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January 30, 2005

Iraqi voter turnout

It looks like Iraqi voter turnout broke through 70%, much more than the 50% government officials had been hoping for and certainly more than we beacon-of-democracy Americans have turned out in decades. So far, it looks like twenty-five Iraqis paid for this today with their lives as terrorists hit with several suicide attacks in rapid succession. By and large, the populations seemed undeterred. I found this bit particulaly telling:

The insurgent threat did not stop Samir Hassan, 32, who lost a leg in a Baghdad suicide bombing in October. "I would have crawled here if I had to," he said. "Today I am voting for peace."

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January 29, 2005

Iraqi vote

In a few hours the main Iraqi polls will open. The ballot is much longer and more complex this time than the last time Saddam held an election. In that "election", there was only a simple "yes" or "no" vote for Saddam. Voting was usually mandatory, and generally not secret.

We have here a translated version of that most recent ballot:

Enjoy your democracy, Iraqi's. Pretty soon you'll be blaming the stupid 51% just like us.

Politics /Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

Absentee voting for Iraq begins...

Iraqi's who are presently out of the country have already begun absentee voting for Sunday's election. Say what you will about the election, security, or Bush's policies, but I just had to pass on this quote from one such voter:

"I have been dreaming of this day to tell my grandchildren that in the first election in the history of Iraq I was the first woman to vote," Lamaa Jamal Talabani, 60, said in Amman.

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Friday Five: So Much Art, So Little Money

This week’s question comes from me.

Who are your five favorite visual artists? This includes painters, photographers, etc., even video stuff.

If you've ever been to my house or perused my library, you know how much of an art-junkie I am. I was impossible to really pick my favorite five, so I just chose five.

1. Howard Schatz: He is an excellent photographer. It was his book Waterdance that attracted me to him at first, but he’s done some other amazing work since.
2. Luis Royo: He is a dark fantasy artist, sometimes a little too dark, but I love his work.
3. Steven Hanks: He paints simple images of people in familiar settings, but it’s the way he captures light that sets him apart. You can look at his paintings and just feel the sunbeam falling onto your bare feet.
4. Michael Parkes: His art is both surreal and beautiful, but it was the pure chance of a WorldCon side-tour to an art gallery that brought his art to the masses.
5. Norman Rockwell: His various Americana paintings captured the emotional core of his generation, and they are a wonderful reminder of a bygone era that still shows up from time to time.

And many, many honorable mentions that would have made this the Friday Twenty-Five: Olivia, Boris Vallejo (as both artist and photographer), Frank Frazetta, Frank Cho, Keith Parkinson, Craig Morey, Patrick Demarchelier, Uwe Ommer, Joyce Tenneson, Lawrence Williams, Nene Thomas, David Cherry, Denise Gardner, Larry Elmore, J.W. Waterhouse, Maxfield Parish, Sorayama, Don Maitz, Ruth Thompson, and Michael Whelan.

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January 27, 2005

Texas Flu Shots

I just ran across a local article:

The shortage is over and everyone over the age of six is encouraged to get their flu shot. The announcement from Texas State Health Services ends months of limiting it to just senior citizens and other high-risk people. Texas becomes the 19th state to lift those restrictions.The flu season runs through May. so it's not too late to get the flu vaccine and still have it do some good.

Considering how sick I've been the last few months (but not yet with the flu), I may very well do this.

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January 23, 2005

Two-ply for Touchdown Tush

(Hat-tip to The Keeper for this one.)

Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Comic Conpiracy?

This is mostly for you folks in the Austin area who subscribe to the Austin American Statesman, but the rest of you will still appreciate the irony.

Have you noticed that the comics have been getting smaller and smaller over the years? Have you also noticed that the Sunday comics page seems to attract ads and flyers like leeches on a hemopheliac? You have noticed how the these tiny comics are getting harder to read with each millimeter lost?

Now, what are those ads for?

Eyeglasses and Lasik surgery.

I leave the conspiracy theories to the astute reader.

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FEED ME!

Getting sucked into a recommendation game, stolen from Marvin and Tanya:

Recommend to me:

1. a movie
2. a book
3. a musical artist, song, or album
4. a LiveJournal user not on my friends list (or a blogger not on my home page)
5. what I should have for dinner
6. a website
7. a quote

Then put this in your LiveJournal/blog and I'll do the same for you. Really, I'll do it. In my infinite spare time.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)

January 21, 2005

Social Security, part 1: Crisis Analysis

Much ink and electrons have been spilled of late arguing whether Social Security is solvent or is instead in a full crisis mode. On one side, you have President Bush saying that it’s facing a crisis of national proportion, and on the other you have Democrats (Ted Kennedy in the lead) saying that the program is solvent through the 2040’s or 2050’s and needs only a minor adjustment to work perpetually. Who’s right? Is this a matter of opinion, or is someone lying?

In my opinion, the “all is well” crew is lying. This isn’t a “we believe that there are WMD’s in Iraq” assertion, or even an “it depends on how you define ‘sexual relations’” evasion. No, this is the kind of clear, numerical lie that made companies like Enron and WorldCom look profitable when they were actually hemorrhaging billions of dollars. In other words, if these guys where making statements like this about a public company, they would be under indictment by now.

Now, in fairness to these Democrats, their word-for-word statements are actually true, but their conclusions are pure fantasy, and they must surely know it. So, let’s take a look at their argument before ripping it apart. The Pollyanna argument goes something like this:

Social Security is currently running a surplus and has been for decades and will continue to do so for more than another ten years. All of that money has been going into the Social Security Trust Fund, and when the program starts to run a deficit, it can tap the trillions of dollars in that trust fund, and that will take it through much of the baby boomer retirement bulge. It looks like we may run a little short towards the end depending on how well we have forecast economic growth vs. life expectancies. Even then all we need is a minor adjustment to the social security payroll tax rate to keep the program solvent through the crunch.

Like I said, all of it is factually true. The next statement is not.

No major changes will be required, so President Bush’s proposal is an overreaction.

Where is the discrepancy that takes us from factual statements to the lie? It’s all about the Social Security Trust Fund. They imply that the money is saved up, on tap, ready to go, when in reality, the trust fund is nothing more than an accounting fiction. Its assets are purely on paper, and not even on good paper. Everyone in government understands this, or at the very least, everyone in Congress does. The notion that we can tap it painlessly is pure fantasy. It is no more an asset than when WorldCom capitalized billions in expenses. When it does come time to tap it, things are going to get very messy.

As they say in all good accounting crimes, let’s follow the money. The federal government gets revenue from a multitude of sources, but for this discussion I’m going to focus on two of the largest, income tax (both personal and corporate) and the Social Security payroll tax. See the notes at the end for quibbling about some of these numbers. Income taxes vary between 10% and 39% and cover all income.[1] The payroll tax is at about 15%, and only covers the first $90,000 earned per individual.[2] Income taxes are generally progressive, costing the wealthier a higher and higher percentage of their income.[3] The payroll tax is essentially flat (with everyone paying the same percentage) except that it tapers off at both ends. The poorest wage earners get the bulk of their payroll tax back (at least their 8%) via the Earned Income Tax Credit, while the richest see this their payroll taxes cap at about $13,500 and thus drop in effective percentage as their income rises beyond $90,000. As such, the payroll tax is heaviest on the middle class.[4]

The income tax pays immediately into the “general fund”, from which the government pays for everything from aircraft carriers to ethanol subsidies. The payroll tax goes to the Social Security Administration first, and it pays out the current level of benefits to its various recipients. Currently, it has money left over afterwards, and that surplus is put into the general fund and spent on the same aircraft carriers and ethanol subsidies. In return, the general fund gives the SSA an IOU. Those IOU’s aggregate into what we call the Social Security Trust Fund. There are no real assets, just a collection of promises from one government ledger to another.

How is that a problem? After all, the government issues treasury bills to individuals when it borrows from them. Your own bank has essentially issued you a promissory note when you deposit funds into your checking account. These are all proper and legal instruments that only financial Luddites question. The key difference is that these other examples are promises between two independent parties. When the general fund borrows money from social security, it is really just a case of the government borrowing from itself. There is only one party involved, so the promise is a fantasy.

The personal equivalent of this is if I were to bring home $1000, but instead of saving it, I spent it on a totally awesome camera, and to make up for it, I wrote myself an IOU for that $1000. I would then say that I still had the $1000 because I had a promissory note for it. But what would happen when it came time for me to redeem that promise, to get that $1000 for the mortgage? Well, I don’t have they money. It’s gone. I couldn’t just hand over the camera either, because the mortgage company doesn’t want it. Instead, I would have to get that money from somewhere else, either by borrowing it or earning extra money.

That’s precisely the problem the federal government is going to find itself in starting in 2018, just thirteen years away. At that point, the social security surplus will run out, and they’re going to turn to the trust fund and start redeeming those IOU’s. Where will the government get the money? It has the same two choices as I. In this case they’re called “increasing the budget deficit” and “raising taxes”. Eventually, even the IOU’s will run out, probably in the 2040’s[5]. That’s the point at which people call Social Security “bankrupt”, but as you can see, there’s a significant problem just a decade away when those IOU’s come due.

So, what will we do in 2018? That’s not very far away. I have kids, and I’m saving for their college education which are further out than 2018. Many of us have 401K’s or IRA’s for our retirement which will come (for my generation) much past 2018. We have 30-year mortgages that go out past 2018 as well. In short, it’s quite reasonable for us to discuss today what the government should do in 2018 when those IOU’s come due.

In this realm, there are really three choices available. In addition to raising taxes or ballooning the deficit, we can cut the benefits being paid to the retirees.[6] None of these will be universally popular. In fact, none of them will be broadly popular. Hell, none of them are going to be even remotely popular, but if we do nothing now, then we’re going to be faced with that choice. Social Security is already a touchy subject. Just wait until then.

If that’s not a looming crisis, I don’t know what is.

Now, you can debate the merit of Bush’s proposal for private accounts. You could even come up with a radical alternative proposal of your own, but these Pollyanna Democrats have done neither. Their “modest adjustment” to the payroll tax is only to avoid or lessen the ultimate bankruptcy of the program, but it will do virtually nothing for the looming surge of IOU’s coming due. They claim that the situation is under control, and that, my friends, is a lie.

President Bush is the first major politician to seriously tackle this issue[7]. Others have talked about various ideas, but none have been both empowered to act and willing to discuss it. It is the third rail of American politics, and we’re seeing the sparks fly, but at least he’s facing up to the problem. Ted Kennedy can safely write this off as someone else’s problem since he won’t be in office in 2018, but junior Democrats need to wake up and join the debate because they are that someone else.

(Look for part 2 coming soon: Demographics over Dollars)

. . . . . .

(If you have any feedback on the use of these notes, let me know. I found it a convenient way to indulge my desire to dive off-topic without cluttering up the main text.)

[1] Actually the rates are lower with Bush’s tax cuts, but I’ve lost track of their current phase-in state. I’m also including long-term capital gains taxes in this for the sake of discussion since they will also fall within the range described.

[2] The $90,000 changes from time to time, creeping upwards, so it may actually be a slightly different value. Most people only see this tax as 8% since that is the portion they pay, but the employer has to pay an additional 7% as well. It really belongs to the employee because it factors into the total cost of the employee known as the “burdened” cost. I speak from personal experience that employers make salary decisions based on burdened costs, not the number on the paycheck. Employers who fail to do so are not employers for long. Increases in the employer’s portion of the payroll tax eventually come out of the employee’s pocket in the form of slower raises and deeper lay-offs. Cuts in that rate (unlikely to ever occur) would end up in the employer’s bank initially, but market forces would eventually shift it back to the employee as labor competition drove wages up. Neither adjustment direction works dollar for dollar, but the employer’s portion is fundamentally part of the employee’s compensation, just like vacation or health insurance. Just ask the self-employed who have to pay it all themselves.

[3] There are exceptions to this as you get higher and higher up the income scale. Some valuable employees or executives can take their income in increasing portions of long-term capital gains if they choose to structure it that way, thus lowering their marginal rates. The extreme rich can structure their estates to avoid as much tax as possible, though often by choosing poorer investments. A notable recent case is John and Theresa Kerry who made millions but paid only 12% in taxes, though much of that income came from tax-free municipal bonds with low yields.

[4] I have laid out the progressive/flat/regressive nature of these two taxes mostly for your own information. It doesn’t bear directly on the nature of the looming crisis, but it does impact its solutions. A “modest increase on payroll taxes” is thus a modest tax increase falling primarily on the middle class. Meanwhile, “allowing younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes into private accounts” is effectively a tax cut on the younger portions of the middle class. Note that the younger portions fall more heavily in the lower part of the income distribution since younger workers have not yet hit their peak earning years. Thus, this tax break for younger workers is slanted towards the poorer workers, though not exclusively so. I have not yet seen enough details to know what will happen when private account payroll contributions run into the EITC payroll tax refunds. In a sense, the poorest wage earners have already gotten this tax cut, but I would hope any plan would allow them to have both, even if it becomes a form of double-dipping.

[5] The exact science of knowing when that official “bankrupt” moment will come is very complicated, and there are several competing models. To do this, you have to estimate the employment rate for each of the next forty to fifty years, what the salary distribution will be like, what the cost of living adjustments will be, how many people will take early vs. late retirement, and just how long those retirees will live. Change a few parameters and you can get wildly different results. In that respect, a long boom akin to the post-WWII recovery could push out the bankruptcy by a decade, and a sluggish economy following a nuclear 9/11 could hasten that bankruptcy significantly. However, all the reputable models show at least some bankruptcy on the distant horizon, and all of them predict the end of social security surpluses in the near future.

[6] There are several ways to do this, some more palatable than others. First, you can raise the retirement age. This was already done once, but not by much. My generation is looking at age 67 for full Social Security benefits. It’s a little late to adjust the baby boomer retirement age, so this does little for the immediate problem.

Second, you can make the benefits “means-tested”, which lowers the benefits paid to the more wealthy retirees. That one is an easier sell, but the counter argument is that it may discourage individual savings.

Third, you can change the formula for the COLA. Currently it tracks wages, not costs. That means retirees will grow wealthier as the rest of society does. By these metrics, wages outstrip costs, so in theory a Social Security check buys more each year. There are some proposals to start tracking cost instead of wages. Unfortunately, the measure of cost (CPI) understates the costs of some things while overstating others and will not accurately reflect the costs facing retirees, so any move in this direction should include a significant revamping of the way we measure cost increases.

The final option is to actually cut the existing payments being made to existing retirees, i.e. take away Gramdma’s grocery money. Now, no one, and I mean no one, has been suggesting this, but this is the instant response from groups such as AARP to any adjustment on the benefits side of the equation and even some adjustments to other elements of the program. If you think I’m taking Democrats to task for their feckless position here, it’s nothing compared to the vitriol I reserve for the vile tactics of these self-serving charlatans. These guys have pursued a policy stance so bad for the country and future retirees, it would be like AAA opposing seatbelts and speed limits.

[7] I may write on Bush’s proposal on a future date, though it is not the “part 2” of this article. However, I did want to make one comment. One of the biggest criticisms of his proposal is the approximate $1 to $2 trillion “transition cost”. Basically, this is the cost of those IOU’s coming due a little earlier than expected, but the trade-off is a reduction in the ultimate number of those IOU’s coming due at all. Critics rail about the cost, but the eventual bill of the existing program will be over ten times that size. They frame the argument in terms that $2 trillion is greater than zero, but in reality, the argument is that the $2 trillion cost of doing something is less than the $15 - $25 trillion cost of doing nothing.

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High School

I just skimmed an article by Paul Graham (of Bayesian Spam Filtering fame) giving advice to high school students on finding their way: What You'll Wish You'd Known. The article looked midly interesting, but the real gem was the final footnote:

Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you're taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.

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Boromir meets Dr. Evil

Check out this scene from the Fellowship of the Ring that we didn't get to see, where Boromir channels for Dr. Evil.

Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday Five: If not for the money

This week’s question comes from Laura:

Remind me, what are the five things that make it worthwhile to get up in the morning and go to work, no matter what the weather? (Aside from getting paid, of course.)

We have to come up with five?! Maybe we can rename this the Friday Two or Friday Three for just a week.

Actually for me, it doesn’t require that much motivation to “get up in the morning and go to work” since I work from home and my commute is a weather-free stroll of about twenty steps from the bedroom. However, I still have to find the motivation to actually work once I get there rather than, say.... answer a Friday Five question. So, without further delay, here are the five non-salaried motivations that keep me from blogging all day:

1. I’m actually working on something that benefits society pretty clearly. I am on the surprisingly small and relatively elite development team that creates the leading Computer Aided Design (CAD) package. (If you’re in that game, you know just what I’m talking about.) The results of our work are all around you, especially in the USA and Western Europe. As our CEO once said, “Look at the things in the world around you. Chances are, if God didn’t make it, one of our customers did.” It’s nice knowing that I play a role in building so much, everything from the day-to-day widgets to the grand-scale civil engineering projects.
2. I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy the process of the work. Of course, that’s a far cry from saying I enjoy every project I do or enjoy every phase of those projects, but there’s a big chunk of the work I do that genuinely enjoyable. One leg of my “retirement triad” is to work on projects I enjoy, and I count that one as largely fulfilled already.
3. I love my kids, so don’t read this wrong, but sometimes it’s a great escape to be able to “go to the office” and lock that door with them on the other side of it.
4. Part of my job involves travel (visiting the main and satellite offices), and I enjoy the opportunity to get out. I traveled a lot as a kid (loooong family vacations), and this is about my only venue for much travel right now.
5. I get access to some pretty cool technical toys as well as a fair amount of NDA information from Microsoft about upcoming OS releases. I’m far from the all-knowing uber-geek of the industry, but I’m reasonably “in the know”. That’s a neat feeling.

But let's not kid ourselves here. It's all about the money.

Other Friday Fivers are struggling for motivation here.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 20, 2005

Politics: My Vacation is Over

For political blogging, I’ve been on something of a vacation since the election. Originally, it was going to be only for November, but work and family issues curtailed my December blogging. But now I’m back. In the coming weeks I’ll be writing some longer essays on particular topics, but this is going to be a bit of a political grab-bag as I catch up.

The blogosphere’s reaction to Bush’s reelection: I didn’t read all that much from the right side of the spectrum. That which I did see was a mix of self-congratulatory tripe that provided a nice, warm fuzzy feeling to those being castigated as the “dumb 51%”. I paid more attention to the left side of the spectrum (which is my normal mode anyway), and found a wide variation, but from my point of view it generally fell into four categories:

• Worthwhile introspection: These made for good reading as they offered good ideas and hope both for the future of the Democratic Party and for American politics in general. In particular, some of the questions they asked of themselves were: Is it possible that some of our cherished ideals need to be dumped into the dustbin of history? How can we emphasize the more important elements of our platform to the middle 20% of the voters instead of getting bogged down on divisive issues? How do we do a better job of energizing and capturing the youth vote? Some of the most promising began with the observation that we live in a nation not of red and blue states (a.k.a. “Jesusland” and the “U.S. of Canada”) but of purple counties, meaning that the Bush voters were not aliens in a far away land but neighbors, i.e. people we already know who don’t fall into easily insulted stereotypes. In other words, they recognized that Bush voters had actually thought about the issues and made a well-informed but different decision. These questions were of the form, “How did we fail to understand them?” In that question are the seeds of communication and cooperation, the very foundations of a democratic civil society.
• Disgust: Some leftward bloggers just threw up their hands in disgust at the turn of events. These ranged from “I weep for the nation,” to “Fuck off, Red Staters!” These guys may just need a break before they can come back to the table of rational discussion, and that’s understandable. It was a very emotional election, probably the most since 1968.
• Tantrum: That’s right, “tantrum” is the correct word to describe what some of these folks did. If you’re a parent, you should be able to recognize the behavior instantly. Jesusland? International apologies for the “dumb 51%”? Plans to make January 20 (Inauguration Day) a No Commerce Day? I can understand the underlying anger, but this is just ridiculous. I only hope that most of these folks will eventually come to and be embarrassed by their childish behavior.
• Irrational hatred: While I can understand the anger as a rational reaction to the election results, some folks have no intention of waking up from their tantrum. They have devolved into an irrational state. They are perfectly happy to merely hate George Bush and everything associated with him, and they plan on doing this for the next four years. Perhaps you could even rationalize the hatred, but my point is that they now see everything through the lens of that hatred and seem to be no longer capable of rational discourse. I don’t know how long they’ll keep it up, but their reputation pays the price for it daily.

Voting, Recounts, and Exit-Polls: By and large, the voting process went smoothly. Long lines in Ohio have gotten a lot of attention, mostly because it was the closest-to-call large state. Long lines existed elsewhere in true-blue and dead-red states, but the media would have us believe that their votes don’t matter as much. Personally, I’d like to see the long lines dealt with by having more early voting. I had to go a little further than my usual polling place to do it, but it was on the way to another errand, and I was in and out in ten minutes. Still, there were systemic limits to how well they could react to larger than expected turnout, and some thought and planning should go eliminating those limits to increase the capacity to react.

Various parties (though smartly not Kerry) pushed for and got an Ohio recount. When it was all said and done, Bush ended up with 300 fewer votes. This was heralded in headlines as “Ohio Recount Lowers Bush Margin”, but this wouldn’t have even been enough to toggle Florida in 2000, let alone the ~120,000 vote margin of Ohio 2004. Of course, the proper way to look at is not 300 out of 120,000 but 300 out of 5,623,000, or about 0.0053%, making the original count 99.9947% accurate. 100% would be better, but 99.99%+ is pretty good too. Unfortunately, some of those votes were electronic without a paper trail (see my earlier rant), so the value of the recount is questionable. Still, there were no “hanging chads” to quibble over.

But then there were the exit polls, particularly the 2pm early version of the exit polls, and how the discrepancy was a sure sign of voter fraud. My initial reaction on this was pure derision. I mean really, you’re using an estimation tool that has had notorious recent failures, and it’s predicting results wildly different than your other estimation tools (Nov 1st polling data), and when the actual results (you know, the real, we-used-actual-ballots-for-this results) differ, you question the vote tally instead of the estimation tool? I’m sorry, but that’s like a doctor using a sonogram to see that your baby will be a girl and then telling you after the delivery that the penis probably isn’t real because it differs from what the sonogram predicted. Well, then the Ukraine elections happened, where exit polls were used to help identify massive voter fraud. However, they key difference is that there were already independent signs of massive voter fraud in Ukraine, while in Ohio there were none. The recent exit poll study identified a number of probable factors for the 2pm inaccuracies, as well as showing how the raw exit poll data was adjusted at the end of the day when they got the turnout totals, etc. Their ultimate conclusion was that the exit poll discrepancy should not be seen as an indication of any kind of voter fraud in the 2004 election. So I’m back to derision, but it’s somewhat muted by the Ukraine experience.

Inauguration 2005: It looks like it’s going to be one hell of a party. Much has been made of the $40 million price tag, but in my opinion this is silly. For starters, my reading shows that all but $3 million of this is private money, and that the $3 million is for added security. Most of the money is for various parties that are also serving as fund-raisers. Much of the press has pointed out how this $40 million could have been spent on other worthy causes, from Iraqi equipment to Tsunami relief. I suspect that what’s eating at most of them is that it could have been spent on a John Kerry inauguration party instead. Oops, I’m sorry. After four years of claiming that Bush was never elected in the first place, I’m sure that such an inauguration would have been a small, quiet ceremony with no celebration at all.

The other complaint is that those donations imply access to the Bush administration over the coming years. Well, I’m fine with that. Politicians have done this for years. Remember Clinton’s coffee meetings or the Lincoln bedroom for rent? But by and large, this access has done folks precious little good when they needed it the most. Just ask Enron’s president who called the Treasury Secretary for help. He reported that accounting irregularities were going to be reported and would savage his stock in the market. He was looking for help from the administration. What did he get? What did the Treasury Secretary tell him? “Thank you for your call.” Translation: You paid for me to take your call, not to clean up your mess.

But mostly this is a celebration of democracy, regardless of the party. To paraphrase a 1980’s official from the then-Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe, “I don’t understand how you Americans can do it. Someone overthrows your government every four years, and you just let it happen.” That’s right, we just let it happen. We have the second oldest continuous government in the world, and much of that is because we have a peaceful transfer of power, marking us as a government of laws, not of men. If you have any question of how passionately we care about that, look no further than Chief Justice Rehnquist who has risen from what may soon be his death-bed to fulfill his role in it. In my book, that’s worth celebrating.

Iraq: In my final political post after the election, I made a prediction:

I expect this to make things much worse in the short term. The assaults on Fallujah and Ramadi will start within days. If Kerry had won, I would have expected the terrorists and insurgents to do their best to fade away... [snippage] But now facing a Bush victory and the inherent staying power it implies, it’s now do-or-die for these guys. They must focus on irrevocably disrupting Iraq before the January elections, and that’s going to make for a bloody winter.

Well, it has been a bloody winter, and these terrorists are primarily focused on disrupting the elections, targeting Iraqi voters as their primary enemy. It’s going to continue to get worse right through the Iraqi election, but I believe that election will take place, and a Shia majority government will form. The Sunni’s are going to get the short shrift in representation because of this election violence, but I have faith that this new government will do what is right for all Iraqi’s, not just for the Shia majority or the active Kurdish minority. At that point, these terrorists and insurgents will have failed. Some will simply fade away, but some will press on as they identify new targets for their aggression, probably the Parliament officials themselves. But either way, I expect a February lull as they regroup.

Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 17, 2005

Coolest Mom

I'm taking Sammy to school these days, and every morning is a familiar traffic jam as every other parent swings through that parking lot. The other day, though, I saw something unusual that I just have to share.

I'd already taken Sammy into class and was waiting for a gap to back out of my parking spot when I saw it. Creeping along in the next row was a white van with a commercial label on the driver's door. I can't remember it precisely, but it was something like:

In-Home Gatherings, Entertainment, Demonstrations
http://www.girlsnightoutparty.com/elika
Ask about my toy box...

In another setting, I'd have put it together immediately, but I wasn't thinking along those lines so close to a kindergarten class. By the time I realized what it was, it had already passed on, the URL a mere fleeting memory. Don't bother trying it -- it's not accurate.

Still, that kid has the coolest mom. It's not quite the Ice Cream Truck, but you've got to give it up for someone getting dropped off in the Vibrator Van.

Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 16, 2005

So cold...

It's actually freezing in Texas, so can this be far behind?

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January 14, 2005

Friday Five: And the Neutronium medal for first prize goes to...

Today's question comes from Marvin:

The Pan-Galactic Olympic Committee has drafted you to represent Earth. The rub is that we don't know anything about the games played in the galaxy-at-large, and they don't know anything about ours. Because you're a newbie you're allowed to pick the events -- five, as it happens -- in which you'll compete. You'll have to win at least three of the five in order to save Earth from being turned into a new MacSapients franchise. What do you pick and why?

And just what's wrong with MacSapients? Their Soylent Green patties are to die for!

Marvin should have known better than to ask this. By and large, the Friday 5 group is not terribly energetic unslothlike animate athletic. So, since I figure the Pan-Galactic Olympic Committee won’t know the difference, I’m going to have to make up a few events that I could win.

1. Football Watching: It’s a complex sport (watching, that is), with most points being gained for cursing appropriately, pointing out why that really wasn’t interference, and bitching about the salary-to-performance ratio of particular players. Bonuses are conferred for accurately calling the play, explaining the tuck rule, and saying something word-for-word just before the announcer does and following it up with the riposte “Hell, I could do that job!”
2. Pr0n Retrieval: No, I'm not talking about those yummy big shrimp. I’m talking about good old fashion whacking material. Scores are calculated in terms of megabytes downloaded per keystroke/mouse-action, and bonuses are awarded for finding the more unusual stuff, e.g. WS/GS/Scat, MILF, CFNM, Necro, BDSM, TS/TG, Bukkake, X-BDSM, WAM, Vore, and of course, Muppet porn. (I’d provide links, but then I’d have to admit to having them.)
3. Riding Mower Racing: It’s not just about speed. It’s about getting all the grass in the shortest path and minimizing the sweeps over already-cut grass. I figure most of these guys won’t even progress to the advanced levels with low-lying obstacles, sloped ground, and swing-sets.
4. Star Wars Trivial Pursuit: Hell, even Marvin had a tough time with me.
5. Murder Solving: Of course, to prevent the unpleasant loss of innocent life, the murders will be of the fictional variety, presented in a dramatic form. For standardization purposes, old reruns of Law & Order will be used, specifically the Logan-Briscoe/McCoy-Kincaid years. The first competitor to accurately name the killer (with proof) wins. I predict this will be a short competition. In practice events, I’ve been known to complete a round in under ten seconds.

Honorable Mention... "Name That Star Trek Episode" will be an exhibition event this year.

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January 13, 2005

Annoying chime...

I use MSN Messenger a fair amount for my work, but I'm typically logged into it not from my development system, but another one a few feet over. As a result, the little message pop-up doesn't catch my eye, and the default "New Message" sound is so innocuous that I often miss it amidst the constant chimes of spam arriving.

So I set out to create a new chime that would be so annoying as to definitely get my attention. My initial attempt was so extremely annoying that I had to tone it down some. Even now, it's pretty jarring. Give it a listen!

Anyone want to start a pool on how long before it drives me insane? And no, I won't post my IM contact to make it easier to affect the results.

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Moss mock moon merits mulct

I just missed Randy Moss' mock moon in the Vikings-Packers game this weekend, but the NFL decided it was worth a $10,000 fine.

The league didn't want to hit Moss with a major fine or suspension out of concern that such a move would simply bring more attention to an ugly incident, one that NFL execs hope just goes away.

On the one hand, $10,000 for pretending to moon someone is a lot of money. On the other hand, this kind of thing is getting out of hand, and I don't think the Green Bay fans are going to see this as anything more than a slap on the wrist. They may even look back on it the way we Cowboys fans remember Terrell Owens' little stunt on the sacred ground of the center-field star. From the point of view of this Cowboys fan, that one has not just gone away.

Personally, I think the $10K is too light. Maybe going too heavy-handed without prior warning would not have been fair either, but I think the league needs to make it clear that these kinds of hijinks are UNacceptable and will be punished severely -- think in terms of multi-game suspensions, not just dollars. (My favorite punishment for this kind of post-score incident would be for the officials to erase the score and hand the ball over.) Otherwise, I fear it's going to get worse... a lot worse.

If it does, someday a player like Owens or Moss will run into a fan like me... drunk, angry, and carrying a baseball bat with a grudge. I'm not really a violent man, but I know some Cowboys fans who would love to do some "reconstructive surgery" on Owens' knees. I'm not trying to pave their way with advanced forgiveness, but the league needs to come to grips with the same problem facing criminal law through the ages. Lax enforcement breeds vigilante justice.

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Good industry buzz generated by latest Apple products

I can't wait to see the dancing sillouette ads for this one!

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January 11, 2005

Star Trek fans with WAAAAY too much time on their hands...

I ran across Star Trek New Voyages today, where some fans seem to be creating seasons four and five of Star Trek (the original series), with new actors in place of Kirk, Spock, etc. It's strictly not-for-profit, and I guess Paramount hasn't sicked the Jem'hadar lawyers on them yet.

It looks like they've only got two episodes so far, and I went ahead and downloaded them. I skimmed one and watched the other, and... and... you know, they didn't suck all that much.

First of all, the acting is bad, though I've seen bits of Xena, Hercules, or Andromeda that aren't much better. Clearly, these aren't pro's. They're fans. However, one episode did have cameo's from two pro's, including one reprising his original role as Commodore Decker from "The Doomsday Machine".

Second, for an amateur production by fans, the sets are amazingly authentic. The attention to detail was phenomenal, especially on the bridge. All the controls and panels were spot-on matches, and I've watched enough Old Trek to know what I'm talking about.

Third... did I mention the bad acting? Oh, ah yes, well, the cinematography was a little weak as well. I mean, it wasn't all jittery or out of focus, but several scenes were shot with one camera panning that IMO should have been shot with multiple cameras/angles with cuts between characters. Also, the lighting was amateurish at times. Some shots showed harsh shadows behind characters, where a good studio lighting system would have had much better fill lights.

But finally, Gene Roddenberry would have painted himself green and donned that Orion slave outfit to have had the effects that these guys did. It's amazing what 30+ years of CGI advancement can do on a budget. For the most part, they matched the classic look of the effects, except instead of looking cheap, they looked good. My only complaint was that the animator got a little too jazzy in some of the starship movements in combat. Yes, I know it's not a model on a stick, but it's not Luke Skywalker at the helm either, ok?

Still, if you're a fan, it's worth checking out.

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Strayhorn's opening moves of 2005

A bit of state politics. Our biennial budgeting process is starting up here in Texas, and our Comptroller (a redundant state CPA) Carole Rhylandor Keeton I've-gone-through-more-men-than-a-combine-harvester Strayhorn has announced a $400 million surplus heading into the process.

To quote the news:

Texas lawmakers will have more money to work with in the legislative session that opens Tuesday in Austin. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn reports Texas will have $64.7-billion in state money for the 2006-2007 biennium. That would give the state a surplus of $400-million after paying for higher-than-anticipated costs and growth in existing programs. Governor Rick Perry says he's pleased that the state economy has performed at the level it has over the last two years. Perry described the surplus as $6-billion, but that would not have accounted for costs to continue existing levels of services. Strayhorn repeated that the state's surplus was $400-million. Perry also announced that emergency items for the legislative session will be school finance reform, along with Child Protective Services and adult protective services.

Now, those of you in Texas probably already know that Strayhorn has been butting heads with Perry for years. The rumor is that she’s setting up to run against him in the 2006 Republican primaries for governor. She’s been doing everything she can to get into the news, making proposals for everything from school finance reform to health and human services management. Mind you, the comptroller’s basic function is to make budget predictions and audit the state’s books. Even at that, I believe those roles have redundancy in other departments.

But how well has she done at that? Hmmm, I recall that in 2001, we were facing a significant shortfall, and then at the last minute, she “found” a few hundred million dollars in revenue. (In the private sector, this might be called “cooking the books”.) In 2003, we were again facing a shortfall until the legislature started making significant cuts in her budget. Again, she suddenly found money.

This year she’s taking a different tack, it would seem. She’s starting off with a small surplus. It would larger, except that she’s assumed certain spending plans in the non-existent budget. Here are my predictions. First, she’s going to weigh in on how that surplus should be spent along with other budget priorities. Second, when her suggestions and priorities are ignored or threatened, that surplus is going to shrink or disappear in an accounting correction.

Sorry to sound so cynical on this one, but I’ve watched her career for over a decade, starting when she realized that Democrats could no longer be elected in Texas and made her switch to the Republican Party. Well, she’s no Republican. She ran for two outmoded and redundant offices on the promise of eliminating them from our government – a promise she would have had no power to fulfill – and instead oversaw their growth and expansion.

Anyway, that’s just me bitching about this opportunistic career politician... sorry, this common sense grandma. Let’s just wait and see.

Mind you, I think Perry is a rotten governor, but at least he’s done next to nothing in demonstration of that fact. Strayhorn would not feel such self-restraint. However, perhaps you Democrats should root for her, because I have voted Democrat against her for many, many years. While my inclination would be to go Libertarian instead, I’d vote for just about anyone to get her out of office.

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January 10, 2005

Swag Among Sweg

For grins, I set up a shop at Cafe Press:

Swag Among Sweg

I'm really just using it for one-off's of stuff for me and my kids, but why pass up the opportunity to poison enlighten a few other minds?

It's seductively easy. I spent more time in Photoshop crafting an image than I spent creating the actual shop and physical item. I cannot yet speak to the actual quality, but I'm checking them out.

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January 07, 2005

Prince Charming's Older Brother

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Friday Five: I am not in denial on the inaccuracy of these prevarications

Rob is not really asking this question. He says he is, but in truth, we all know he isn't.

Name five things you're in denial about...go on, double dare you.

Normally I'd wait for the triple dog dare in this kind of thing, but I'll cut him some slack.

</denial>

1. The combination of work/kid stress and obesity is putting me on the fast track to a massive coronary. My genetic predisposition towards low cholesterol will only protect me for so long.
2. My technical skills are rotting with each year as I hope they'll carry me through to retirement.
3. My father is losing the will to fight his cancer.
4. My hairline is receding.
5. There were a lot more than five items for this list.

Well, that was nice and depressing. Fuck you, Rob. Fuck you very much.

<denial>

Actually, that's really an exaggeration.

1. My blood pressure, while a little high, isn't all that high.
2. I've traded up-to-the-minute fad skills for a deeper, general understanding of computing. I could switch to any field and be up to speed in a matter of months.
3. He's a tough old bastard and will soldier on far past anyone's expectations.
4. It's really just that I wear my hair back now that it's so long. I'm trying to compare it to the look of the long bangs of my youth.
5. But they were even more exaggerated than these were. I'm sure I'm not as fucked up as everyone else.

Good one, Rob.

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January 06, 2005

Goodbye Garfield!

The L.A. Times has dropped "Garfield" from its comics to make room for new, fresh talent. While some might decry this as an attack on a classic, I applaud it. In the last decade, "Garfield" has become so repetitive. Basically, it's the same four jokes over and over:

1. Garfield is fat and lazy.
2. Jon is a loser.
3. Odie is stupid.
4. Uh... did I mention Garfield is fat?

But heaven forbid we cancel it! After all, "It's Garfield!"

Blech!

(Alas, I could make the same complaint about "Cathy", "Ziggy", and "Hagar", but they don't have cats.)

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Silly quizzes

I don't know whether to be proud, insulted, or scared.

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January 05, 2005

Friday 5, The Prequel, Part II

I’m catching up on some questions I missed, including this one from me:

Some folks don't know to quit when they're ahead. As such, there have been some really bad sequels, trilogies, and series installments foisted upon a soon-to-be-disillusioned fan-base. So, which are the worst five cases of N+1 when they should have stopped at N? I'm mostly thinking of books and movies, though some other form would be acceptable. Also, is there anything you would have done to fix the sequel short of erasing it from existence?

1. Alien 3: Just scrap it all and start over. The real story of Ripley is over at the end of Aliens. She, Newt, and Hicks go back to Earth. Ripley marries Hicks, they adopt Newt, and all three live happily ever after. They went through too much in Aliens for anything else. Meanwhile, the Colonial Marines nuke every square kilometer of LV-426. Twice. It becomes an annual event with each branch of the service trying to use bigger bombs, until after seven years, the Navy detonates the local star and vaporizes what little is left. Ninety-four years later, with an entirely new cast, Newt’s granddaughter comes across a colony of these aliens, fully functioning with technology of their own. Then the war begins in earnest.
2. Honor Harrington Series: This series is a set of cement blocks chained to my legs as I plummet into the depths of crap, with neither a bottom nor an editor I sight. It started off very strong, and I suppose the merciful thing would have been to end it after book 4, Field of Dishonor. That was perhaps the strongest book and ends in tragedy, with our heroine victorious but driven into exile for doing the right thing. It could have ended there as a proper tragedy. But no, it pressed on, through some really, really bad drivel, especially in books seven, eight, and part of nine (Ashes of Victory), but at least Ashes ended very strongly with a most definitive end of a war. It could have stopped there, and a long gap between nine and ten fooled me into thinking that it had. But no, along came ten (War of Honor), and it was a major stinker, taking great pains – and I do mean pains – to lay out the material for the next five or so books.
3. Star Wars: This one is a must for any responses to this question. Empire was a worthy sequel. In fact, it kicked serious ass, making it the oft-quoted exception to the rule of sequels not living up to the originals. Jedi... well, Jedi was actually pretty good, except for the Ewoks, and to tell you the truth, I’d have been willing to accept them as the cute fuzzies they were, but in the final battle, they would have needed to turn vicious. Not just “look at my bow and arrow” vicious, but “watch us sever limbs from storm troopers” vicious. That would have been a suitable lesson about things not being what they appear.

   As for the prequels, well, my inner Lucasholic still holds out hope for Revenge of the Sith, but who’s really fooled by that? I’d have fixed the prequels by abandoning the idea that these were movies aimed at the 8-15 year old demographic. Yes, the originals were family films to a degree, but the fan base grew up. We’re adults now, and the story of Anakin’s rise and fall really is an adult story. Just go R to begin with. Show the last days of the Republic in all its glory and corruption, with all the petty murders and bloody schemes in graphic detail. Show Palpatine’s rise to power with his followers not as fools but as patriots who see the Empire as the solution. Show Anakin’s affair and marriage to Amidala with all the lust and despair it should have had. And finally, show Anakin making a conscious choice to turn to the Dark Side because he believes it is necessary to preserve the things he cares for. Make him a true tragic figure.

4. Foundations Edge (the 4th book in the Foundation Trilogy): They say the worst book in a trilogy is the fourth, but in fairness, the first three weren’t really a trilogy. They were a collection of short stories and novellas. Still, they worked well as a trilogy. The first showed the establishment of the Foundation itself. The second showed it responding to outside forces, included that most tragic figure, the Mule. And the third came to grips with Hari Seldon’s true legacy: the Second Foundation. While it didn’t take us through the full thousand year arc of the Foundations’ rise to power, it covered all the ideological bases.

   But an editor (curse her!) convinced Asimov to start it up again, and he totally botched it. In moving forward, Asimov committed two great sins. First, he didn’t tell the same kind of story that the earlier tales had told, visions of sweeping history from the point of view of the man on the spot. Second, in moving forward, he changed what had come before. Now, it’s one thing when an author later reveals some new fact that changes our perception of what came before, but to do that right, he has to have planned it. The roots needed to be there from the beginning. The real test for that kind of trick is when the later facts are revealed, your reaction is “Yes, now I understand!” If it fails, as it did for Asimov, your reaction is, “No, that’s not what happened.” He started by stripping the Mule of his status as a wonderful tragic character and turning him into a common criminal. In his misguided drive to tie all his books together, he converted dozens of strong characters, including Seldon himself, into nothing more than pawns of a robot that should have broken down millennia before.

   In my opinion, very little can be done to save it apart from bitch-slapping that eager editor retroactively.

5. Highlander: Highlander was a great cult classic. The story was good, and it wrapped everything up nice and neat. All the major characters were dead except one (discounting the girl), and the remaining hero had undergone a significant transformation into Something Else. That very transformation effectively changed the rules of the world we had come to live in, and the very promise of that new world acted as a satisfying denouement. We had seen the main character from his very beginning, so there was no need for a prequel, and we had seen where he was going, so there was no need for a sequel. And since we’d seen all the truly important characters, there was no need to even tell the tales of any parallel or supporting characters.

   Fortunately, no one ever tried to make a prequel or sequel or even a spin-off series of this film. No. No. They didn’t. Just stop—No, just stop talking. They never did. You’re hallucinating. Yes, I’ve seen the boxes at the video store. Yes, I’ve seen the listing in TV Guide. We’ve all been hallucinating. LSD in the water. That’s what it is. But no, no one ever, EVER tried to make anything like that. Highlander stands alone as single movie.

   That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

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January 04, 2005

Where’s My Kung Fu Grip?

MAW and I were taking the twins into the doctor’s office for a checkup this morning, and they were playing with a few toys in the backseat. Eventually, Catherine tossed one down between the seat and the door, making a clattering noise as it went.

“What was that?” I asked.

“The plastic car,” MAW replied.

A little while later I heard another noise. “Another car?”

“No,” she replied, “that was the action figure.”

Action figure... the phrase alone brings back vivid childhood memories of G.I. Joes lounging around camp with their equipment arrayed neatly around them. Mind you, these were the original 12-inch G.I. Joes with genuine fuzz for hair and beards, not the cheap, little, die-cast plastic ones that came later with hard heads. No, these had been the real thing, and we had it all: the tower camp, the helicopter (with moving blades!), the 6-wheel amphibious vehicle, and my pride and joy, the tank. And of course, the later versions of these Joes could actually hold and operate all the equipment thanks to their Amazing Kung Fu Grip! Now, those were real action figures, not the little hard plastic doll Catherine had so justly dismissed.

We had one G.I. Joe that we had custom modified, shaving off the bulk of his beard, leaving him only with a super-cool mustache. We called him The General, and did our best to make his outfits appear much dressier like an officer’s. He had been an older model, so we had gone out and bought a Kung Fu Grip model just to steal the hands and graft them onto The General. The Joe donor accepted the stiff hands and was thereafter known as Private Tom and was the subject of every cruelty we could imagine, from testing the homemade parachutes to acting as a target for well... let’s just say “friendly fire” and leave it that.

But The General went onto great glory. We even customized his hands by carefully slicing through the rubber with an exacto-knife to make the fingers individually posable. He could grip that capture German Lugar with ease, handle a grenade, even cup a makeshift wineglass elegantly. He was the absolutely coolest, and all because of the Kung Fu Grip.

I opened my mouth to tell my wife just that. “It’s not a real action figure unless it has Kung Fu Grip,” I was going to say, and yes, Kung Fu Grip was going to be capitalized.

But then, suddenly, it hit me. There was nothing Kung Fu about that Grip at all. It was just a piece of rubber cast into a half-closed fist. I mean, there was nothing about it that cried out “martial arts”. It wasn’t even particularly oriental. And just where in the long Shaolin history is there some amazing grip anyway?

It was just a hunk of rubber. Sorry, General.

I looked over at MAW. “I’ve been had.”

She shot me a quizzical look, and I did my best to explain it, how cool it had been, capital letters and all, and now... it’s all gone, sold off at a garage sale, even the memory now tainted as a cheap marketing trick.

At the stop light, she chuckled. “You sound like a blog entry.”

I just want my Kung Fu Grip back!

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January 03, 2005

Friday Five: A Texas Industrialist in Hammurabi’s Court

This week’s question comes from Adam:

Because we never get tired of Time Travel questions, I'm wondering - assuming you know you're going back in time for an indefinite period (possibly life), and can haul with you a couple hundred pounds of supplies, what period (pre-19th Century, just to make it interesting) would you go to if you hoped to build the local technology and set yourself up as a Connecticut Yankee, so to speak?

My, oh, my... how do I answer this one in less than 50,000 words?

This is one of my favorite thought experiments. It’s something to think about while drifting off to sleep or on a long drive, though preferably not both at the same time. The real enjoyment in digging deep into something like this is how it makes you really think about the important developments in our history, and just how they really work. What’s the difference between a musket and a rifle? Just how is modern fertilizer really produced? What is the secret of steel, and why is that so important? If you had to design a steam engine from scratch, could you? I’ve learned so much about the modern world around me by trying to figure out how to reproduce its simpler elements in pre-industrial days.

Of course, there are those who would see such a project as ruining humanity’s more “natural state”. I’m not in that camp. Look at the world around us. This is man’s natural state. We are a species that builds. If we were transplanted to Eden and had our memories erased, we would just start again. All we’re looking at here is speeding things up.

In all but one, I’ve focused on finding a setting ready and waiting for me. My thinking on this has generally been that my best bet would be to gain a high powered patron since the rapid establishment of industry typically requires significant financial and/or human capital. However, this is not an absolute requirement. I could still make a significant difference without the sponsor, but it would be like the difference between the atomic programs of WWII America and Germany. It was an American priority, but in Germany it was always something of an orphaned project. I’d rather my work be a priority.

1. 30,000 BC, Tigris Valley: If I understand my pre-history correctly, by this point homo sapiens were already in true form and functioning in loose collections of hunter-gatherer tribes. Here I would have no real patron except hopefully the support of one or two tribal chieftains.

   Main technologies/industries: By introducing the bow, metallurgy, agriculture, and the domestication of animals, I would oversee a huge population boom as infant mortality rates from malnutrition plummeted. From there, I could see the founding of the first cities. With luck, I’d be able to get them on the right track on government, writing, medicine, sanitation, and the scientific method. Basically, I’d get to lay out the foundations of what we call civilization, and hopefully I’d get to skip most of the trial and error that we spent millennia on. Oh yeah, and the wheel, upon which virtually all machines are based.

   Risks: My biggest worry here would be falling in with the wrong tribe (“Hmmm, the visitor looks fleshy – we shall eat well tonight!”) or being mauled/stampeded/eaten by some random ice age furry thing.

   Goal: To shave twenty to twenty-five thousand years off of our civilization’s development, thereby decreasing the likelihood of some random asteroid whacking us before we develop the means to avoid it.




2. 245 BC, Qin Kingdom of China: This would have been under the rule of Qin Shi Huang, the first true emperor of China since he united/conquered the surrounding kingdoms to create the China we know. I have some misgivings about doing this one since by many accounts he is considered a ruthless, bloodthirsty villain. (This is the Emperor in “Hero” and “The Emperor and the Assassin”.) However, he did have tremendous power concentrated in his hands, both in terms of manpower and in shaping the intellectual future of China. While many of his goals were undone by the Confucians in the years that followed, he still made lasting impressions in the culture and language.

   Main technologies/industries: Metallurgy, the water wheel (for cheap mechanical power), gunpowder, and the printing press. On that last one, one of Huang’s big goals was to simplify the written language. While there was certainly some wonderful cultural heritage lost in that act, it significantly improved the flow of information across geography and time. He might have needed to simplify it even more to accommodate a printing press, but I suspect he’d have gone wild on the idea of mass-producing the written word.

   Risks: Like I said, he was said to be pretty ruthless and perhaps more than a little irrational. It would be easy to say the wrong thing, bow the wrong way, etc. and cause a fatal offense.

   Goal: China (as a nation, not a government) is the oldest nation on the planet, I think. There’s a certain continuity that allows ideas to survive and flourish, and that would be a good place to accelerate technology. Also, some of the technologies would be with an eye towards putting power into the hands of the people (water wheel, gunpowder, printing), and that would help mitigate some of the autocratic ways of the historical Chinese governments.




3. 140 BC, Rome: This would have been in the final years of the Roman Republic, prior to its conversion to an Empire under Julius and Augustus. There was a lot of civil turmoil amongst the political class, and some slave rebellions were already underway, though the bloodiest of these was still 30 years away. I’m not sure at present who I would want for my patron, but Tiberius Gracchus is a strong candidate.

   Main technologies/industries: Metallurgy (specifically the Bessemer steel process), the steam engine, the railroad, mass production manufacturing, gunpowder, better sailing ships, fertilizer techniques, crop rotation, refrigeration, farming machinery, the printing press, etc. In short, I’d give them everything they needed for both guns and butter.

   Risks: It was a volatile time, politically. My notional patron Gracchus was killed for his efforts in agrarian-land and veteran-benefits reform. Rome as a Republic was starting to falter, heading into a century of civil wars that eventually led to the Emperors.

   Goals: Even as an Empire, Rome spread the ideals of civilization throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. However, at its heart was an extreme slavery culture of haves and have-nots that makes America’s wealth distribution look like a communist utopia. The pity is that the fundamental ingredients for industrialization were all present in the waning days of the Republic: a functioning civil society, access to raw materials, an available labor pool, etc. Mostly what was missing was idea of what to do with it. Under the right stewardship, they could have transformed from an agrarian slave economy to an industrial worker economy. In such a demographic shift, the political pressure would have been more towards civil liberties and representation rather than civil violence and dictatorship. With a few eighteenth century political ideas mixed in, they might come out of the turmoil with a balanced constitutional government.

   Rome, the New Republic, might have still gone on to conquer “the known world”, but they would have been in a much better cultural position to integrate the new populations as citizens instead of slaves.




4. 1150 AD, England: This would have been under the rule of Henry II, the first Plantagenet. If you’ve ever seen “The Lion in Winter”, that’s the Henry I’m talking about. He ruled over England and a good chunk of France and was able to consolidate his hold on those territories over the decades of his reign. However, conflict over which of his sons would succeed him on the throne eventually led to his demise. I’ve thought about this one extensively, but I’ll limit my details for space and time.

   Main technologies/industries: Lots of repeats from the Roman entry. Sailing technology would be a critical one both due to England’s island status and the possibility of using the Americas as a source of resources and colonial lands. Add in some elementary radio (spark-gap) communications, and possibly even lighter-than-air travel – though I’m still working out if I can get enough lift from a hot-air dirigible to carry the necessary steam engine and its coal and water supply. Also, I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to bring conveniences from modern cities into medieval ones, e.g. indoor plumbing, the Franklin stove for efficient heating, insulated single-family homes for modest incomes, etc. Basically, how could I build a modern city with low-but-accelerating technology? A lot of popular support for various reforms could be gained by providing such improvements in quality of life. I’d also be trying to introduce such concepts as a volunteer, trained, professional army, representational democracy, and the scientific method.

   Risks: This is probably one of the safer bets I could make. Henry was a pretty pragmatic man. His only real weaknesses seemed to be the various women in his life and trouble raising his sons. He is the earliest historical patron with whom I think I could trust my secret of being from the future. After proving my value and getting into his good graces, I suspect he would accept it and draw upon it as an appropriate resource. My biggest risk here is running afoul of the Catholic Church for heresy. Economic reforms would require a banking system which would only work on loans-for-interest, which were outlawed by the Church, and my strange notions on the scientific method would earn me all the wrath of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler all rolled into one. However, Henry already had his own conflicts with the Church and showed himself to be fairly independent. Plus, he was a long way from Rome.

   Goals: In many ways, Henry’s rule was the proper beginning to English heritage. English civil society and its relation to the church were undergoing some changes, and the Magna Carta was just a generation away. The seeds of common law were in place. Henry already made a significant impact on the history of our English (and thus American) culture because he had the force of personality to make things happen. Give him the additional economic and military power of the nineteenth century, and he could have done quite a bit more.

   However, his Achilles’ heel was that he was unable to find a satisfactory way to preserve and pass on his kingdom to the next generation. Partly this was due to conflicting successors, but it also seems to be that he didn’t really like or trust his adult sons. I would like to think it would have been possible to transition to a constitutional monarchy during his lifetime, and such a government would have ridden out the turmoil of ensuing centuries much more smoothly. The problems of a weak king or conflicted succession are essentially removed from the equation that way. Finally, with appropriate forethought, the various colonies could be pre-wired with the conditions for legal and peaceful independence, fast-forwarding colonial relations right past the American Revolution and into the solid Anglo-American alliance seen since World War II.




5. 1770 AD, Philadelphia: Hey, if nothing else, it would be worth it to hang with my main man Ben. I refer, of course, to the original eighteenth century party animal, Benjamin Franklin. Plus, he would make an excellent patron. He had money, a keen intellect, and an appreciation for both technological and social progress.

   Main technologies/industries: They sky is the limit, almost literally. I think I could take us through 1920’s technology by the 1820’s. There were abundant natural resources, an eager labor supply, and by 1790, a very encouraging governmental system. The main detail here is that I would start heavily – but extremely quietly – with the mass production of rifles with interchangeable parts and fairly modern shell-cartridge ammunition. That would mean gun cotton or cordite rather than gun powder, but it would also let me toss in such tricks as rifled explosive artillery and mortars. With those weapons and a more modern combat doctrine, the American Revolution would have been over by 1777 with the Monroe Doctrine going into effect by 1778 by a different name. Afterwards, of course, it would be about starting the industrial revolution fifty to sixty years early with much better ideas on how to do it right.

   Risks: There would be minimal risks here, though there would be that whole war thing hanging over me. If my little factories were discovered prematurely, the British Crown might not look upon me too kindly.

   Goals: While I’d like to claim high ideals for this one, it’s mostly about ego, i.e. doing things better and faster and being on the scene at times of historic import. However, I would like to think that the early start of the industrial revolution and the subsequent mechanization of agriculture would have made slave labor in the southern states less cost effective. It might have led to the gradual end to American slavery through economic obsolescence rather than through the bloody Civil War that eventually came. If it did still come to Civil War, the rapidly industrializing northern states would have crushed any southern rebellion much earlier in the timeline.

• Honorable mention I, 1938, Washington, D.C.: This one must be excluded from the official list since the question gave a cut-off date of 1800. However, I wanted to talk about it briefly since I’ve given it so much thought in my personal thought experiments. This was a period when several technological revolutions were on the cusp but not quite there, and as we all know, world-scale war was about to boil over.

  Main technologies/industries: Atomic power and weaponry, computers, plus just a huge information dump on what worked and what didn’t. In my thought experiments on this, I would gain the American military as my patron by accurately predicting the September 1939 German-Soviet pact and subsequent invasion of Poland. My anticipatory letter would end with, “While you will understandably think I am crazy, please tuck this letter away someplace safe so that after my prediction comes true, you can call me in for a full debriefing.” Thus, I could tell them everything I know about the coming years of the war, of technology, of social developments, etc. I’ve been toying with this experiment for a few years, and it’s led me to beef up my knowledge in this area making me something of a history buff, not just on the military but on 1940’s technology development. I would hope that in addition to the mega-debriefing, I would be allowed to found a company to build the first computers, beating ENIAC by 2-3 years and producing a much better machine.

  Risks: The main risks here are IMO: being ignored, ending up in the loony bin, and most worrisome... being captured by foreign agents. Knowing what I know, I would be the most dangerous man in the world.

  Goals: This one is more about ego than anything else, though a 1943 atomic bomb (instead of a 1945 one) would save a lot of lives both in battle and in concentration camps. It would also leave Russia in its most depleted military state rather than the overpowering Red Army of 1945, but that would be icing on the cake IMO.

  Now, on this particular atomic question, some might claim that I am being immoral by offering to accelerate the development. Instead, perhaps I should feel obligated to try to stop the development by pointing out accurately that the fear of the German bomb was unrealistic since Germany’s bomb program never got off the ground. It could be argued that this would save the world from decades of Cold War and nuclear brinkmanship.

  However, I feel that sooner or later (perhaps not by 2004, but eventually), someone would create the atomic bomb. In our age of technological advancement, the possible is often the inevitable. Whoever developed the bomb first would have access to an irresistible weapon, and if they chose to, they could easily conquer the world in a nuclear blitzkrieg that would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like demonstration tests. Now, you could say that most nations would eschew such an opportunity, but the truth of the matter is that only one nation can truly say that: America. As much as you might call Americans a bloodthirsty and warlike people, that generation of Americans held the key to global conquest, and they turned it aside to pursue peaceful objectives instead. Thus, I know I could trust America to be the first nation with atomic weapons. Anyone else... why risk it?

  Onto more peaceful goals, I would love to be the granddaddy of computing. That’s pure ego. Plus, looking at the early design decisions of ENIAC, I’m just screaming with “No, don’t use decimal!” and “Control execution via a program stored in cheap toggle or relay memory!” I understand the early history well enough that I could advance computing by a decade, easily. Plus, it would put me in a good position to thwart many of my own computing pet peeves. Year 2000 problem? Not anymore. Scratched CD’s/DVD’s? Not when they’re enclosed in sleeves like 3.5-inch floppies. EBDIC? No, ASCII from the get-go. Left-handed graphics coordinates? Never created in the first place. Pascal as the preferred teaching language? Not on my watch. You get the idea.

  Additionally, I would be in a position to become fabulously wealthy, and it wouldn’t even be from knowing how to build a bomb or a computer. Paraphrasing Terry Pratchett in “Johnny and the Bomb”, it’s not really about knowing how to make something. It’s about just knowing what was going to work. It’s about knowing how much people like McDonald’s hamburgers, or VCR’s, or Sony Walkman’s, or internet shopping, etc. Once you have the money, it’s easy to do this kind of thing.

  Of course, there would be some more humanitarian goals. I’d be able to recognize GRIDS as AIDS and pile lots of private money into the research to catch in a pre-epidemic stage. I’d know the benefits of early cancer detection and promote mammograms and similar tests. I’d be able to advise FDR and Truman on the kind of adjustments needed to adapt Social Security to an increasing life span. Man would land on the moon in 1962 without the fire of Apollo I. Tax policy would reflect the economic successes of the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts. My companies would be integrated on racial, gender, and sexuality lines from the very beginning, and I would publicly attribute much of my success to such forward-thinking policies.

  But most importantly, Star Wars would be shot in 1969 under my direction, and Han Solo would always and forever after shoot first!




• Honorable mention II, 1250 BC, Greece: This isn’t one I’ve thought about so much, largely because someone else already did a pretty good job of it. Check out S. M. Stirling’s trilogy of “Island in the Sea of Time”, “Against the Tide of Years”, and “On the Oceans of Eternity”. It doesn’t quite fit the limitations of this week’s question, but it carries some of the spirit. The premise is that the modern day island of Nantucket is transported back to its spot off the American coast in 1250. Over the trilogy, this leads through technological revolutions and epic wars from the not-yet-British Isles through Babylon. If you liked this week’s question, you should like these books.




• Honorable mention III, Present Day, America: I include this one because it’s another thought experiment I run with occasionally, though I’ve explored it so thoroughly I don’t play with it much anymore. Since I don’t have personal knowledge of future technology to play with, I substitute the supposed future knowledge with a limited form of omniscience. It’s not the “I am the All Seeing God of All Things” omniscience, but more of an on-demand omniscience where anything you consciously want to know will be known immediately.

  Mostly this would take the form of knowing the solutions to any technical problems, but it would also allow you to know any secrets, even a smattering of the future by balancing probabilities vs. the butterfly effect. Here you don’t really need a specific sponsor since the capital markets will provide you with all the resources you need. (Plus, secret knowledge would let you do fun things like raid the offshore bank accounts of all the crime organizations worldwide with impunity, or for the more patriotic minded, you could turn the FBI’s Most Wanted list into a profitable morning’s email, chock full of current locations, operational details, etc.)

  Now, just focusing on the technical problems alone would make this an interesting scenario for today’s question. What problems in the world around us do you think could be solved by some new technology? What would it be? What would be the other ramifications of it? If you could promise us cheap, portable energy, what would that do to the world’s oil-based economies? How would you suggest we navigate the political shakeout of such an invention? If you developed a launch vehicle that dropped the cost of orbit to pennies per kilogram, just what would you do with it – not in 2250 with a robust space economy, but today? If you could boost data storage and computation power by a factor of a million in one year, what applications would you propose for such a system? If you could find cheap pharmacological cures for AIDS, cancer, heart disease, etc., in what priority would you implement them, and how would you see to their distribution?

  This particular thought experiment provides a near-infinite list of what-if scenarios to ponder, but to me they often come down to an interesting dichotomy. Some people see new technology as purely a good thing. Others see it as largely a bad thing. I see it as neutral, and that it is how we choose to use that technology that leads us towards either a utopian or dystopian future. The choice is not stark or clearly labeled, but ultimately it is ours to make.

Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 01, 2005

Christmas/New Year's/Tommy Wrapup

Just a little wrap-up of little things over the course of the week.

Christmas:

• I received opposing Star Wars gifts: a copy of the Star Wars Bastardization Special Edition DVD's and a "Han Shot First" t-shirt.
• We're still opening the kids' presents. Everyone wants to buy presents for little kids, and with three, the loot adds up. We opened about half on Christmas morning, but the kids became overwhelmed by all the new stuff. The rest are being opened at a manageable pace.
• A big winner was a harmonica in Sammy's stocking. He hasn't figured out how to use it yet, but he keeps giving it to me to play it. That part is great, because I'm having so much fun with it, I wish I'd gotten one in my stocking. The downside is that he's also shoving every other toy at my mouth in the hopes that I can cause it to make wonderful noises.
• With one thing and another, I'd put off my Christmas shopping until almost the last minute, so I ran out to hit several stores on December 23rd. The crowds and traffic were about as bad as I expected, but I still did pretty well. The really annoying part came halfway through when a purchase at Linen's and Things triggered a call to the credit card authorization center. No, I hadn't hit my credit limit or anything. Rather, their computer had flagged my card for suspicous activity, i.e. last-minute Christmas shopping. :P
• Of course, the best part of it all was that I had my family home for Christmas. In that respect, the best present came early when I got to tuck Tommy into his own bed on the 22nd.

New Year's:

• MAW is going to watch UT in the Rose Bowl this afternoon, so I'm going to have to be Mr. Mom and do my best to keep the kids from interfering with that. In return, MAW gave me the morning to piddle away in my office without kids. Thus the surge of entries. I just hope I can convince them all to do something calm and quiet after their naps. Yes, I know. I'm doomed.
• Seriously discussing the whole New Year Resolutions thing for a moment, I've taken a page from the annual performance review at work and dealt with the Resolutions in a useful way. For the last few years, I've made my resolutions not as the typical "I need to change my entire life" cry for help that lasts two weeks but more of a "these are my performance goals for the coming year" approach. I make sure they're specific and measureable, and I keep tabs on them over the course of the year. I was running in the low 40% ratings for a few years, but for the last two years I've broken through the 50% barrier. This year I hope to break through 60%.
• For the first time in several years, I did not get an Olivia calendar this year. Lately, Olivia (or at least her calendars) has been on a Betty Page fixation. It's not that the pieces aren't well done, but I never found Betty Page to be that sexy, at least not for twelve months a year. I've decided to let Janesko fill the cheesecake slot in my calendar rotation this year.

Tommy:

• Tommy continues to improve. We had one bit of projectile vomiting on Monday, but only the occasional bits of spit-up since then. Even that's been cutting back. More impressive is that he appears to be much more energetic now and is now exploring more.
• We got a scale on Tuesday, and we're taking twice-daily measurements. Kudos to Special Addition Maternity for opening half an hour early to rent it to me.
• Since we now control both the schedule of his feedings and the timing of when the weight is taken, we've been able to damp out a lot of the measurement noise that we were getting at the hospital. They were taking one measurement a day with no correlation to his intake or diaper schedule, and even then they weren't always sure he was being weighed on the same scale. At home, we're weighing him just after waking up (pre-breakfast, post-overnight diaper) and just before bed (post-meal). That gives us a low weight and a high weight, and we're using the average as his weight of the day. With enough data, we'll be able to toss in some moving averages and trend-lines for the weight gain. The goal is for him to gain 30g a day, and at that rate, he'll be a black hole by his birthday. Er... make that 30 grams a day, not 30g. Anyway, so far, so good, but we don't have a long enough history to say for sure.
• We still don't have much of a diagnosis for what caused the problem in the first place, only a mild to moderate case of reflux. He's taking Prevacid for that, and it seems to be helping. Kudos to the compounding pharmacist at Quick Pharmacy in Round Rock who bumped me to the head of the list in order for Tommy to get his medicine on schedule. A tip to the rest of you: if you've been given some medicine in a hospital and also a prescription to continue it after you leave, get the hospital to fill the prescription. You never know when they've prescribed something so rare or unusual that only three or four pharmacists in the city can fill it.

And that's it. Enjoy whatever break you got.

Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)

New Year's Resolutions... Planning for Success

The key to success in New Year's resolutions is to target your goals carefully. Thus, I present my 2005 New Year's Resolutions:

1. Watch more Reality TV.
2. Read less, especially books.
3. Gain fifteen pounds.
4. Download at least ten gigabytes of bad porn.
5. Infuriate friends. Lose at least two.
6. Triple the number of alcoholic blackouts -- bonus points for ER visits.
7. Raise my blood pressure 20 points and my cholesterol by 50.
8. Try to forget family's birthdays -- not just overlook them but actually forget the dates.
9. Increase debt.
10. Use more sarcasm to increase clarity.

Good luck on your resolutions!

Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy New Year!

Looks like somebody celebrated a bit too much last night.

Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)