Network's Viewers are Dying

Probably from boredom. Does anyone still watch the broadcast networks? We haven't had cable or even so much as rabbit ears in five years or so. We have watched episodes of certain network shows on their web sites, but even when we had dish, I don't remember watching much if any of the networks. When we visit my parents, I'll flip through what they get, but even the stuff I used to like watching, like HGTV, has turned to sludge. I can't see ever paying $50 a month for that again.

"Retreating into our Shell"

Talk about taking it in the neck: Stocks falling, oil at a new record, and Barclays declaring they are in "tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth."

I guess we shouldn't have gotten excited about gas going down four cents....

The bakery has been incredibly slow the last two days. I keep saying it's like everyone is holding their breath, waiting for this to blow over, only it doesn't. There is a lot of rot that has built up thanks to all those Harvard MBA's preaching their "new economy" and the end of history crap.

[Update: Monday doesn't look much better for stocks or oil. Like the shrunken head on the wizard's Knight Bus says: "it's gonna be a bumpy ride!"]

Firefox 3

I was one of the nearly 8 million that downloaded the Firefox 3 browser on June 17th. As of yesterday, Firefox 3 has been downloaded over 20 million times. The vast majority of these downloads are people that have Firefox 2, of course. But there are reports that a small part of these downloads represent people switching from Microsoft's IE browser to Firefox.

After living with Firefox 3 for a week, I can certainly recommend it. If you have Firefox 2 (or you are the couple people that routinely read this site using Firefox 1.5 or 1.0), the new Bookmarks with tagging and the new location bar (called the "Awesome Bar" which is just too cutsie) are worth the small amount of effort to download and install the update. It is much faster opening sites, even when you do like I do and open 20 or so tabs all at once. The lockups and memory leaks that clogged up your entire system are gone. Definitely worth it.

If you use IE, it is certainly worth a try. Now that IE has tabbed browsing, the main cosmetic reason for switching to Firefox seems to have been removed. But under the hood, Firefox 3 is much more secure, automatically blocking known malware sites and adding a bunch of warnings when you are about to do something stupid. I haven't used IE in years, so I can't give you any idea which is faster or uses less memory (is that really important when entry level machines have 2GB of RAM?). But the added security features alone make a strong case for at least giving Firefox 3 a spin around the block.

All this is in the context of running Windows XP. If you run Linux, I assume Firefox 3 is a step forward and maybe they figured out a way to correct some of the annoying behaviors, like grabbing and dragging buttons when you try to click on them. If you have Apple, from what I've heard, Safari is still king, but again, probably nothing lost if you give Firefox a workout.

Short version: Get it.

Office Productivity

Every office I've worked in is just about this productive from 4:30 to 5:00:

Liars for Jesus

How hard is it to figure out? This is the age of the internet. Nothing you say (especially in an email) goes away. You cannot simply edit your personal web site and change reality.

Because this simple fact is beyond some people, the conservative Christian community is, once again, made a laughingstock by one of their own.

What should happen: Andrew Schlafly and his followers are called out by the Christian community and either publicly apologize to Richard Lenski, or face shunning by the entire, world-wide Christian community for intentionally living in a state of sin by violating both the Old Testament command against bearing false witness and the New Testament principle of being above reproach.

What will happen: The Christian community will close ranks around Schlafly and his syncophants. His lies will be repeated from pulpits all over the world. Then the entire episode will join the growing list of examples the Christian community uses to prove that all Darwinists are bent on world domination and buggering little Christian boys.

God help us.

Blurred Border

Mexico is retaking the Territories in three ways; demographics, economics, and drug crimes.

Maybe we should be brushing up on our Spanish. Interesting times.

Second Amendment Lives

Being on the west coast, I'm too late for this to be breaking news, but the Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment as an individual's right to keep and bear arms. It can be regulated, but it cannot be outright banned (the case was regarding Washington DC's complete ban on ownership of any handgun inside the district limits). The argument from the anti-gun crowd has always been that the Second Amendment was a collective right granted to state militias, not a right granted to individual citizens. As Kip explains, this is absurd:

The decision then traces how it would be absurd to suggest that, e.g., the First or Fourth Amendments did not guarantee individual rights but rather some contorted “collective right,” which is exactly what opponents of the Second Amendment try to do. “The people” means, well the people! Persons, individuals. Freedom of speech for persons. Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures for persons. Freedom to bear arms for persons. Not states — persons!

....

If a blob of text has the word “Apple” ten times, then you don’t get to pretend that it means “Apple as in fruit” nine times but “Apple as in Steve Jobs” once and only once, when it suits you. It is facially absurd, and utterly sloppy constitutional interpretation, to pretend that “the people” means “individuals” everywhere in the Constitution except the one place where you want it to mean “a state government.”

If you read Kip's entire piece, this decision may have consequences outside of just gun regulations.:

Meanwhile, one wonders (hopes?) whether any jurist might make the same argument about the Ninth Amendment? If “every Amendment counts” and “the people” unambiguously means individuals, then isn’t it time to end this unforgivably insolent reasoning that the Ninth Amendment is an “inkblot” or a “mere rule of interpretation” and not a self-standing font of individual liberties separate and co-equal with the rest of the Bill of Rights?

The Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Interesting times.

More on Doctor Bussard

I wanted to highlight a link in one of the comments to my post about Dr. Bussard's fusion project. This is the text of Bussard's legislative proposal for X Prizes. X Projects and X Prizes are complimentary. An X Project shows us the limits of our current technology. Nearly every aviation X Project resulted in the aircraft being severely damaged or augured in. X Prizes provide economic incentive for private companies to do the possible in the face of large market and/or technological risks. The best part about X Prizes is that they cost the taxpayers, or the private individual or organization putting up the prize money, nothing unless the company or companies doing the work succeed.

Personally, I don't think the BFR is ready for an X Prize just yet. If WB-7 works as advertised, it certainly will be, but WB-7 has to confirm the results from the WB-6 destructive testing. In fact, looking at Emc2's web site, what they identify as Phase 1 is an X-Project, and Phase 2 is an X-Prize.

The New IT

One reason I got out of IT was that the current emphasis is all about doing as little work as possible yourself while piling as much work as possible on everyone else. It even effects Bill Gates. One thing Microsoft used to do was usability testing: real users, not geeks, setting in a room trying to accomplish something while being observed. It is obvious this is no longer done. It is also clear from the responses to Gates' e-mail that Microsoft has become a bureaucracy and Pournelle's Iron Law is in full force. It is certainly worth your time to read the entire e-mail thread and watch how everyone responding to Gates is certain that something needs to be done. By someone else, of course.

Never again. Even if it means scrubbing pots when I am 70 years old.

Busyness

Rob the Bouncer has a great piece on The "Busyness" Fallacy. What is funny is that I was just discussing this very same thing with a coworker at the bakery. We work for someone just like this: always too busy to actually run the business. To me, it's simply amusing. For those that depend on the paycheck to survive, it's terrifying watching the place spiral into a hole wondering when the paychecks will start bouncing. The next four or five months will be interesting.

Global What?

I know I'm beating a patch of grass where a dead horse used to be, but there is news from the world of dendrochronology: climate changes. It gets warm, it gets cold, but what it never does is stay the same. It has been warmer is historic times (Medieval Warm Period) than anything the warming alarmists are predicting and the world's forests didn't burst into flame and the polar bears seem to have come through just fine. But the best news is that even the Medieval Warm Period pales next to the 3,000-year-plus heat wave called the Holocene Climate Optimum that ran from 5500 to 3300 BC. If the world survived that, I'm sure it will do fine during the incredibly minor up-tick during this century as temperatures return to normal after the Little Ice Age.

OK, OK; I'll shut up now.

Not much has been going on for me. Work has been work -- nothing special. Next week all of travel and auto travel is closing down early to head to an employee appreciation dinner/award thingy. This is the first time they have had it during business hours-- they usually have it on a Saturday.

This weekend in Prescott is the Blue Grass Festival. They closed down part of the main road and have the stage set up on the road. It was just getting started after I got done at the bank and walking with Ric to work. People bring their own lawn chairs or blankets and coolers and try to find shade around the courthouse. We will head back down tonite after dinner and/or tomorrow. Not really my type of music, but Ric likes it and it gets us out of the apartment. I love people watching anyways. (And if I am likely --- the food vendor may be out and I can talk Ric into a funnel cake!)

AAA Prescott will be in the 4th of July parade here in Prescott on July 5th. We are wearing red, white, or blue shirts and will be walking the whole parade route. I'm glad the parade starts at 9am.

The weekend after, we will be in Michigan. Quick and dirty -- in and out --- two family reunions. Originally I wasn't going to have much PTO time built back up -- so we had to shorten it up alot. Hopefully next summer we can take more time. We have one open house and one wedding we know about we plan to get back for.

Model Building

Architectural models in Lego? Hmmmm. Arcosanti 5000 could be built in a week for a few hundred bucks.

Seriously, though. This could be a quick and dirty way for an architect or builder to make a scale, 3D model of even small projects like a house remodeling. That way, those who have problems visualizing something from a blue print will be able to figure out that the stairs don't only go down....

Water!

It is now a near-certainty that the white stuff the Phoenix lander dug up is, in fact, water ice.

Woo hoo!

More Blah, Blah, Blah

Nothing really going on out here in Arizona. It's getting hot, so of course the AC in the bakery crapped out a couple days ago. It's still nothing compared to Arcosanti's triple-digit temps while handling 2200 degree bronze, but it isn't all that pleasant, either.

Speaking of the bakery, we still are not using tomatoes so we don't have to argue with everyone about whether they are safe to eat or not. Yesterday, I over-heard the owner explaining to a customer that she was waiting until the "tomato crisis" was over before ordering some more. Crisis?!?! Well, I guess, given that everything else is a crisis, why not? But it just struck me as funny. Hold on to your bippies, folks; we're in the midst of a tomato crisis!

As you can see from our reading list over on the right, I'm finally getting around to reading the Harry Potter series. The first movie follows the book pretty closely including the dialog, which is unusual. People in real life never talk the way they do in books, largely because book dialog has to do a lot of explaining due to lack of body language. Sort of like talking on a telephone vs. talking to the same person face-to-face. The second movie seems to have wandered a bit farther away from the book by simplifying some of the plot line, which is more in line with what I would expect.

When we bought a new book shelf a couple weeks ago and started filling it up, I made the observation to Debbie that each book in the Potter series is longer than the one before, with book seven being a real monster. Yesterday, I was poking around to see when the next movie was coming out (November this year) and found a rumor that the last book will have to be made into two movies. There would be too much material left out trying to cram it into one.

OK; enough Harry Potter news. Like I said, not much going on out here.

We were at Arcosanti last weekend for the Juneteenth Jazz Festival. There were probably half the vendors and maybe a third of the people from last year. At first, we assumed things had died off early because it was Father's Day, but when we talked to several of the residents we know, they said it had been slow the other two days as well. The bakery has been slow, the resaurant has been slow; it's the same story with everyone we talk to. Everyone is just holding their breath waiting for the next jolt.

Maybe this is it.

Dr. Robert Bussard

Burrowing through links left in the comments to this post, I found a video of a talk Dr. Bussard gave at Google. It's an hour and a half, but worth the time.

108 Inches

In case you were wondering what to spend all that stimulus money on, Sharp has a new 108-inch flat-screen for a mere $100K. Coming to the US this fall.

We would have to set the beast out in the courtyard and watch it through the window....

X Projects

Jerry Pournelle reminded his readers of an article he wrote some time ago about how to get to space. In it, he talks about the reasons for the success of the early X projects and the reasons for the failure of current so-called X projects. He also mentions in passing that the principles of a true X project can be applied to areas other than aerospace.

Robert Bussard was working on a small, scalable fusion reactor nearly 'till the day he died. He was working on version 6, which was destroyed in a test. (Read the Pournelle article and understand that this is not a failure, as was commonly reported at the time; it is part of the process.) Work has continued since his death and version 7 is up and running, funded on a shoestring budget. For very little up-front cost and risk, we could have access to a virtually unlimited supply of energy.

Instead we spend $7.5 million per hour in Iraq....

Why Government Schools Scare Me

This article is about a school board in Canada using a psychic to allege sexual abuse. That's bad enough, but this should be what truly terrifies parents:

"The schools are our eyes and ears in the community," said Mary Ballantyne, executive director of the Simcoe County chapter. "They are with children more than anyone else in the community and are the first to spot a child who may be in need of our protection."

People who take the word of a psychic are the most influential people in your children's lives.

Current Economic Picture

Short version: Not Good.

Somewhat longer version:

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.

"A very nasty period is soon to be upon us - be prepared," said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist.

A report by the bank's research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as "all the chickens come home to roost" from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.

Great; Bob is using my chicken analogy. At least the party was fun while is lasted....

Prices Jump Some More

But, of course, you knew that. Unless you've been living in a cave.

I do get a kick out of the "core inflation" concept. Inflation is calculated on a "basket of goods" that is tracked from month to month. In order to remove some of the noise in the data when looking at long-term trends across several years, food and energy are taken out, leaving the so-called core inflation. That may be a valid statistical concept when trying to track ten years of inflation, but why it has any meaning for a single month's inflation is beyond me. Who cares that core inflation, consisting of such impossible-to-live-without items as flat screen TV's and iPods, is "only" .2%? I can put off buying a new laptop or, at least in the short run, clothes. I can't put off buying food.

Mark Twain was right: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

First Cosby, Now Obama

I could learn to not loath this guy. Maybe.

Cosby he ain't, but at least he is saying what needed to be said long ago: the problems in the black "community" are caused by blacks, largely effect blacks, and need to be solved by blacks acting like adults rather than blaming everything on whites.

This Could Be Important

So of course we will pour blood and treasure into the sands of Mesopotamia rather than fund this.

Someone, somewhere will make this work. I'm betting Japan, which has no oil resources of its own to speak of. Maybe China, but they seem focused on coal at the moment, bringing one or two new power stations on line every week. But certainly not here: trillions for war; a pittance for energy independence.

It doesn't look like it will be Britain, either. It seems a math error will force the closure of several research labs. The once great British empire. Nice to know that we won't be walking the road to irrelevance alone.

Friday Post

Friday the Thirteenth is on a Friday this month.

Sorry. Had to say that quick before it was midnight.

Still slogging away at the bakery. Gradually getting more hours as I make myself increasingly indispensable. Which is good given that I am back down to only one job again. Some scary news today: new bakery opening about a block away from the one I work at in a very visible location on the main street through town. The bakery I work at is already struggling. This could get interesting.

Speaking of the bakery, we tossed all our tomatoes when the whole salmonella thing first hit the news. Our supplier isn't cleared yet, so we are doing without. Which is interesting when tomatoes are on at least half the sandwiches we serve. Ah well. I knew I didn't like raw tomatoes for a reason.

Food Prices

Great. On top of silly government policies that are driving up food prices, now nature has to lend a hand.

Perfect storm?

Some Good News?

Retail sales bumped up 1% last month. Of course, .2% of that was increases in gas prices alone. Still, even a one-month increase of .8% isn't something to casually dismiss. Or is it?

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said one possible explanation was that consumers have suddenly returned to their carefree spending ways despite weak consumer confidence readings and the credit crunch.

But he said a more likely reason was that rebate checks were giving a temporary boost to spending that would not last, resulting in weaker economic performance in coming months.

Almost everyone I work with have used their checks to pay off debt, pay back taxes, etc. We plan to blow ours on something completely frivolous (a 42" flat screen leads the pack), but we have no debt or back taxes, which puts us in a distinct minority. I suspect Mr. Shepherdson's second explanation is correct.

Free Speech, China-Style

This is China's idea of free speech. Just another reminder that they have a long, long way to go. This could be one of the more interesting Olympics in recent history.

Automated Bike Garage

You got to hand it to the Japanese; when it comes to cool toys, they really go all out. Gas will need to be way more than $4 a gallon to get enough Americans out of their cars and on bicycles to justify building one of these here. But regardless, just way cool:

Simple

Even a cow gets it. I'll start taking tree huggers seriously when they start talking sense.

Quick Work Update

Before I run off to another exciting day at the bakery, I thought I would let everyone know what my current work situation is. You know you care.

I'm pretty much done at the restaurant. I haven't worked there since May 31. I may be needed this weekend, but I doubt it. Meanwhile, the bakery business is all over the place. One day, we are flooded with people, then the next day it's completely dead. Talking to other people, it's pretty much the same all over: erratic, and much, much lower than average. It's like everyone is just holding their breath.

I know we aren't doing our part. We haven't eaten out since we came back from Europe to an empty refrigerator. We more-or-less walk everywhere, stay home on the weekends, only buy what's on sale, etc.

I predict an interesting summer.

Not Getting It. Again.

I've assumed since the Napster flap that Metallica is getting kick-backs from the RIAA. Now they are threatening bloggers for, well, blogging. About them. About their new album. Which they heard at Metallica's studios. At Metallica's invitation. Then they (gasp!) blogged about it. On the Internet! Imagine that. That would be like inviting print journalists to a press conference, then having them actually write about it. The mind just boggles at the audacity of some people.

How can any one person, or group of people, be this completely and utterly clueless?

Oh. Right. Probably the same people that think anyone knows or cares about Metallica....

Religion of Peace Revisited

As if any were needed, Kip again reminds us of why Islam is anything but the religion of peace.

It's about more than just making your women wear a giant garbage bag. Much, much more.

The Fat Lady Sings

Even three or four months ago, I would have never believed it. But it seems that Hillary has at long last admitted defeat. Obama, a black swan if there ever was one, will face off against McCain. Camille Paglia, who despises the Clinton's, has been a supporter of Obama from very early in his campaign. Her thoughts are here, and are very much worth your time.

I'm still waiting for the headline announcing that Obama has been run down by a Hillary Clinton campaign bus and Hillary has crowned herself Queen of the World. I've been predicting her as the president in 2008 since she carpet-bagged her way into the senate.

And I've never been happier to be wrong.

Well Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

The three doctors largely responsible for diagnosing 20% of the under-eighteen population as diseased and needing medication for the rest of their life, have been taking millions from the drug companies. I'm sure that's a real shocker to everyone. I'm equally sure that, like Freud before them, the results of their tainted research will be used to destroy lives long after they have been shown to be frauds.

The psychiatric industry at its best.

Sunset on Mars

Big Random Post

I haven't done one of these in a while. I figured all you skimmers out there could use the practice (staring your direction, bubby....).

I'll kick things off with a video of the first-ever crash of a B-2 Stealth. The cause was water in the sensors. I guess the rumors that B-2's can't be flown in the rain have some merit after all?

On the economic front, The Dow dropped nearly 400 points today, oil set a new record, and May had the largest increase in unemployment in 22 years. Not bad for a Friday. Markets are closed until Monday, which means either that people calm down over the weekend and we will see a market rally, or people sit and stew over the weekend and we have another Black Monday. I don't know about anyone else, but the Grey Goose sitting in the refrigerator is looking better by the minute. Today was the slowest day since I started working at the bakery, and I haven't worked at the restaurant since last Saturday. And even then, it was a waste of my time to be there; I worked less than three hours. This isn't a little blip; this is 30 years of chickens coming home to roost. Of course, Uncle George is going to send us more devalued dollars or something else stupid, which is supposed to fix everything.

Speaking of 10 kinds of stupid, I know tree huggers tend to come from the left side of the bell curve, but this has to be worthy of some sort of award for the dumbest damn thing in a long time. If the firewood (presumably driftwood or deadfalls) isn't burned, it will rot. Which releases just as much CO2 as burning it does. Which is CO2 that was taken out of the air when the tree was alive. Holy Mother of God and all Twelve Apostles, save us from ignoramuses.

Turkish courts continue to fight a loosing battle to keep Turkey from becoming the next Lebanon or Egypt. Sounds like it's about time for the military to come out of the barracks and re-establish a western-style democracy. The lefty-liberal, all-world-views-are-equally-valid EU won't allow that though, so expect Turkey to be another Islamic basket case in a decade or less.

You may die from TB, but at least it's organic and isn't made by one of the Big Evil Agribusiness Corporations. I have to laugh every time the bakery owner goes into her speech about her wonderful organic cheese made by hand at some farm in California. All that means is that you are far more likely to die from some third-world disease. But the lefty-liberals around here lap that crap up like a starving barn cat hitting a bowl of (raw, unpasteurized, TB-tainted) milk.

And just to wrap things up: Star Wars becomes reality.

Paolo Gets Some Press

Looks like after years of talking, something Paolo designed will get built in Arizona somewhere other than on his own property. I've seen a couple models of this and it should be pretty cool. Maybe now people in Arizona won't look at us like we just grew a second head and say "Soleri who? Arco what?"

The Price Starts to Bite

High gas prices are finally having some impact:

according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles in March 2008 than they did a year ago, a 4.3 percent decline that the sharpest year-on-year drop for any month since the agency began keeping records in 1942.

I am so glad we moved into Prescott and contributed to that 11 billion fewer miles. If these prices stick, I'm seriously considering a Vespa.

About Time

Hillary is finally throwing in the towel. That giant "Whew!" you heard was the DNC's sigh of relief that the national convention will not be a bloodbath.

Ya Just Gotta Click...

...when the title of the article is "Dutch Man Suffers Cut Buttocks in Joke Mishap." Who knew mooning was a hazardous occupation.

Back Among the Living

Now that all the photos from our vacation are finally on Flickr, I have been working my way back into my normal internet routine. Between the asymmetry of our cable connection, the unstableness of the Flickr Uploadr application, and the general flakiness of Windows XP, the job took much longer than it should have, but in any case it is done. So in the process of catching up, a couple things caught my eye.

The first is an article recommending that you stock up on food now as higher prices are imminent. Anyone that has been to a grocery store in the last couple months knows that prices are steadily ticking upwards, and dramatically so for certain items such as eggs. What most people do not understand is that the big, evil corporations that supply us with much of our food, have been taking most of the hit for recent increases in everything from diesel fuel to feed corn. This simply cannot continue indefinitely, meaning there is a good chance that we ain't seen nothin' yet. Of course, anyone over the age of 30 knows that a well-stocked pantry is just plain good sense. The shelf life of canned and dry goods is essentially infinite if kept away from moisture and out of direct sunlight (in other words, in a pantry), so it isn't as if you will be throwing away what you don't use immediately. But like much good sense, stocking a pantry seems to have gone the way of baking ones own bread, with the pantry in the average home today being a bad joke. I must confess that includes us as well. Ours has become home to mostly inedible stuff that we don't know what else to do with as we adapt to smaller living quarters. We will likely change that and sooner rather than later.

The second is a review by Freeman Dyson on two books concerning (you knew this was coming, right?) global warming or global climate change or whatever label it has this week. He doesn't say it, but what I took away from this article is something that Jerry Pournelle has been harping on for years: when faced with two mutually exclusive courses of action, it is better to spend money reducing uncertainty rather than arbitrarily choosing a course of action only to find out that you chose poorly after it is too late to change course, or changing course involves vast expenditures. But the "consensus" seems to rule the day, so you may want to consider moving to a warmer climate just in case the current lack of solar activity becomes a full-blown solar minimum. We are still within historical precedent and will be for about another nine months or so. But I would point out that I had a paper route during the last comparable solar minimum and walking in -40 degree temps delivering newspapers is no picnic. Keep in mind that in a contest between fire and ice, fire is more conducive to human welfare.

Well, I need to get busy on the pile on my desk.

Finally!!!

All the vacation photos are finally up on Flickr, in order, in the correct sets, tagged, described (feebly described, mostly), and in the Royal Caribbean Tour and Cruise 2008 collection. Final count: 2,112. You might want to take a potty break before you start.

Woo hoo!!

Now I can spend next week getting caught up on everything else. Right now, I going to start a movie and hope the restaurant doesn't call me to come and work. It would be nice to have today off.