Categories
politics

The campaigning has started already

I’ve started to get posts in my facebook profile about the “In it to win it” effort to re-elect Obama in 2012. Pop quiz, which party starts wars and expands existing ones, adds trillions and trillions to the federal deficit, busts people legally selling marijuana to cancer patients, has a terrible track record on civil rights, operates secret (and not so secret) detention centers across the world and routinely denies habeas corpus to it’s inmates, and bails out and supports large business and special interests on the taxpayer tab? Trick question, it’s both parties of course.

 

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Obama supporters still support him, he has become everything he professed to hate when he was running in 2008. Where have the anti-war protestors gone? Where is the anger about Gitmo? Why does Obama seemingly get a free pass on all of these things? The only thing I can come up with is that the people that were protesting before were really protesting the fact that the “wrong” team was in office. That would also broadly fit into the reasons behind the more recent protests. Anything the tea partiers are protesting could have been relevant when Bush II was in office, and yet they didn’t show up then. Cheerleaders, that’s all that republicans and democrats seem to be.

Despite all of my gripes, Obama is in a weaker position now then he was last election. Luckily for him, the republicans don’t seem to be able to come up with a real candidate. It reminds me of when dubya was running for a second term and all the Dems could come up with was John Kerry. I really think that the only republican that would have a real chance against Obama is Ron Paul. That’s because he is, and has been, anti-war, anti-drug war, anti-deficit, pro 2nd amendment. He was against the bailouts, doesn’t trust the federal reserve, and is adamantly against corporate welfare. The really wonderful thing about him is that all of that is philosophically consistent, all of his positions are based upon individual liberty and autonomy. He hasn’t flipped his positions, check out the speeches from Obama’s 2008 campaign if you want to see the definition of a weasel politician. Of course, the reason Paul won’t get the nomination is because he is too different from regular republicans. The irony is that makes him different from most Democrats too, making him the ideal candidate to run against Obama.

 

I predict more of the same fiscal mismanagement, foreign entanglements, crony capitalism, and vacuous assurances that they are doing everything possible to make everyone better off in 2012. I know, crazy prediction, right?

Categories
technology

First day looks good

My first day with the iPhone has lived up to what I was hoping it would be. #1 is that I get great reception in my basement room, Tmobile never did very well with that.

 

More importantly for me, I was able to listen to LastFM in the car! Ever since my stepbrother mentioned listening to Pandora instead of FM in the car, I have been lusting for the same capability. I have the “higher quality” setting (whatever that means) on LastFM and it sounds pretty good over both headphones and in the car. I’ll try LastFM tomorrow and see how that goes. I might try a navigation app at some point too, can’t imagine what else I would use in the car. As the days go by, I’m sure I’ll find more and more apps that are useful on the go. It’s a different mindset than using the iPod touch. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon:)

Categories
technology

iPhone!

At long last I have an iPhone. Maybe now I’ll see what all the kids are raving about with these new fangled things. It is the first real phone I’ve owned, everything I’ve had before this has essentially been disposable. It’s probably not coincidental that I hated them too… I had held out for a long time, but I was finally given too good a deal to pass up.

My first impressions… Wow, the screen really is amazing. You’d think that I would have noticed that by now, but putting it next to my older iPod Touch really shows how much better then new display is. Brighter, better colors, and much much sharper. Pictures look fantastic on it. I’m looking forward to trying out the cameras. Believe it or not, it’s one of the things I’m most excited about. It’ll be nice to carry a camera around again. And… I now have a video camera for the first time in my life! I’ve owned motion picture cameras (both 16mm and 8mm) but never video. Who knows, maybe I’ll get back to making movies now that I can…

I’m also looking forward to the location services and the social aspects of that. I can find out where I am, and what’s around me on the go. We’ll see how much else I’ll do with it, there’s a lot of possibilities.

Got myself a case from these guys. I got the “smart” case for both my iPhone and iPad from them. I have to have a belt case, it’ll keep me from losing it, plus I will use it all the time at work. Between the calculator, reference guides, and mactracker, it will be out all the time. I’m going to get a bumper for it too. I know that it isn’t as protective as some other cases, but it will fit in the case I got and I think it will be adequate in combination with it.

Anyway, exciting stuff. I’ve got a couple of weeks to get used to it before my iPad arrives. I am now officially in the Apple mobile world. Let’s see where it takes me….

Categories
culture odds and ends

Woven Texturized Polyester Pants

Nothing says 1975 like Woven Polyester Texturized pants.

1975.xx.xx Sears Christmas Catalog P159

(Click on the picture for more from the 1975 Sears Catalog.)

Unless of course it was the number one single of that year, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille. The chats from that year are filled with the likes of BJ Thomas, Tony Orlando and Dawn, John Denver, and Wings. That was one ugly year, even the colors were awful. The only year I can think of that can compete with it is 1974….

Categories
technology

iTunesU

I got a catalog the other day from The Great Courses (TGC). I’ve always been tempted by those things, the course descriptions make my mouth water, but the prices! Aha! But this is a sale catalog! There are some really good deals in there so I started to fill up my shopping cart. Even with the sale going, it added up to over $400…

 

SIGH. I can’t do it, as much as I’d like to I just can’t. Hmm, maybe one or two… I started to wonder about alternatives and I remembered iTunesU. It’s a frequently overlooked part of iTunes, but it’s wonderful. College lectures from all sort of places, including heavy hitters like Oxford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. I’ve long been a fan of the offerings from Mises.org (still the best things to listen to if you’re interested in economics) but I had forgotten about the other stuff from iTunesU.

 

The best thing of course is that it’s free. I’ve watched some videos on quantum mechanics and quantum computing so far. I’m hoping to do some more physics based stuff before too long and I’ll probably get back to some economics as well. So what does The Great Courses offer in comparison? Ironically, there may be too much stuff in iTunesU. It can be difficult to find what you’re looking for. Some of the lectures TGC offer on early Christianity sound really interesting, trying to find something similar in iTunesU is proving to be frustrating. There’s lots of Christian schools that have their own lecture series but they tend to be long on evangelizing and convincing and short on academic, historical interest. TGC is nice because it is really easy to find what you’re looking for. Or, at least it is easy to see what they offer and make a decision. That might actually be worth the asking price in some situations. I think I am going to spend more time on iTinesU and see if I can exhaust what’s there before springing for a DVD set from TGC. Check out iTunesU, there’s a whole world of knowledge there.

 

Categories
music

Morning song

I had a dream that I was at work when “Blueside” from Rooney came on the store’s music system. The rest of the dream became inconsequential as I locked onto the song. It’s really catchy and I marveled because I had never heard it at work before. Come to think of it, it’s quite a bit more appropriate than some of the other songs I hear at work like “Wicked Game” and “Fake Plastic Trees.”

I woke up a lot later still humming it. If you haven’t heard it, the song is a guitar driven power pop ditty. Imagine a mashup of Matthew Sweet, the Beach Boys, and maybe even the Partridge Family thrown in for good measure. The band also took on the old CCR look for the video, the hair, the denim, the earnestness… Check it out!

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Economics isn’t a science. Unless…

From Tyler Cowen:

 

I conclude that economics is not yet a science.  Economics is most like a science when people do not care about the outcome of the argument.

 

This is something that Russ Roberts has been saying for a while. It is almost impossible to do any real tests of macroeconomic theory. Even when experiments (aka policy) are done, there are too many variables to nail down causes and effects beyond first order effects, sometimes that’s not even obvious.

Categories
Uncategorized

As bizarre a collection of photos as you’ll ever see

 

This post lives up to it’s name of 50 unexplainable pictures. These are the kinds of things you wonder how they were ever thought of, let alone made. Here’s one of my favorites…

WTF?

Check out the rest of them, you’ll have a surreal time…

Categories
economics

Who’s being greedy?

AT&T recently announced that they are going to start implementing bandwidth caps on their DSL subscribers. You would be allowed 150 GB of data per month, and then for each 50 gigs you go over, it would be another 10 bucks. Predictably, there is general outrage over this. People are threatening a mass exodus over this etc. . Personally, I can’t imagine going over 150 gigs a month on a personal internet connection, let alone 200.

The big thing that gets thrown around is that AT&T is just being greedy. After all, it doesn’t cost them any more to push one byte across their network than it does to push 200 gigs. The “pipe” costs them the same in any case. What people forget is that the more space that is taken up by one person in the pipe means there is less for other people, and it could potentially limit the number of customers that they could service. AT&T claims that something like 2% of their users consume 20% of their bandwidth.

So, on the one hand, we have a company that can pinpoint users that are using terrific amounts of their service and wants to charge them to make up for decreased customer capacity and possible impact on other users, on the other we have people that use tremendous amounts of bandwidth and scream bloody murder because they think they shouldn’t be charged any differently no matter what kind of impact they have on AT&T or other users. So who’s the greedy party again?

Categories
economics free market

NPR funding

My facebook feed is full of my friends gnashing their teeth over attempts to defund NPR. The general theme seems to be , “Those damn Republicans! How stupid are they? We need NPR, the government should keep funding it!” For the record, I have enjoyed some public radio from time to time. Having said that, I’m puzzled by the attitude that is implied. Surely, if NPR was super important, people would go ahead and support it directly. I’m not trying to be snarky, I’m really trying to understand why people feel that it is important that the US government has to be a middleman for this seemingly important thing. I am really looking for a reason other than “Everyone else should pay for things that I think are important.” That’s not it, is it?

 

Whether they realize it or not, the angst seems to boil down to being unhappy at not being able to force other people to pay for those things. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to most people and say that they have bought into the “government funded” trap. There is a lot of confusion as to where the money comes from. The government doesn’t fund anything, tax payers do. The dream of a free market guy is that people that value something would actually be the people that pay for it.

It doesn’t matter that the percentage of our tax bill going to NPR is tiny isn’t important. Shaking you down for fifty cents or fifty dollars is bullying all the same. Granted, I am paying a lot less for NPR than the various wars we’ve been fighting. I don’t like those either and I’m under no illusion what is the more pressing concern. I wish both Democrats and Republicans would keep their eye on what’s more important. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think that “listener supported radio” would be best, you know, supported by listeners. If there aren’t enough people willing to pay for it, that should tell you something…. I say that NPR should beat congress and cut ties to the taxpayers money. Rely on your listeners, it’s the honest thing to do.