Gray Watson's Blog -- January 2006

Blogging is a useful way for me to record my thoughts and digital travels every so often. Hope you enjoy my digital stream of consciousness.

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January 26, 2006

Well the More Cowbell skit from SNL has turned the phrase into part of the English language. Here's a history of the phrase's rise from Wired.com. Here's the Wikipedi page on it. I've seen the clip of the skit 30 times and I still enjoy it.
So I was just reading this poor article about US versus Japanese cars in terms of reliability. "Take a good look at vehicle reliability data and the answer may surprise you" says the piece. What suprises me is how poorly this article was researched with JD Powers surveys of car owners and not observed data. They are more testing brand loyalty than reliability. According to the Consumer Reports research from October 2005, of the 31 cars rated highest for predicted reliability, 29 were Japanese, 2 were US, and none were European. Here's an article from the Car Talk guys about it. This article from Edmunds.com mentions it. The consumer reports article was also covered by CNN.
Toyota, along with its Lexus division, makes more than half of the sedans and small cars that earned Consumer Reports highest reliability rating. All the others that earned this rating were also Japanese, including the Honda Accord and previous-generation Civic; the 2006 Infiniti M35/45; and nonturbo models of the Subaru Impreza.

January 25, 2006

The Ford automobile make announced lay offs of over 28,000 yesteday. They were discussing this topic on On Point over the radio on the way into work. So much talk about competitiveness, education, healthcare, etc.. All important topics that need to be addressed. However, the overall problem is that Ford (and GM) are not selling enough cars -- they are not competing with Honda and Toyota. Since many of the Japanese cars are being built in this company by similar US workers, you can't blame labor for the collapse of the American auto industry. I blame the fact that American companies still cannot design and build cars with the same levels of quality as the Japanese. They also have no long term vision as we are witnessing now with the hybrid technologies being dominated by the Japanese. Another interesting point is that it is only Ford's (and GM's) North America division which is doing so poorly.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Georgetown law school yesterday and was greated by a number of acts of civil disobedience in protest over the wire-tapping of Americans without court oversight. Good for them!
"When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough. In light of this, I'm proud of the very civil civil disobedience that was shown here today." - David Cole, Georgetown University Law Professor
Here's another accolade for the United States. The hallowed title of the World's Worst Savers. Congrats to us all! This is from a report by AC Nielsen polling company which shows that 22% of US citizens "have no spare cash". Portugal came in close second. The report does show that the situation seems to be improving in the US the percentage down 6% since May 2005 and with 42% of strapped citizens listing debt repayment as their #1 concern. I think that this shows poor political and social leadership. The problem is that if we encourage people to save how much do we hurt the economy? But any short-term shock to the economy may be money well invested when people lose the jobs or retire and don't have to rely (as much) on welfare. Here's the CNN article about it.

January 24, 2006

A colleague at work found some details on crash only software. It links to a Stanford site about it. Basically it describes a high-reliability mechanism where any system fault causes the system to restart using "microrebooting". Supposedly Akamai uses this mechanism for all of its distributing computing. Although I understand the concept and I've added it to my lexicon, at some level it feels like a big hack. It seems like a replacement for proper software engineering if you require/expect your ap to crash once and a while and restart. Certainly endeavoring to persist things properly and recover automatically are good things.

January 22, 2006

So I've not blogged in a while. Been busy at work and at home have been fighting some OS upgrades and a Verizon FIOS install (looooong story). In any case, just stumbled upon this funny page with a number of side-to-side "twins" shots. Maybe separated at birth would be more appropriate.

January 11, 2006

Yesterday, when Apple introduced the first of its Intel x86 computers to the public, it's stock closed at US$80.86. Strange but true. The image on the right is a snapshot from Yahoo finance at the end of the day.

January 9, 2006

Incredibly scary article about the Diabetes epidemic -- maybe pandemic would be more appropriate. Doctor's call it the Rodney Dangerfield disease because it get's no respect and little funding compared to other diseases. But it will inflict, disable, and ultimately kill millions of Americans and it's getting worse. It is inversely correlated with income because poor people are less likely to eat fresh food and get exercise. Gym classes are being cut from mandatory curriculums around the country. The Center for Disease Control has a number of pages about Diabetes. Here's a scary graph showing the disease growth from 1980 to present. Also see their dietary guidelines for Americans. Here's a link to my Body Mass Indicator chart. I'm still in the overweight category.
"At a time when we are trying to shift health care out of hospitals, with diabetics you don't have a choice," he said. "Nursing homes are going to be crammed to the gills with amputees in rehab. Kidney dialysis centers will multiply like rabbits. We will have a tremendous amount of people not blind but with low vision. And we have lousy facilities in this country for low-vision problems. These people will not be able to function in society without significant aid."
In 2003, diabetes vaulted past stroke and AIDS from the sixth-leading cause of death in New York to the fourth. It was fifth, slightly behind stroke, in 2004. But the health department says it believes the actual toll is much worse because doctors who fill out death certificates may ascribe the death to a complication rather than to the diabetes at its root. Lorna Thorpe, deputy health commissioner, combed through medical charts and concluded that diabetes should be third, trailing cardiovascular disease and cancer.

January 6, 2006

So although I don't understand the ramifications, a lot of experts have been crying foul that the Federal Reserve is ceasing its M3 report. Here is there small announcement of the fact. Here's another story. Pundits are saying that it's an attempt by the Fed to hide information about how they are impacting the market. They say that inflation is being hidden by market tactics. At the very least it looks like yet another move by our federal government to keep things from public scrutiny.
First of all it's important to understand that the M3 report is the broadest measure of the supply of money in the economy. Secondly, it is important to note that the M3 has literally doubled in less than 9 years. In other words, there is twice as many dollars out there than there while the economy has grown far less. Lastly, it is important to understand what inflation actually is.
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The first answer is to compare that to the federal government reporting only the deficits, but no longer the federal debt. The federal deficit for last year was around US$318.6 billion. But the federal debt went up US$553.6 billion last year. How can that be? How could the total debt increase more than the deficit? Because the federal government lies. Off-budget items don't get reported in the deficit numbers. That's why the M3 is important, because it includes items that aren't reported in the M1 and M2.
So this old news but I wanted to throw it up. So there are folks out there who take the whole xmas lights thang a bit too far. One example is Carson Williams, from Ohio who spent US$10k and two months laying the 25,000 lights choreographed to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Wizard in Winter. He used the Light-O-Rama system with 88 separate light channels. I can see myself doing something like this but way smaller. I'd probably use DC LED lights and maybe something like this D-Light or another controller.
Disgusting story about the payouts surrounding Senator Frist's AIDs "Charity".
World of Hope gave $3 million it raised to charitable AIDS causes, such as Africare and evangelical Christian groups with ties to Republicans - Franklin Graham's Samaritan Purse and the Rev. Luis Cortes' Esperanza USA, for example. The rest of the money went to overhead. That included $456,125 in consulting fees to two firms run by Frist's longtime political fundraiser, Linus Catignani. One is jointly run by Linda Bond, the wife of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo.
The charity also hired the law firm of Vogel's wife, Jill Holtzman Vogel, and Frist's Tennessee accountant, Deborah Kolarich. Kolarich's name recently surfaced in an e-mail involving Frist's controversial sale of stock in his family founded health care company. That transaction is now under federal investigation.
According to this article, Representative Bob Ney is in trouble. It was written long before the Abramoff story splashed far and wide but details some of the supposed questionable dealings between the Congressman and lobbyist.
In recent days, the Justice Department claimed a "Representative 1," later identified as Ney, was a major player in a conspiracy of political corruption. According to court filings, Abramoff and Scanlon provided Ney with "a stream of things of value," including "a lavish trip to Scotland to play golf on world famous courses, tickets to sporting events and other entertainment, regular meals at [Abramoff's] upscale restaurant, and campaign contributions." Ney or his staff also received tickets to the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., frequent golf expenses for greens around Washington, D.C., and a 2000 trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific that had hired Abramoff as a lobbyist. In an apparent exchange, prosecutors claim that Ney agreed "to perform a series of official acts" like placing statements in the Congressional Record, meeting with Abramoff's clients and trying to arrange a cellphone business deal for one of the lobbyist's clients.

January 5, 2006

So this 21 year old from the UK has sold US$1 million of advertising on his home page which is milliondollarhomepage.com. For US$100, you buy a 10x10 box on his page. I kid you not. His last 1000 pixels (that's 1/5 the size of the image on the right) is going right now for over US$150,000 on ebay -- no, seriously. He's a trailblazer in the latest (and I'm predicting short-lived) craze in pixel advertising. Here's the Reuters copy on it. I happy for the kid but as for the other copycats I just don't see this working very much except as a novelty. But I've been wrong before and now there are hundreds of these stupid sites which I'll list but I refuse to link to: milliondollarspixel.com, buckapixel.com, mypageofpixels.com, pixmeup.com, pixelbay.org, etc..
Another unfortunate quote from Pat Robertson who said that Sharon was struct down by god's wrath. It's this sort of comments which expose the fundamentalist Christian beliefs about Israel which are all tied to the rapture. Even though they hate the jews for killing christ and (I assume) think they all will die horrible deaths during the anti-christ visits after the rapture, they need them around to fulfill the prophesies.
Sharon "was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said.
In discussing what he said was God's insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said.

January 4, 2006

The White House has quietly issued a "signing statement" which allows them to bypass the torture restrictions written into the latest defense appropriations bill by Senator John McCain. I figured that this was going to happen or that they were just going to do it anyway after they backed down from opposing the amendment. Bush continues to consider the executive branch to be without check or balances in the name of the war on terrorism.
After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a "signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.
"The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President... as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach "will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."
So this plea agreement by lobbyist Jack Abramoff has Congress (and probably the White House) very worried. The feds supposedly have all of his email including day-to-day influence peddling details and money records. People are going to go down and go down hard for this. He's given money to Democrats and Republicans although it looks like the Rs are going to get it harder. At the very least the open K-street project of the current Congressional Leadership is finally (hopefully) over. More K-street project articles: Washington Post, Carpetbagger Report, Washington Monthly. I really don't understand why this behavior still goes on. Golf trips to Scotland? Expensive box tickets to sports games? Does anyone really think that this is proper democratic behavior? Another piece from the BBC about Abramoff and another about Washington lobbyists in general.
But that was cold comfort on Capitol Hill, where there was a sense of lawmakers and lobbyists' waiting for the other shoe to drop. In a city whose history is rife with scandal and the political price it exacts, from the F.B.I. sting operation known as Abscam to the savings and loans collapse involving "the Keating Five", some experts feared that the Abramoff investigation would eclipse all the rest.
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"There's a lot of talk coming out of various quarters that the Justice Department is going to pursue a different definition of bribery, meaning that if somebody were to give a gift or a campaign contribution in the same time period as a member took an official action, that in and of itself would constitute bribery," said a former Republican leadership aide who insisted on anonymity. "That scares the bejesus out of people."
First launch of the first European Galileo satellite which will provide competition to the US' GPS systems. It should be much more accurate (probably in all 3 dimensions) and will not be controlled my the US military which routinely blocks GPS signals to war theaters. The idea that the Europeans need to spend US$4 billion because they are scared that our government controls the GPS system is yet another sign of Euro-American mistrust.
Galileo will also be more exact than GPS, with precision of about three feet, compared to about 16 feet with GPS technology, ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina said. With Galileo, for example, rescue services will be able to direct ambulances on which lane to use on the highway, he said.
A second satellite named Giove B'' is scheduled to be placed in orbit this spring. Two more satellites will then be launched in 2008 to complete the testing phase, which requires at least four satellites in orbit to guarantee an exact position and time anywhere on earth.
The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are still going strong on the Martian surface after two years (1 Martian year). Although they continue to show their age with some join and motor issues, they are still relatively healthy and active. Here's a CNN story about them.
Aided by a good power supply from Spirit's solar cells, researchers have been using the rover at night for astronomical observations. One experiment watched the sky during a meteor shower as Mars passed through the debris trail left by a passage of Halley's comet. "We're taking advantage of a unique opportunity to do some bonus science we never anticipated we would be able to do," said Cornell's Dr. Jim Bell, lead scientist for the rovers' panoramic cameras.
Opportunity is examining bedrock exposures along a route between Endurance and Victoria craters. It recently reached what appears to be a younger layer of bedrock than examined inside Endurance. In Endurance, the lowest layers of bedrock were deposited as windblown dunes. Some of the upper layers were deposited as underwater sediments, indicating a change from drier to wetter conditions over time.
Here's an article about the latest from the Virgin Galaxy spaceport in New Mexico. They are expecting to launch 50,000 people into space over the first 10 years of operation.
Branson told SPACE.com, after making a personal inspection of the spaceport to be, that the remote sandy landscape is "beautiful, absolutely gorgeouswith lovely mountain ridges around it." The locale is not far from lakes and rivers, "so we can make a real experience for people coming, which is important," he added.
Virgin Galactic operations and the firms facilities at the spaceport will be driven by the designs of SpaceShipTwo and the White Knight Two mothership that hauls the passenger-carrying rocket plane to high altitude for release.

January 2, 2006

In looking for another bookmark, I found this site which specializes in and sells plastic repair kits and supplies. A lot of them are automotive based but are also applicable for household or hobby uses. With their kits, supplies, chemicals, and welding irons you should be able to fix a wide variety of cracked or broken plastic pieces. A friend of mine from India said that because most people are poor over there, if anything plastic breaks, there are stores and craftsfolk who will repair it for you. The American version is to throw it out and buy another one which drives me crazy.
Our web site gives you all the information you need to do your repair... and, it requires absolutely no thinking on your part. It's all spelled-out for you in simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions that are so easy, an eight year old could do it. Not only that, you can purchase everything you need to get the job done right... and it's all just a click away.
Scary statistic. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has put out a report that says that of the drivers on the road, an average of 10% are talking on their cellphones. This is very worrisome given the evidence which seems to indicate that cell-phone use significantly impairs a driver's ability and rivals drunk driving in terms of accident causing potential. I bet in 10 years if the surveys hold up use while underway will be banned in most states -- but a lot of people are going to have to die before we see the laws change.
NHTSA's policy on using cell phones while driving is conveyed in the following statements from www.nhtsa.gov: "The primary responsibility of the driver is to operate a motor vehicle safely. The task of driving requires full attention and focus. Cell phone use can distract drivers from this task, risking harm to themselves and others. Therefore, the safest course of action is to refrain from using a cell phone while driving." More information on the agency's policy can be found on this Web site.
I've not been blogging much lately. Last minute work stuff then holiday time in sunny Pittsburgh, PA and Youngstown, OH. Except for a particularly bad behavior from our 6 year old it was a good trip. Hope you and yours had a happy/restful/joyful time as well.

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