposals to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. ... And Rudy Giuliani’s call for “free-market solutions, not socialist models” was about health care, not education...

The truth is that there’s no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children’s medical bills “welfare,“ with all the negative connotations that go with that term.

And conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.

Here’s what I mean: The great majority of Americans believe that everyone is entitled to a chance to make the most of his or her life. Even conservatives usually claim to believe that...

But a child who doesn’t receive adequate health care, like a child who doesn’t receive an adequate education, doesn’t have the same ... chances in life as children who get both these things. And insurance is crucial to receiving adequate health care...

So how can conservatives defend the indefensible, and oppose giving children the health care they need? By trying the old welfare queen in her Cadillac strategy (albeit without the racial innuendo that made it so effective when Reagan used it). That is, to divert public sympathy from people who really need help, they’re trying to change the subject to the supposedly undeserving recipients of government aid. Hence the emphasis on the evils of “middle-class welfare.”

Proponents of an expansion of children’s health care have, as they should, responded to this strategy with facts and figures. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that S-chip expansion would, in fact, primarily benefit those who need it most: the great majority of children receiving coverage under an expanded program would otherwise have been uninsured.

But the more fundamental response should be, so what?

We offer free education, and don’t worry about middle-class families getting benefits they don’t need, because that’s the only way to ensure that every child gets an education — and giving every child a fair chance is the American way. And we should guarantee health care to every child, for the same reason.

The Great Iraq Swindle

Rolling Stone Magazine
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

--From Issue 1034

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government.

In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they f**k things up.

The Hangover Theory, by Paul Krugman:

A few weeks ago, a journalist devoted a substantial part of a profile of yours truly to my failure to pay due attention to the "Austrian theory" of the business cycle--a theory that I regard as being about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire. Oh well. But the incident set me thinking--not so much about that particular theory as about the general worldview behind it. Call it the overinvestment theory of recessions, or "liquidationism," or just call it the "hangover theory." It is the idea that slumps are the price we pay for booms, that the suffering the economy experiences during a recession is a necessary punishment for the excesses of the previous expansion.

The hangover theory is perversely seductive--not because it offers an easy way out, but because it doesn't. It turns the wiggles on our charts into a morality play, a tale of hubris and downfall. And it offers adherents the special pleasure of dispensing painful advice with a clear conscience, secure in the belief that they are not heartless but merely practicing tough love.

Powerful as these seductions may be, they must be resisted--for the hangover theory is disastrously wrongheaded. Recessions are not necessary consequences of booms. They can and should be fought, not with austerity but with liberality--with policies that encourage people to spend more, not less. Nor is this merely an academic argument: The hangover theory can do real harm. Liquidationist views played an important role in the spread of the Great Depression--with Austrian theorists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter strenuously arguing, in the very depths of that depression, against any attempt to restore "sham" prosperity by expanding credit and the money supply. And these same views are doing their bit to inhibit recovery in the world's depressed economies at this very moment.

The many variants of the hangover theory all go something like this: In the beginning, an investment boom gets out of hand. Maybe excessive money creation or reckless bank lending drives it, maybe it is simply a matter of irrational exuberance on the part of entrepreneurs. Whatever the reason, all that investment leads to the creation of too much capacity--of factories that cannot find markets, of office buildings that cannot find tenants. Since construction projects take time to complete, however, the boom can proceed for a while before its unsoundness becomes apparent. Eventually, however, reality strikes--investors go bust and investment spending collapses. The result is a slump whose depth is in proportion to the previous excesses. Moreover, that slump is part of the necessary healing process: The excess capacity gets worked off, prices and wages fall from their excessive boom levels, and only then is the economy ready to recover. ...

The hangover theory ... turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone--horrors!--printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. ... But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms--especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others...

A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels
by Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky
from the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol 36, No. 1

As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation that requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics.

We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale in the United States of America. Our Suggested list of required warnings appears below.

Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.

Warning: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.

Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.

Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.

Consumer Notice: Because of the 'Uncertainty Principle,' It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.

Advisory: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Known as 'Tunneling,' This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your NeighborUs Domicile. The manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.

Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain Suggested Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.

This is a 100% Matter product: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.

Public Notice as Required by Law: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.

Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a 'Gluing' Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.

Attention: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.

New Grand Unified Theory Disclaimer: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are 'Rolled Up' into Such a Small 'Area' That They Cannot Be Detected.

Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.

Component equivalency notice: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.

Health Warning: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.

Important Notice to Purchasers: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot be Guaranteed.

eBay Auction Items -

Sometimes show more than you may have wanted to see.

Left click for a larger image...

The of-the-moment Nebula chandelier, designed for Flos by Joris Laarman.

By Alice Rawsthorn

Published: August 24, 2007 - IHT

"In an environmental crisis, when most of us already feel guilty about owning more stuff than we need, design is about making things matter - or making them seem as though they do. Smart designers are using advanced technologies to create industrial products, which will seem so meaningful to us that we will come to love them as much as we do lovingly handcrafted objects, or our favorite antiques."

TV's Aryan Sisterhood

They know only one hair color: blonder!
By Jack Shafer

Posted Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007, at 6:26 PM ET

On Wednesday, Fox premieres a new scripted reality show which "follows the trials and tribulations of buxom blonde Lauren Jones" as she learns the ropes of broadcast journalism. Jones has no journalistic experience, but she does have one thing in common with many female broadcasters: blond hair. In February 2006, Jack Shafer reported that blondes dominate the TV news airwaves in numbers far beyond their proportions in the population.

Click here to read Jack Shafer's original slide show.

A Day of Reckoning for Americans Who Lived Beyond Their Means
By Joseph Stiglitz
The Taipei Times

Sunday 12 August 2007

The pessimists who have long forecast that the US economy was in for trouble finally seem to be coming into their own. Of course, there is no glee in seeing stock prices tumble as a result of soaring mortgage defaults. But it was largely predictable, as are the likely consequences for both the millions of Americans who will be facing financial distress and the global economy.

The story goes back to the recession of 2001. With the support of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, US President George W. Bush pushed through a tax cut designed to benefit the richest Americans but not to lift the economy out of the recession that followed the collapse of the Internet bubble.

Given that mistake, the Fed had little choice if it was to fulfill its mandate to maintain growth and employment. It had to lower interest rates, which it did in an unprecedented way - all the way down to 1 percent.

It worked, but in a way fundamentally different from how monetary policy normally works. Usually, low interest rates lead firms to borrow more to invest more, and greater indebtedness is matched by more productive assets.

But given that overinvestment in the 1990s was part of the problem underpinning the recession, lower interest rates did not stimulate much investment. The economy grew, but mainly because American families were persuaded to take on more debt, refinancing their mortgages and spending some of the proceeds. And, as long as housing prices rose as a result of lower interest rates, Americans could ignore their growing indebtedness.

Even this did not stimulate the economy enough. To get more people to borrow more money, credit standards were lowered, fueling growth in so-called "sub-prime" mortgages. Moreover, new products were invented, which lowered upfront payments, making it easier for individuals to take bigger mortgages.

Some mortgages even had negative amortization: payments did not cover the interest due, so every month the debt grew more. Fixed mortgages, with interest rates at 6 percent, were replaced with variable-rate mortgages, whose interest payments were tied to the lower short-term T-bill rates.

What were called "teaser rates" allowed even lower payments for the first few years. They were teasers because they played off the fact that many borrowers were not financially sophisticated and didn't really understand what they were getting into.

And Greenspan egged them to pile on the risk by encouraging these variable-rate mortgages. On Feb. 23, 2004, he pointed out that "many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade."

But did Greenspan really expect interest rates to remain permanently at 1 percent - a negative real interest rate? Did he not think about what would happen to poor Americans with variable-rate mortgages if interest rates rose, as they almost surely would?

Of course, Greenspan's behavior meant that, under his watch, the economy performed better than it otherwise would have done. But it was only a matter of time before that performance became unsustainable.

Fortunately, most Americans did not follow Greenspan's advice to switch to variable-rate mortgages. But even as short-term interest rates began to rise, the day of reckoning was postponed, as new borrowers could obtain fixed-rate mortgages at interest rates that were not increasing.

Remarkably, as short-term interest rates rose, medium and long-term interest rates did not, something that was referred to as a "conundrum."

One hypothesis is that foreign central banks that were accumulating trillions of dollars finally figured out that they were likely to be holding these reserves for years to come, and could afford to put at least some of the money into medium-term US treasury notes yielding - initially - far higher returns than T-bills.

The housing price bubble eventually broke and, with prices declining, some have discovered that their mortgages are larger than the value of their house. Others found that as interest rates rose, they simply could not make their payments.

Too many Americans built no cushion into their budgets, and mortgage companies, focusing on the fees generated by new mortgages, did not encourage them to do so.

Just as the collapse of the real estate bubble was predictable, so are its consequences: housing starts and sales of existing homes are down and housing inventories are up.

By some reckonings, more than two-thirds of the increase in output and employment over the past six years has been real estate-related, reflecting both new housing and households borrowing against their homes to support a consumption binge.

The housing bubble induced Americans to live beyond their means - net savings have been negative for the past couple of years. With this engine of growth turned off, it is hard to see how the US economy would not suffer from a slowdown. A return to fiscal sanity will be good in the long run, but it will reduce aggregate demand in the short run.

There is an old adage about how people's mistakes continue to live long after they are gone. That is certainly true of Greenspan. In Bush's case, we are beginning to bear the consequences even before he has departed.

---------

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is professor of economics at Columbia University and was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under US President Bill Clinton and a chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank. Copyright: Project Syndicate

Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database is Online

The UCS Satellite Database is a listing of operational satellites currently in orbit around Earth. It is available as both a downloadable Excel file and in a tab-delimited text format, and in a version (tab-delimited text) in which the "Name" column contains only the official name of the satellite in the case of government and military satellites, and the most commonly used name in the case of commercial and civil satellites. The database is updated quarterly.

Group successfully details hardware-based iPhone unlocking

By Aidan Malley

Published: 07:15 PM EST

A determined group of hobbyists has documented breaking the iPhone's ties to AT&T through a mixture of hardware and software, proving that the Apple handset can be hacked to permanently function with other cellular carriers.

Calling their project Finding JTAG after the Joint Test Action Group standard used to test access ports on circuit boards, the hobbyists claim to have refined a surefire but dangerous ten-step process that allows the iPhone to use an unmodified SIM card from T-Mobile or other GSM cellular networks.

The technique requires an iPhone that has already been "jailbroken," or derestricted to allow third-party programs, as well as soldering tools and wiring. Similar to the process for unlocking a Siemens phone from Europe, the process involves forcing the read-only boot memory on the iPhone to accept unsigned code on the phone's built-in NOR flash storage that controls some of the most essential functions. This permits the code to change the iPhone's default behavior, which normally bars all but specially approved SIM cards from placing and receiving calls.

"Once the code is on the NOR [memory] we can do whatever we want," said Finding JTAG's public representative, George Hotz. "So patch out the [carrier] lock; voila, unlocked iPhone."

While the summary appears straightforward, however, the actual process is potentially complicated -- and also potentially fatal to the phone for novice hackers. In addition to removing the back cover of the phone and exposing the circuit board, the procedure requires cleaning and then resoldering a single trace on the board to a power line and an unlock switch; a failure could render the whole phone unusable. "You only get one chance to do this right," Hotz warned.

Pastoral, Church, and Business Models:
via UCC Chatter on Ecunet

"In all businesses, there are employees, bosses, owners, managers, etc, and customers, and product. If you define the pastoral role within any business model, then the relationship between the pastor and the governing body and the congregation and the wider community is classified along those lines.

If I am an employee, then what does that make the governing body in relationship to me? Boss? Manager? Owners (heaven forbid, but I have seen such from a governing body)?

What does that make the congregation in relationship to the pastor? Bosses? Managers? Owners? Customers?

Now this is where it becomes interesting. What does that make their tithe? Payment for services rendered? Tips? Payment of satisfaction of a good sermon, of a good service, of a good experience? I know someone who tore out her check from her envelope because she did not like a film clip in the service. Ron, is that not what you are experiencing? The group does not like the UCC, or you, and so they do not come to church, serve, or give. We have that problem right now in our wider church. They do not like the theology, the message, and so they do not give to OCWM.

And all along, they are not giving to God. Wonder how God feels about that. Wonder how God feels about people whose gifts become blackmail for the church and for the pastor to live up to their belief and relational expectations? And churches and ministers lose their souls because they can no longer speak a counter-cultural message that is inherently in the scriptures and the Gospel.

And what about the churches message? It's the product we sell. Catchy slogans that are theologically and relationally inept. I saw a slogan on a van from a UM church. "Bringing Christ to People, People to Christ." How bad is that? But I remembered it. It is catchy. Sounds good, but the theology stinks. But business models tell us that we need to sell our church in a multi-church business environment, and we fall into it. The Gospel gets lost at the cost of selling our church like a local theme park. We spend our time on product placement, advertising a better product than our competitors, and product improvement which are usually building program improvements (adding a new exciting and thrilling ride to our theme park). Some churches are just one step away from having Daffy Duck at their church with a sign, "Come parents and bring your kids! Have their picture taken with Daffy Duck. Stay for worship with us!"

Of course, you could have no product to sell. They don't make anything, and they don't do anything. But they make enough money.

Well, I have ranted enough, I guess. hehe.

Blessings,
Ed
spiritualquest@mac.com

Fungi Make Biodiesel Efficiently at Room Temperature

By Aaron Rowe August 20, 2007 | 1:01:32 PMCategories: Biotechnology, Conference, Energy, Environment

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology have found a much better way to make biodiesel. Their new method could lower the cost and increase the energy efficiency of fuel production.

Instead of mixing the ingredients and heating them for hours, the chemical engineers pass sunflower oil and methanol through a bed of pellets made from fungal spores. An enzyme produced by the fungus does the work -- making biodiesel with impressive efficiency.

Last Monday, Ravichandra Potumarthi showed off his work during a poster session at the International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. After returning to his lab in Hyderabad, he was able to send out some pictures of his experimental reactor (shown on right) and the fungal pellets.

Typically, biodiesel is made by mixing methanol with lye and vegetable oil and then heating the brew for several hours. This bonds the methanol to the oils to produce energetic molecules called esters. Unfortunately, heating the mixture is a huge waste of energy, and a major selling point of alternative fuels is efficiency. An enzyme called lipase can link link oil to methanol without any extra heating, but the pure protein is expensive.

Potumarthi has a simple solution. Why bother purifying the lipase? It would be easier to just find an organism that produces plenty of the enzyme and squish it into pellets. In this case, the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae does the trick.

Recently, several huge research centers have sprung up to develop better ways to make biofuels. Considering that a handful of chemical engineers can accomplish so much on what appears to be a shoestring budget, the future of alternative fuels looks pretty good -- but maybe a bit slimy.

World's Worst Job
(Windows Media - 3mb)
via Doug Franks

Malthusian Doctrine:

" Other circumstances being the same, it may be affirmed that countries are populous according to the quantity of human food which they produce or can acquire, and happy according to the liberality with which this food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase. Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries more populous than corn countries. But their happiness does not depend upon their being thinly or fully inhabited, upon their poverty or their richness, their youth or their age, but on the proportion which the population and the good bear to each other." Thomas Robert Malthus ( 1766-1834)

Visual clutter detection (from BoingBoing Website - 8/21/07)

MIT researchers have designed a software tool that measures "visual clutter." According to the scientists, the system could someday help designers create better displays, maps, and data visualizations and steer our attention in various ways. The prototype tool, written in MATLAB, is freely available here. From the MIT News Office:

"We lack a clear understanding of what clutter is, what features, attributes and factors are relevant, why it presents a problem and how to identify it," said Ruth Rosenholtz, principal research scientist in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and the paper's lead author.

The fact that one person's clutter is the next person's organized workspace makes it hard to come up with a universal measure of clutter. Rosenholtz and colleagues modeled what makes items in a display harder or easier to pick out. They used this model, which incorporates data on color, contrast and orientation, to come up with a software tool to measure visual clutter.

To be useful, such a tool has to capture the effect of clutter on performance. In their paper, Rosenholtz and her colleagues-- MIT BCS graduate student Yuanzhen Li and BCS undergraduate Lisa Nakano--tested the influence of clutter on searching for a symbol in a map, like an arrow indicating "you are here." They found good correlation between the time it takes to find a symbol in a map and the amount of clutter according to their measure.

Link posted by David Pescovitz on August 21, 2007, 01:59 PM permalink
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Event horizon of a black hole

Wikipedia article: black hole

The most commonly known example of an event horizon is defined around general relativity's description of a black hole, a celestial object dense enough that its gravitational field is so strong that no matter or radiation can escape. This is sometimes described as the boundary within which the black hole's escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. While this definition can be made to work, it only does so if the effects of special and general relativity are taken into account. A more accurate description is to note that within this horizon, all lightlike paths (paths light could take), and hence all paths in the forward light cones of particles within the horizon, are warped so as to fall further into the hole. Once a particle is inside the horizon, moving into the hole is as inevitable as moving forward in time (and can actually be thought of as equivalent to doing so, depending on the spacetime coordinate system used).

Gettin Older

Blackwater:
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill

Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning investigative journalist. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and television show Democracy Now!. Scahill has reported extensively from Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Nigeria. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army is his first book.

Britney still invaluable to Vegas

Dispatches from Las Vegas by Richard Abowitz

...It turns out, for nightclubs in Las Vegas, having an erratic star in the house offers fantastic press, regardless of behavior: The more bizarre, the more widely reported, the better. It also keeps things interesting for the crowd. Take this example: Spears began her year by being carried out of Pure during a similar appearance. Was the club upset or concerned? Pure Management Group also runs LAX, where Spears is hosting the opening August 31. No matter what else is going on in her career, it is clear, Britney Spears will always have Vegas. Of course, in the long term, allowing your life to become an endless hang in Vegas did not go so well for Elvis.

Aug 17, 2007 9:28:52 AM

Trusted Sources

by Nathan Gardals in LA Times

"For consumers to trust Chinese products, they must trust regulation of those products. And regulation cannot be trusted without the rule of law, which doesn't bend to bribery, fraud and quanxi (connections). ...

[T]he ultimate paradox of Deng's soft totalitarianism is that privatizing people's lives will ultimately deprive the authorities of their power. As more people come to enjoy private freedom, fewer will abide it being taken away. Globalization, it seems, has accelerated this process by forging a kind of objective coalition of the growing Chinese middle class and the American consumer in favor of the rule of law. ...

Savvy consumers are not likely to buy China's response of prosecuting or executing high-level officials -- "killing the chicken to scare the monkey." They simply want the lead removed from their children's toys or they will take their purchases elsewhere.

Bailing out the Speculators

via Robert Reich's Website

"Last night the Federal Reserve Board, acting as America’s central bank, sliced half a percentage point off the discount rate it charges banks for loans. The move was designed to give banks, in turn, more money to lend to their customers. But its primary purpose was to lift the confidence of investors and consumers in the United States and around the world that America’s central bank would do whatever necessary to keep the American economy going.

Ordinarily, central banks shouldn’t bail out speculators. It’s not their job to protect investors from themselves. In particular, it’s bad policy to make money cheaper – and investments thereby less risky – after investors have been hoisted on the petards of their own foolishness. That only invites more foolishness next time around.

Yet there’s precedent: In August of 1998, despite growing evidence of inflation, the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates in order to forestall a global credit crisis after Russia defaulted on its loans (many of which had been underwritten, foolishly, by several large Wall Street investment banks that assumed Russia would never default). Weeks later the Fed pressured banks to reschedule the debts of a giant hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management, for fear that if the hedge fund went belly up, it would cause a crisis in credit markets.

In other words, ordinary rules don’t apply in extraordinary circumstances. That several thousand lower-income Americans inability to meet their mortgage payments set off a chain reaction leading to a worldwide credit crunch is an another such extraordinary circumstance. This one may require even more intervention by the Fed and other central banks around the world than we’ve witnessed already, in order to avoid a global financial meltdown. How much more? We’ll know more this coming week.

But what exactly happened to set this off? The story isn’t simple, but I’ll try to state it as simply as I can. In recent years, with so much money sloshing around the global economy, American banks and other mortgage lenders found themselves with lots of cash. They thought they could make a tidy profit by pushing home loans – not only on average Americans (whose eagerness to own a home or two thereby bid up housing prices) but also on poorer Americans who wanted to own a house but normally couldn’t afford the interest on the loans. Oddly, private credit-rating agencies judged these “sub-prime” loans to be relatively good risks. The loans were then sliced up and sold to other financial institutions where they were repackaged with other loans. Meanwhile, hedge funds created what can only be described as giant betting pools – huge amalgamations of money from pension funds, university endowments, rich individuals, and corporations – whose assumptions about risk were derived from the assumed low risks of the home loans (hence, the term, “derivatives”). Investors in these hedge funds had little or no understanding of what they were actually buying because hedge funds don’t have to disclose much of anything.

It was not just a housing bubble but a financial house of cards that would tumble when central bankers tightened up on the global money supply in order to fight inflation, as they inevitably would, and when the home loans were thereby revealed to be far riskier than thought. Because the bad loans are so widely dispersed and because so much additional credit is connected to them through derivatives, a contagion of fear has spread through financial markets. The credibility of the whole financial system has become shaky. Large numbers of stocks and bonds appear riskier than before, which is why Wall Street is taking a beating.

Americans are understandably nervous. Most American households have invested their savings in stocks and bonds. Most have also relied on the rising values of their homes as “nest-eggs” when they retire. The fact that the housing bubble has burst while stocks and bonds have lost ground is likely to cause American consumers to tighten their belts and cut their spending. Given that consumers comprise 70 percent of the economy, this could push America economy into a recession.

Europe and Asia are feeling the effects. The global financial market is now one big pool of money with spigots and drains all over the world. A loss of confidence on Wall Street is felt almost instantly in other financial capitals. Moreover, American consumers are the “energizer bunnies” of the global economy. Their purchases have maintained global demand even when other economies have sagged. The possibility that they won’t or can’t continue to buy is rocking all global corporations that sell them goods or services.

In other words, the Fed has to bail out the speculators because we’ll all suffer if it doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean, though, that the irresponsibilities now so clearly revealed in American financial markets should be excused or forgotten when the crisis ends. Wall Street has been living in an anything-goes world for too long. It has been widely – and wrongly – assumed that investors, creditors, and borrowers are smart enough to take care of themselves, especially if they’re big. That’s wrong.

The system has become so fast and so loose that many of the fancy financial instruments now in use, and the mathematical models on which they’re based, are too complicated for anyone except a computer to understand. Fortunes have been made exploiting tiny opportunities for arbitrage or devising new derivatives on the basis of data and risk assessments far less certain than they’re assumed to be.

Hedge funds have been operating huge financial casinos without having to disclose what they’re betting on, or why. Credit-rating agencies have cut corners or averted their eyes, unwilling to require the proof they need. They’ve been too eager to make money off underwriting of the new loans and other financial gimmicks on which they’re passing judgment. Banks and other mortgage lenders have been allowed to strong-arm people into taking on financial obligations they have no business taking on.

In order for the financial market to work well – to ensure fair dealing and to prevent speculative excess – government must oversee it. This mess occurred because no one was watching. The Fed and other central banks now have to clean it up. But regulators in American, Europe, and Asia have to make sure it stays clean. Hedge funds have to be more transparent. Credit-rating agencies must not have any relationship with underwriters. Banks and other mortgage lenders should be better supervised. Finance is too important to be left to the speculators. posted by Robert Reich | 4:03 PM

The View from Tehran

Hamid Varzi, "an economist and banker based in Tehran," discusses how the U.S. is viewed by the rest of the world:

A debt culture gone awry, by Hamid Varzi, Commentary, IHT: (Tehran) The U.S. economy, once the envy of the world, is now viewed across the globe with suspicion. America has become shackled by an immovable mountain of debt that endangers its prosperity and threatens to bring the rest of the world economy crashing down with it.

The ongoing sub-prime mortgage crisis, a result of irresponsible lending policies designed to generate commissions for unscrupulous brokers, presages far deeper problems in a U.S. economy that is beginning to resemble a giant smoke-and-mirrors Ponzi scheme. And this has not been lost on the rest of the world.

This new reality has had unfortunate side effects that go beyond economics. As a banker working in the heart of the Muslim world, I have been amazed by the depth and breadth of anti-Americanism, even among U.S. allies, manifested in reactions ranging from fierce anger to stoic fatalism. Muslims outside the United States interpret America's policies in the Middle East not as an effort to spread democracy but as a blatant neocolonialist attempt to solve its economic problems by force. Arabs and Persians alike argue that America's fiscal irresponsibility has forced the nation to seek solutions through military aggression.

Many believe that America's misguided adventure in Iraq was a desperate attempt to capture both a reliable source of cheap oil and a major export market for the United States. ...

What have Americans gained from their nation's mountain of debt? A crumbling infrastructure, a manufacturing base that has declined 60 percent since World War II, a rise in the wealth gap, the lowest consumer-savings rate since the depths of the Great Depression, 50 million Americans without health insurance, an educational system in decline and a shrinking dollar that makes foreign travel a luxury.

The best cars, the best bridges and highways, the fastest trains and the tallest buildings are all to be found outside America's borders. ...

The bottom line is that America is awash in red ink and seeks the wrong solutions to its debt problems. A return to fiscal responsibility would make America far stronger, both domestically and internationally, than would a continuation of current policies that falsely project strength through idle protectionist threats and failed military aggression.

Current tensions between the United States and the rest of the world will continue as long as America's military bark is louder than its economic bite.

A solution to the U.S. debt problem requires radical measures, including: the elimination of corporate tax loopholes, a reversal of tax breaks for the ultra-rich, a bipartisan campaign to eliminate budget "pork," imposition of stringent limits on corporate debt and speculative lending, a vast reduction in military expenditure and, finally, an additional 50 cent per gallon gasoline tax that would slash the federal deficit, curtail energy waste and spur technological breakthroughs.

Let us hope America heeds the warnings, dispenses with junk-food economics and embraces a crucial diet of fiscal discipline. It remains to be seen, however, whether America's political leaders have the courage to instigate such reforms, and whether Congress is finally willing to do something for the future of ordinary, hard-working Americans.

"We are Skeptical of Recent Press Coverage Portraying the Conflict as Increasingly Manageable"

The view of Iraq from soldiers serving there:

The War as We Saw It By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy: (Baghdad) Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. ... To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. ...

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. ... What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense. ...

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head ... on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive...) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. ... Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but ... on Iraqi terms... There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal. ...

Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise... When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to ... let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Posted by Mark Thoma on August 19, 2007 at 12:42 AM in Iraq

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Workouts, Not Bailouts
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times - Friday 17 August 2007

In April, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declared that all the signs he saw indicated that the housing market was "at or near the bottom." Earlier this month he was still insisting that problems caused by the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages were "largely contained."

But the time for denial is past.

According to data released yesterday, both housing starts and applications for building permits have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, showing that home construction is still in free fall. And if historical relationships are any guide, home prices are still way too high. The housing slump will probably be with us for years, not months.

Meanwhile, it's becoming clear that the mortgage problem is anything but contained. For one thing, it's not confined to subprime mortgages, which are loans to people who don't satisfy the standard financial criteria. There are also growing problems in so-called Alt-A mortgages (don't ask), which are another 20 percent of the mortgage market. Problems are starting to appear in prime loans, too - all of which is what you would expect given the depth of the housing slump.

Many on Wall Street are clamoring for a bailout - for Fannie Mae or the Federal Reserve or someone to step in and buy mortgage-backed securities from troubled hedge funds. But that would be like having the taxpayers bail out Enron or WorldCom when they went bust - it would be saving bad actors from the consequences of their misdeeds.

For it is becoming increasingly clear that the real-estate bubble of recent years, like the stock bubble of the late 1990s, both caused and was fed by widespread malfeasance. Rating agencies like Moody's Investors Service, which get paid a lot of money for rating mortgage-backed securities, seem to have played a similar role to that played by complaisant accountants in the corporate scandals of a few years ago. In the '90s, accountants certified dubious earning statements; in this decade, rating agencies declared dubious mortgage-backed securities to be highest-quality, AAA assets.

Yet our desire to avoid letting bad actors off the hook shouldn't prevent us from doing the right thing, both morally and in economic terms, for borrowers who were victims of the bubble.

Most of the proposals I've seen for dealing with the problems of subprime borrowers are of the locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone variety: they would curb abusive lending practices - which would have been very useful three years ago - but they wouldn't help much now. What we need at this point is a policy to deal with the consequences of the housing bust.

Consider a borrower who can't meet his or her mortgage payments and is facing foreclosure. In the past, as Gretchen Morgenson recently pointed out in The Times, the bank that made the loan would often have been willing to offer a workout, modifying the loan's terms to make it affordable, because what the borrower was able to pay would be worth more to the bank than its incurring the costs of foreclosure and trying to resell the home. That would have been especially likely in the face of a depressed housing market.

Today, however, the mortgage broker who made the loan is usually, as Ms. Morgenson says, "the first link in a financial merry-go-round." The mortgage was bundled with others and sold to investment banks, who in turn sliced and diced the claims to produce artificial assets that Moody's or Standard & Poor's were willing to classify as AAA. And the result is that there's nobody to deal with.

This looks to me like a clear case for government intervention: there's a serious market failure, and fixing that failure could greatly help thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans. The federal government shouldn't be providing bailouts, but it should be helping to arrange workouts.

And we've done this sort of thing before - for third-world countries, not for U.S. citizens. The Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s was brought to an end by so-called Brady deals, in which creditors were corralled into reducing the countries' debt burdens to manageable levels. Both the debtors, who escaped the shadow of default, and the creditors, who got most of their money, benefited.

The mechanics of a domestic version would need a lot of work, from lawyers as well as financial experts. My guess is that it would involve federal agencies buying mortgages - not the securities conjured up from these mortgages, but the original loans - at a steep discount, then renegotiating the terms. But I'm happy to listen to better ideas.

The point, however, is that doing nothing isn't the only alternative to letting the parties who got us into this mess off the hook. Say no to bailouts - but let's help borrowers work things out.

It's All About Them
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times - Monday 13 August 2007

Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your father's political campaign.

Last week, at one of Mitt Romney's "Ask Mitt" forums, a woman in the audience asked Mr. Romney whether any of his five sons are serving in the military and, if not, when they plan to enlist.

The candidate replied with a rambling attempt to change the subject, but near the end he let his real feelings slip. "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation," he said, "and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I'd be a great president."

Wow. The important point isn't the fact that Mr. Romney's sons aren't in uniform - although it is striking just how few of those who claim to believe that we're engaged in a struggle for our very existence think that they themselves should be called on to make any sacrifices. The point is, instead, that Mr. Romney apparently considers helping him get elected an act of service comparable to putting your life on the line in Iraq.

Yet the week's prize for most self-centered remark by a serious presidential contender goes not to Mr. Romney, but to his principal rival for the G.O.P. nomination.

Rudy Giuliani has lately been getting some long-overdue criticism for his missteps both before and after 9/11. For example, The Village Voice reports that he insisted that the city's emergency command center - which included a personal suite with its own elevator that he visited "often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced" - be within walking distance of City Hall. This led to the disastrous decision to locate the center in the World Trade Center, an obvious potential terrorist target.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani is being attacked for his failure to take adequate precautions to protect those who worked on the cleanup at ground zero from the hazards at the site. Many workers have since been sickened by the dust and toxic materials.

For a politician whose entire campaign is based on the myth of his leadership that fateful day - as The Onion put it, Mr. Giuliani is running for "president of 9/11" - anything that challenges his personal legend is a big problem. So here's what Mr. Giuliani said last week in response: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers.... I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Real ground zero workers, who were digging through the toxic rubble while Mr. Giuliani held photo ops, were understandably outraged. So the next day Mr. Giuliani tried to recover, claiming that "what I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk." But thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we can all watch Mr. Giuliani's actual demeanor as he delivered the original remarks. Empathy had nothing to do with it.

What's striking about these unintentional moments of self-revelation is how much Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani sound like the current occupant of the White House.

It has long been clear that President Bush doesn't feel other people's pain. His self-centeredness shines through whenever he makes off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks, from his jocular obliviousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the joke he made last year in San Antonio when visiting the Brooke Army Medical Center, which treats the severely wounded: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself - not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch."

What's now clear is that the two men most likely to end up as the G.O.P. presidential nominee are cut from the same cloth.

This probably isn't a coincidence. Arguably, the current state of the Republican Party is such that only extreme narcissists have a chance of getting nominated.

To be a serious presidential contender, after all, you have to be a fairly smart guy - and nobody has accused either Mr. Romney or Mr. Giuliani of being stupid. To appeal to the G.O.P. base, however, you have to say very stupid things, like Mr. Romney's declaration that we should "double Guantánamo," or Mr. Giuliani's dismissal of the idea that raising taxes is sometimes necessary to pay for things like repairing bridges as a "Democratic, liberal assumption."

So the G.O.P. field is dominated by smart men willing to play dumb to further their personal ambitions. We shouldn't be surprised, then, to learn that these men are monstrously self-centered.

All of which leaves us with a political question. Most voters are thoroughly fed up with the current narcissist in chief. Are they really ready to elect another?

"We satisfy our endless needs
And justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny
And in the name of God"

The Eagles - The last resort
(Hotel California; 1976)

Mesa Verde 600-1300 AD

One example of an earth-sheltered home site

Narcissus by Caravaggio
1597

Failing to obtain their fifteen minutes in the public sphere, many create their own personal fame-enhanced self image...usually without justification.

As the saying goes: "Never forget you are absolutely unique in the world...just like everyone else."

And even your mother will tire of hearing how great you are, if you aren't.

Clousseau's "inflatable parrot" was an apt icon for the modern world...just as Caravaggio's was for an earlier age.

Even with a hundred year lifespan, there is no way one trillion people can get fifteen minutes.

Very Scary Things, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:

"What’s been happening in financial markets over the past few days is something that truly scares monetary economists: liquidity has dried up. That is, markets in ... financial instruments backed by home mortgages ... have shut down because there are no buyers."

The song "Little Boxes" was allegedly written about Levittown

In Levittown, all the homes did look the same. Even all of the gardens were manicured similarly. Residents only hung laundry out to dry on specified hangers and only on certain days. If someone disregarded their grass for too long, Levitt would send people in to cut the grass and send the bill later. The Levittowner baby boomers had formed communities where all of the homes looked similar, but it did not matter to the residents, satisfied and content to just have a single family house.

In her song "Little Boxes," folk singer Malvina Reynolds described the little box houses of Levittown and its residents as "all just the same." She described how everyone living in the houses all lived the same monotonous life and how everything always ended up the same, just like the houses. Her observations are right, wrong or both depending on your perspective.

"LITTLE BOXES"

Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky tacky.
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and there's business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Words and music by Malvina Reynolds
Copyright 1963 by Schroder Music Co.

Average Global Land/Sea Temperature Change Per Century - Courtesy of Wikipedia











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Annual Average Global Surface Temperature Anomalies 1880-2006

Go directly to the NOAA Temperature Changes page.

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Courtesy of EPA Website Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 2007 that warming of the climate system is now “unequivocal,” based on observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level (IPCC, 2007).

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) 2006 State of the Climate Report and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) 2006 Surface Temperature Analysis:

• Since the mid 1970s, the average surface temperature has warmed about 1°F.
• The Earth’s surface is currently warming at a rate of about 0.32ºF/decade or 3.2°F/century.
• The five warmest years over last century have likely been: 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006. The top 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1990.

Additionally (from IPCC, 2007):

• The warming trend is seen in both daily maximum and minimum temperatures, with minimum temperatures increasing at a faster rate than maximum temperatures.
• Land areas have tended to warm faster than ocean areas and the winter months have warmed faster than summer months.
• Widespread reductions in the number of days below freezing occurred during the latter half of the 20th century in the United States as well as most land areas of the Northern Hemisphere and areas of the Southern Hemisphere.
• Average temperatures in the Arctic have increased at almost twice the global rate in the past 100 years.

There Are 12 Kinds of Ads in the World - Resist them all!

By Seth Stevenson on Slate
Posted Monday, July 23, 2007, at 12:19 PM ET

In 1978, Donald Gunn was a creative director for the advertising agency Leo Burnett. Though his position implied expertise, Gunn felt he was often just throwing darts—relying on inspiration and luck (instead of proven formulas) to make great ads. So, he decided to inject some analytical rigor into the process: He took a yearlong sabbatical, studied the best TV ads he could find, and looked for elemental patterns.

After much research, Gunn determined that nearly all good ads fall into one of 12 categories—or "master formats," in his words. At last year's Clio Awards, I saw Gunn give a lecture about these formats (using ads mostly from the '70s and '80s as examples), and I was fascinated by his theory. I soon found myself categorizing every ad I saw on TV. It was a revelation: The curtain had been pulled back on all those sly sales tactics at the heart of persuasive advertising.

This slide show presents some recent ads exemplifying each of Gunn's 12 basic categories. With a little practice, you, too, will be ticking off the master formats during commercial breaks.

Click here for a slide show on Gunn's 12 master formats. Or watch a video version of this story at Slate V.

Verbally they are:

• Demo the product
• Show the need or problem
• Symbolic representation of the problem
• Comparison
• Exemplary story
• Benefit causes story
• Presenter/Testimonial
• Ongoing characters/celebrities
• Exaggeration of benefits
• Associated user imagery
• Unique personal property
• Parody or borrowed format
  

"The genius of a competitive market system is not in the individual products produced, but in the climate of experimentation and discovery that unleashes the creativity of a society."
Posted by Mark Thoma on August 6, 2007 at 12:24 AM in Economics, History of Thought,

Prototype Internet Device Fails FCC Test

DIBYA SARKAR | August 8, 2007 |

Associated Press via Huffington Post ompare 01:30 PM EST01:23 PM EST12:05 PM EST11:07 AM EST with 01:30 PM EST01:23 PM EST12:05 PM EST11:07 AM EST versions

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WASHINGTON — The government gave a failing grade to a prototype device that Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Dell Inc. and other technology companies said would beam high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves.

In a 85-page report, the Federal Communications Commission on July 31 said the devices submitted by the technology coalition could not reliably detect unused TV spectrum, and could also cause interference.

Despite the setback, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday the agency still would like to find a way to transmit high-speed Internet service over the unused airwaves.

Edmond Thomas, who represents the technology coalition, said the companies are convinced the spectrum can be used without causing interference to TV and wireless microphone signals.

"We intend to work with the FCC in order to identify the discrepancies in their tests with the tests we've done," Thomas, who is a former chief engineer with the FCC, said Wednesday.

The technology companies say the unlicensed and unused TV airwaves, also known as "white spaces," would make Internet service accessible and affordable, especially in rural areas and also spur innovation.

However, TV broadcasters oppose usage of white spaces because they fear the device will cause interference with television programming and could cause problems with a federally mandated transition from analog to digital signals in February 2009.

If the device eventually is approved by the FCC, it could adopt rules for operating unlicensed devices in the white-space spectrum by October, according to its own timetable. By December, the agency could start certifying similar devices, which means manufacturers of the devices must show their technology conforms to the agency's technical requirements.

But any such devices would not go on sale until after Feb. 18, 2009 when TV broadcasters switch from analogy to digital transmissions.

Who Am I?

He was born about 1894, near the small town of Supine. His father, a section boss on the railroad, was killed when he was a month old. His mother was left with only "gumption" and a house in which she was able to keep boarders. His early youth in Supine involved cornering all the marbles in town at age nine, serving as a messenger for the telegraph company, having a girlfriend named Millie, fishing, swimming and raiding melon patches with Spike Spangle and beating up the son of the banker who planned to foreclose on his mother's house.

Then on June 7, 1905 when he was only 11, his mother died at age 30, of typhoid. On the night of the funeral he was put on the outbound Limited. Presumably he later spent some time in the city for he and Paddy Cairns were companions together in the old 8th Ward.

For a few semesters he attended college studying engineering but found no time for football or girls because he had to work seven nights a week and Sundays in the local steel mill to pay off a debt. His family background and lack of prep school education kept him from entering a fraternity. He eventually became foreman in the rolling mill, married, worked and planned for a family, kids, and house of their own. When "Daddy" began to make big money the marital happiness was lost but he retained his identity with the common people.[1]

The derivation of his name is from his making millions through munition sales in World War I.

After the war, he continued as an industrialist, but became a philanthropist as well—his fortune had built to "ten zillion dollars." His wife instigated the taking in (no adoption ever took place[2]) of a young girl while he was away on a business trip. On his return, he was smitten with the child and, as her father-figure, offered the girl support as needed. He often intervened in Annie's life during crisis, always returning in time to save the day.[3]

Despite his immense wealth, he was, now and then, reduced to such poverty as to be forced to raid the piggy bank. He always leaves an I.O.U., and is always restored to his wealth and repays his debts.

He is knighted by the Queen later in life.

Any parallels to Dick Cheney, while revelatory, are purely coincidental...

The truth is: It is Daddy Warbucks from the comic strip: Annie - by cartoonist Harold Gray

Information via/courtesy of Wikipedia.en

White House Adviser Says Operations Within Pakistan Possible If Musharraf Fails To Stop Al Qaeda

Obama says it first (in this news cycle) - Aug. 2nd, 2007 ; then

Bush Aide: Military Could Go Into Pakistan - Aug. 2nd, 2007 ; but earlier in the cycle...

Bush says Musharraf can do the job - July 21st, 2007 - and the Arab Gulf view:

America praises Islamabad's efforts to fight extremists

AP Published: August 02, 2007, 23:15

Washington: A US diplomat said that Pakistan must use its boosted military presence in lawless tribal regions to do more to fight extremists. But the official defended Pakistan's much criticised efforts to defeat Al Qaida and Taliban militants. John Gastright, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told lawmakers on Wednesday of a growing threat of violence in Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight against militants in South Asia. The United States, he said, believes Pakistan can do more in that fight. But he noted 100,000 Pakistani troops along the rugged Afghan border and praised Pakistan's soldiers for harassing terrorists in an area where they previously felt safe. He testified that Islamabad "must now use these assets to take more effective action against extremists taking refuge there." When a lawmaker raised the most recent US National Intelligence Estimate, which says Al Qaida had become increasingly comfortable in Pakistan, Gastright commended Islamabad's comprehensive strategy to fight extremists. Tensions rise "The government of Pakistan is no friend of Al Qaida," he said. "No government has captured or killed more Al Qaida or Taliban extremists than the government of Pakistan." The House of Representatives subcommittee on South Asia hearing comes as security deteriorates in Pakistan and as tensions rise between Washington and Islamabad. President Pervez Musharraf is facing increasing criticism from Washington that the country's tribal regions have become a haven for terrorists; Pakistan denies this.

Long Creation Days
by Jim Schicatano

ABSTRACT: "For the past century, the Biblical Creation story has come under considerable scrutiny and derision by the scientific community. Much of the controversy centers around the length of the Biblical Creation Day. While many Fundamentalist Christians insist that a Creation Day must span the traditional twenty-four hours, mainstream science has determined that the age of the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old.

Consequently, for the Bible and science to be reconciled, a Creation Day would have to span longer periods of time. This article will demonstrate that long Creation Days are not only possible but with a clearer understanding of the arguments the Biblical text virtually mandates them."

Important Early Modern Homo Sapiens Sites

Date of Fossil (years ago) East Africa: Herto, Middle Awash 160,000-154,000 Omo 1 195,000 Laetoli 120,000 South Africa: Border Cave 115,000-90,000 Klasies River Mouth 90,000 Israel: Skhul and Qafzeh 92,000 Australia: Lake Mungo 60,000-46,000 Asia: Ordos (Mongolia) 40,000-20,000 ? Liujiang (China) 139,000-111,000 ? Zhoukoudian upper cave (China) 27,0000 Europe: Peştera cu Oase (Romania) 36,000-34,000 Combe Capelle (France) 35,000-30,000 Mladeč and Předmostí (Czech Republic) 35,000-25,000 Cro-Magnon (France) 27,000-23,000

Note: Artifactual evidence indicates that modern humans were in Europe by at least 40,000 and possibly as early as 46,000 years ago. Dating of the earliest modern human fossils in Asia is less secure, but it is likely that they were present there by around 60,000 years ago. Copyright © 1999-2007 by Dennis O'Neil. All rights reserved.

How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way

Be gentle. Problem-related stress can make people seem rude or stupid even when they're not.

Reply to a first offender off-line. There is no need of public humiliation for someone who may have made an honest mistake.

If you don't know for sure, say so! A wrong but authoritative-sounding answer is worse than none at all. Don't point anyone down a wrong path simply because it's fun to sound like an expert. Be humble and honest; set a good example.

If you can't help, don't hinder. Don't make jokes about procedures that could trash the user's setup — the poor sap might interpret these as instructions.

Ask probing questions to elicit more details. If you're good at this, the querent will learn something — and so might you. Try to turn the bad question into a good one; remember we were all newbies once.

While just muttering RTFM is sometimes justified when replying to someone who is just a lazy slob, a pointer to documentation (even if it's just a suggestion to google for a key phrase) is better.

If you're going to answer the question at all, give good value. Don't suggest kludgy workarounds when somebody is using the wrong tool or approach. Suggest good tools. Reframe the question.

Help your community learn from the question. When you field a good question, ask yourself “How would the relevant documentation or FAQ have to change so that nobody has to answer this again?” Then send a patch to the document maintainer.

If you did research to answer the question, demonstrate your skills rather than writing as though you pulled the answer out of your butt. Answering one good question is like feeding a hungry person one meal, but teaching them research skills by example is teaching them to grow food for a lifetime.

Single-Payer System Would Give US the World's Best Care
By Dr. John Daley
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Monday 07 May 2007

Major newspaper editorials in the US rail regularly against health care reform. But more often than not, such railings represent yet another attempt by members of the health insurance industry, or someone with very good insurance, to torpedo the best choice for health care reform - a single-payer system, or Medicare for all - by using scare words like rationing or socialized medicine.

As a family physician on the front lines of medicine, I see daily the difficulties patients face due to lack of insurance or underinsurance. Generally, these patients ration their own care, disappearing for a year or two when they lose their job and insurance, only to return with sky-high blood pressures or out-of-control diabetes, effectively taking years off their lives.

In New Hampshire, approximately 135,000 citizens lack health insurance, and, for those who have it, many can't get all they need. The MRI wait may not be long, but many people can't see their doctor, much less get an MRI. Now, with health savings accounts and high-deductible plans, I have insured patients refusing their MRIs due to the cost.

It is estimated that 18,000 Americans die annually due to lack of insurance - a rather harsh effect of our present method of rationing. Shouldn't the elimination of these deaths be a national priority?

The editorial mentions Canadians coming to the United States for surgery because of better and more readily available care. These numbers are rather small, and the editorial fails to mention Americans going to Canada to get affordable drugs, or the ever-increasing phenomenon of medical tourism, where Americans travel abroad to get surgeries that are more affordable.

The bottom line is that Canadians enjoy longer, healthier lives than Americans, despite spending far less than we do, while covering every citizen. In a recent survey, only 3.5 percent of Canadians reported feeling that they waited too long for care - a much smaller number than our 15 percent uninsured, who wait quite a bit. Long waits are a misleading myth.

Furthermore, a recent Harris Interactive poll of patients in the leading industrial societies found that Canada ranked first and the United States last in patient satisfaction with health care. You can't just poll those with good insurance, after all!

Remember the term "single-payer" as the best solution to our health care system's problems. If one believes that health care is a human right and not a privilege, and if one wants to avoid having a health insurance company - which profits by denying care - choosing which tests you can have and which drugs you can take, it is the best answer.

The government pays for more than 50 percent of health care costs already through Medicare, Medicaid, federal employees, the military and the Veterans Administration, so it is not a radical stretch to extend Medicare to all Americans to cover the uninsured.

HR 676 has been introduced in the US House of Representatives by (along with others) Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. In my home state of New Hampshire, the House has shown great wisdom in introducing a resolution to study single-payer care for the state.

When discussing health care reform, don't be scared by words like "rationed" or "socialized." Be informed, be wise and be empathic - choose what's best for America and all its citizens, not just those with good insurance.

If we took the money, structure and ingenuity in the current health care arena and applied it to the whole population via a single-payer system that eliminated the unfairness, complexities and waste, we truly would have the world's best health care for our citizens.

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Dr. John Daley of Londonderry, New Hampshire, is a physician in Derry and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.