The Date Man

My 3D Experience

2011-07-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

The first (and so far only) movie that I've seen in 3D is Avatar. Watching it, I fell in love with 3D. I found it incredibly immersive. I didn't suffer from any kind of dizziness, headache, etc. that some people report. All in all, I would have to say that I was an instant convert. I knew I wanted to watch a lot more movies in 3D, and I knew I wanted 3D at home. I'm not interested in 3D being the focus of the movie, but 3D really changed how I saw the movie. Instead of watching from outside, I was actually stainding in the movie.

Now, I haven't been rushing to see any other 3D movies... I go see very few movies in the theater, and the quality of 3D has been poor in most movies according to the reviews, so I'm still waiting to see 3D really take off... but I'm still a huge fan of it.

On a separate note, in the past few months, I've finally made the decision that I'd like to get off cable TV, and one route to that is the new internet-ready TVs. Though not the only option, that's the route I'm interested in going, so I've been doing a lot of pre-purchase research to figure out what I'm looking for. Although there's not a lot of 3D content out there that I'm interested in at this point, there are starting to be a small handful of movies (primarily animate) that I have seen and enjoyed in 3D, and which have gotten good reviews for their 3D. Also, I can't see buying a non-3D HDTV now and then replacing it in only a couple of years. So I decided to purchase a 3D TV in the expectation of starting a slow transition to 3D.

So, about 2 months ago, I started doing serious research into the TV options. My first stop was Consumer Reports. Based on them, it seemed to me that there were really four main names in 3D: Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and LG.

I never considered Panasonic (for reasons I'll discuss below), and initially I was ignoring LG (primarily due to a lack of familiarity with the brand). Between Samsung and Sony, I was initially leaning towards Samsung, though over time that leaning switched to Sony.

At some point in the process, I saw an advertisement for LG talking about it's passive display. I'm not going to go into a discussion of the difference between the two (check out any tutorial about 3D for a description). I'd read about active vs. passive early on in my research, but I must have been reading an older description, because it said that there was no passive display available at a reasonable price point. So when I found out that LG had a passive display, it immediately joined the list of brands to consider, and after a bit of research, I'd pretty much decided that it was between Sony and LG.

A trip to Best Buy (who carried both) helped to solidify things. It's true that the active display may have been a bit sharper, but the LG was certainly 'good enough', so I was pretty much sold on the LG.

At that point, based only on technical issues, I'd pretty much decided on an LG, but it wasn't a decision that I was emotionally vested in. Other techical issues might have come along to shift that another direction, and I certainly didn't have any major complaints about Samsung or Sony... I just felt that LG was a little better fit for me. It was simply the one that had the most X's in the plus column and the fewest in the minus column.

All that changed a few days ago. The choice to buy an LG is no longer simply a logic-based decision subject to change if other technical issues arrive. It is now set in stone, and Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony are no longer options for me, not just in the 3D TV market, but in ANY consumer electronics purchase for the forseeable future.

The change occurred when I decided to pick a movie to buy along with the TV. I mean... I can't buy a 3D TV and have NOTHING 3D to play on it. It didn't have to be my favorite movie of all time, but I did want to buy at least one movie that I'd seen and enjoyed in 2D. So, I went to Amazon to see what was available, and that's when I learned that a practice that I had only peripherally been aware of was extremely pervasive. It has to do with the reason I initially excluded Panasonic.

When I started shopping, the ONE movie that I knew I absolutely wanted was Avatar. I also knew that Panasonic had an exclusive lock on that movie until 2012. If you didn't buy a Panasonic, you couldn't buy Avatar. That type of business decision may not be illegal... but it is absolutely unacceptable. I refuse to support that behavior. As a result, from the very start, I eliminated Panasonic as a possible brand to purchase.

When I went to Amazon to see what movies were available, the selection was very limited... basically, all of my top choices were absent, so I started doing some research. The following link showed me exactly what was going on: List of Blue Ray 3D releases. The movies I would potentially enjoy on 3D include the following:

Avatar: exclusive to Panasonic until 2012
How to Train Your Dragon: exclusive to Samsung, no general release date set
Monsters vs. Aliens: exclusive to Samsung, no general release date set
Shrek series: exclusive to Samsung, no general release date set
Megamind: exclusive to Samsung, no general release date set
Tangled: generally available

Although I'm not interested in the movies, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony all have exclusive access to some of the movies.

The very companies that should be pushing the 3D industry have made it absolutely impossible to purchase all of the movies that I want.

I've already written to Panasonic and Samsung (still trying to figure out the best way to contact Sony) to let them know that I will NOT be purchasing one of their TVs... but after additional thought it comes to this:

I will not purchase a single item from Panasonic, Samsung, or Sony for the forseeable future. I will only change that attitude after they stop this practice (and probably not for a year or two after that).

I will encourage anyone who asks my advice to not purchase from those three brands.

In the interest of fairness, LG does have ONE exclusive deal... on a documentary named 'Under the Sea'. I'm a bit baffled by that. A documentary is not going to be a sales-driving title. If that were the goal, LG would have formed an exclusive deal with some other film, so I'm not sure of the purpose of this deal. However, since this deal will have no impact on the 3D industry, I'm willing to overlook it.

As another sidenote, Disney (a company that I normally dislike very much because of their use of the 'Vault' as a tactic to force people to buy their movies, and the role they've played in constantly extending the duration of copyrights long beyond when they should be) is one of the 'good guys' in this battle. All of their 3D movies are generally available.

A bet with my wife

2010-11-03T07:24:00.001-07:00

So, the elections are over, and the republicans got some
significant victories. I'm sure that we'll here all about
the mandate that the people have given to the republican
party. People are now looking to the republican party to save
them from the democrats. I'm amazed at how short people's
memories are... it was just two years ago that people looked to
Obama to save them from the republicans.

This election (more than any previous one) has been a point of
disagreement between me and my wife. For this election, I
automatically rejected all democrat and republican candidates. In
races where only those two parties were represented, I cast no
vote. In races where one or more independents ran, I chose
between them.

My wife was upset that I wasn't even interested in learning about
the republican and democrat candidates in order to make a fully
informed decision between all of the candidates.

I agree with her to a point. I cannot make a fully informed decision
between all of the candidates unless I learn about them. That's
true. However, I feel that I am fully (or at least sufficiently)
informed to be able to discard the republican and democrat party
candidates.

I've watched the different parties all my adult life. While there have
been a few blips in the trend, the general trend is that both
parties have steadily taken the government (whether it be local,
state, or federal) in directions I did not want it to go. Not
only that, but the trend is accelerating.

I've spent years writing my thoughts (unpublished... someday I
may put them on the web, but not yet) about political ideas. I
may not have stayed up-to-date on every issue or every candidate,
but I certainly don't consider myself uneducated about politics.

And based on what I have studied, I have no faith in the two main
parties. When a candidate says that he or she is democrat or
republican, in my mind that says that they agree with the actions
of the party, at least to some extent (enough to affiliate
themselves with it). So why would I want to vote for them?

The answer is that I don't. In previous elections, I have voted
for one of the two main parties if no independent ran, but in
this election, I chose not to. I'm not committed to that course
of action for future elections... but it's certainly an option.

In short, my expectation is that if you say you are a republican,
you will do things that the republican party does.. and so I
don't want you in office. The same thing goes for a
democrat. Only independents (who are in essence saying that they
do not agree with what the two main parties are saying) are
candidates I'm interested in listening too at this point. So
those are the ones I spent my time researching.

Anyway, back to my wife. As we were discussing the results of the
election and I said how people were saying how people were now
looking to the republicans to save them from the democrats, my
wife made the statement that most people are not in favor of the
health care reform bill and want it gone, and that's why they
voted for republicans. Then she said (and I'm paraphrasing
here... if she want's to rephrase this in any way, I'll rewrite
it to match what she says) that as soon as the republicans are in
power, the health care reform will get thrown away (at least
partially).

I disagreed with her completely, and told her I'd bet anything
she wanted that she was wrong. By writing this down, I'm
comitting to my statement. I believe that 4 years from now (when
I assume that the republicans will have been in power for a
whie), the health care reform will still be in place. It might be
modified somewhat. It's quite possible that it will be
extended. It will NOT be reduced significantly. If I'm wrong, my
wife wins.

The reasoning behind my statement is this. The entire goal of a
career politician is to gain power. It's NOT to serve the public.
It's NOT to make the country a better place to live. It's NOT to
secure my rights. It IS to gain power.

The federal government has, through the health care reform,
extended their control over the health care system (a system
which accounts for between 10 and 20 per cent of our
economy). Controlling the health care system means an enormous
amount of power. Sure, the health care reform doesn't imply total
control of the system, and since the government already had a
great deal of control over it, this reform merely extends that
power. But the idea that the government, now that it has given
itself more power, will now relinquish it is absurd in my mind.

Thinking about all the ways the federal government extended it's
power under Bush, name one way that Obama has relinquished it?
All of the powers seized through the Patriot Act are still in
place. Wiretapping without a warrant (a big deal at the start of
the Obama administration) has not been done away with. I welcome
comments to name ONE thing that the Obama administration has done
to decrease the power of the federal government.

If the republican party were gain the senate, the house, and the
presidency in two years, the health care reform will not be removed.

Actually, I don't even think it will be an issue at that
point. My guess is that by then (two long years in the future),
people will largely have forgotten about it. Do you think I'm
wrong? Two years ago, people voted the republicans out en masse
and there were talks about the death of the republican party. Two
years later, and we're voting them right back in. In this day of
instant access to a flood of text messages, news, entertainment,
and other distractions, two years is an eternity. Two years from
now, the health care system will simply be forgotten.

But even if I'm wrong about that. Even if the health care system is
a current topic... the solution implemented by whichever party is
in power will be to extend government control over it, NOT reduce
control. A politician does not relinquish power. It may be taken
from them. It may be traded up (i.e. a politician may relinquish
some in exchange for gaining more power elsewhere). But it is
not given away.

Reforming Health Care

2010-03-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

In honor of the government taking one more step towards socialism (passing the health care bill), I want to write some of my thoughts about health care reform.

First off, I absolutely recognize the necessity of health care reform. In other words, the system as it is currently set up is NOT working very well. One problem with trying to reform the system is that the health care system includes so many pieces. It's almost impossible to untangle one part of the problem without impacting (possibly in a very negative way) other parts. But untangling the entire thing at once is not practical. So, how do you reform it in a way that improves it, moves it in a direction that I believe it should go (and clearly, there is no concensus on which way that should be), and doesn't break other parts in catastrophic ways.

As with every other political decision, my primary goals are to preserve individual rights, and to provide an environment where that are able to pursue the things they want (which would obviously include health care), but beyond that, governmental intervention should be minimized.

In reforming health care, there are many different aspects involved in the problem that I would like to see reformed including:

the Americal Medial Association
malpractice insurance
cost of medical school
lobbyists and special interest groups
health insurance
government health care programs (medicare, medicaid)
health care taxes
medical research
drug companies and prescriptions

and probably a number of others. I'll begin by saying that I have only a cursory knowledge of how things are right now. I have never worked in any aspect of health care, and as such, I don't really know how things work. But I feel that I have a decent understanding of some basic principles that should be used to create the "ideal" health care system.

So, let's talk about some of the above factors. I will list a few reforms I'd like to see done. They don't tend to be sweeping 'fix everything at once' reforms, but they tend to be reforms that I think could be reasonable to isolate and do without totally disrupting things.

Once these reforms had been in place for 2-4 years, then a second set of reforms could be started.

American Medical Association

It is my understanding that the AMA is involved in almost every aspect of health care, and I believe that that gives them too much "monopolistic" powers in that field.

In the same way that single companies are monitored very closely when they control a monopoly on some comodity, the AMA needs to be examined closely. If they have been involved in any type of price fixing (and I believe that they have been), then they need to be broken up, the same way the oil companies and phone companies were.

The health care industry is so large, and occupies such a vital role in the lives of every individual that it is critical to avoid monopolistic behavior. Just as the oil companies could use the power of the monopoly to cripple the transportation infrastructure of the country, a monopoly based health care system could do the same with an even more critical system.

The medical field desparately needs many of the functions that the AMA provide (at least in theory), but in order to avoid monopolistic powers, most of those functions should belong to separate agencies.

The first agency that I would look at is a certification agency. There absolutely needs to be an organization that can certify people working in health care. Every single doctor and nurse, every single hospital, clinic, and pharmacy need to be certified to make sure that everyone working there is properly trained, and is using proper medical procedures.

So the first reform that I would like to see happen is to separate this function from the rest of the AMA and form a separate agence to handle certification. The certification agency must have absolutely no role in determining WHO can work in a medical field (other than denying them certification), how much they charge for their service, or their ability to accept payment from a government agency, an insurance company, or any other entity. The certification would describe what types of medical procedures each person and provider were qualified to perform. Every health provider would pay a fee to the organization in order to get certified, and would be periodically reviewed in order to maintain the certification.

I would actually like to see competing certifying organizations, so that if one organization refused to give some a certification, an avenue would be open to approach a different certifying agency, but that could be a second step.

I would also examine the AMA carefully, and if it has been involved in price fixing, I would immediately treat the AMA as a monopoly and break it up further into other agencies in order to limit it's ability to engage in those practices.

Cost of medical school

I did a small amount of research and found that the average doctor leaves medical school with 200K to 400K in loans. This of course means that a doctor MUST receive a very good salary in order to pay for those loans. I also learned that there is a good deal of justification for the cost of that education.

Medical professors are real doctors, and must be paid comparable amounts to other doctors in order to get good, well-qualified teachers. In addition, the medical equipment required to teach the students tends to be extremely expensive, and needs to be kept up-to-date, which means more frequent replacement than the equipment in other programs.

So, although I'm sure that there are ways to reduce the cost of a medical education, I don't think you can reasonably expect to cut it in half. Perhaps a quarter is possible... but even that would mean that the cost of medical school would still be huge.

Of course, one possible way to reduce the cost of medical school would be for the government to subsidize it. I absolutely do not subscribe to this point of view. If it's subsidized, it means that taxes have to be raised to pay for it, but in a "hidden" way. If I want to go to a doctor, obviously, I will need to pay for his education and skill. I'd much prefer that that be in the form of a medical bill as opposed to a tax increase.

So, initially, I wouldn't propose any reforms here.

Lobbyists and special interest groups

I'm a huge fan of reducing the influence of lobbyists. However, I don't think I'd deal with that problem as part of health care reform. I'd prefer to deal with the problem more generally, so I'll save that topic for some other day.

Health insurance

Many of the reforms in the current health care bill come in the form of health insurance reforms, but I defintely do not agree with all of them.

There are a few reforms that I would like to see with respect to health insurance.

First, insurance needs to be treated as a contract which can only be terminated by the insured person. The contract says that a person will pay X dollars a month and in return, the insurer will pay some portion Y of any medical bills that person accrues. Once that contract is in place, that contract should only be ended by the insured person. Either the insured person stops paying for the policy (which terminates the contract) or they choose to switch to a different policy. An insurance agency should NOT be able to terminate the contract. They should not be able to modify the terms of the contract (with respect to the portion of the medical bills that they cover). And they should only be able to increase the cost of the policy in some way related to the cost of medical care (i.e. if the cost of medical care increases 5%, they should be able to raise the cost of the policy by 5%, but not some arbitrary amount).

A second reform is that insurance should be treated as a vital service available to all, and at the same cost. What I mean by that is that the same policy to two different individuals who fall into the same category (with respect to some actuarial set of tables). The insurance company comes up with a set of tables which define how much the medical care will cost for a person based on some number of risk factors (do they smoke, are they overweight, etc.). If two people fall into the same category, the policy for both must cost EXACTLY the same. It doesn't matter if one is unemployed and one works for a huge mega-cooporation. Also, the policy cannot be denied to either. By treating health insurance as a vital service, you put it in the same category as other emergency services. A fire department cannot refuse to respond to a call based on where the fire occurs. A 911 operator cannot ignore calls made from locations in a poorer section of town. Health insurance must be equally available.

Another reform that is related to the second is that the actuarial tables used by an agency must be available so that they can be monitored for fairness, and so that people can make sure that the rate they are paying is equivalent to someone else in the same actuarial state and with the same policy. Also, changes to the actuarial tables would need to pass some sort of review in order to be accepted.

There are some reforms that I'm NOT in favor of. First, I'm not in favor of price controls on insurance rates. Price control can be handled by competition.

I'm not in favor of requiring people to have insurance. I don't feel that it is the government's role to protect people from themselves. If they choose to forego insurance, that is their choice (though I'm willing to consider a requirement to have insurance policies for their children).

I'm also not in favor of forcing insurance agencies to ignore pre-existing condtions. A pre-existing condition would be used to determine where a person fell in the actuarial table, and that's reasonable. The only way to make ignoring pre-existing conditions work would be to force people to have insurance (otherwise, you'd only get insurance when you got sick), and I reject that solution.

So, I would start with the three reforms I listed above.

Health care taxes

I would like to see health care tax free. By that, I mean both preventative health care and treatments for medical conditions, but I do NOT mean purely cosmetic things such as most plastic surgeries, or treatment for conditions that have no impact on a person's health.

Under the current tax system (which I think needs to be completely replaced), medical care should be 100% tax deductible.

I would probably hold off on this reform however. Each of the other reforms will cost money to implement, and I think that the taxes on health care services would be a reasonable source of funds to cover those reforms.

Medical research

One of the reforms that I am most in favor of comes from medical research condcuted by drug companies and other medical research institutes.

There have been a number of high-profile court cases where drug companies were sued for selling drugs with known problems.

Given that, how can a person be reasonably sure that the drugs or procedures being provided are safe?

I would like to see all medical research data be public as a condition for the drug or procedure being approved by the FDA. In other words, the raw data from all tests done on a drug need to be available in a public place where they can be reviewed by other agencies before the drug can be sold as anything other than an experimental drug.

This solves a couple of problems. The data can be reviewed by others and any questions can be responded to by the drug company (perhaps in the form of additional tests), or by indicating that there are conditions for which the drug has not been tested and it should not be used in those situations. This simultaneously protects the company from lawsuits, and allows potential buyers to make more informed decisions, both of which are good things.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

Gun ownership

2009-11-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write down my thoughts about gun ownership.

As with almost all of my political beliefs, my thoughts are based on the Declaration of Independence... and in this case, two particular phrases:

that they are endowed ... with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty ...

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

I believe that every person has the rights to Life and Liberty. An immediate (and reasonable) implication is that you also have those rights necessary to protect your Life and Liberty.

There are 3 primary threats to our Life and Liberty.

Threats from other individuals
Threats from other nations
Threats from our own government

Threats from other individuals

It is fortunate that we have a police force, but the fact is that their primary job is to catch someone who has committed a crime, NOT to prevent a crime from being committed. It is true that the presence of a police force does tend to deter some crimes from being committed, but certainly not all, and in almost all situations, the police become involved only AFTER a crime has being committed.

So how do I protect myself (and my family) from others who want harm us? The most effective way is to be as well armed as the person who wants to commit a crime that could deprive me or my family of our right to Life.

My right to Life is an unalienable right. It was not granted to me by the government, and it must not be taken away by them. My right to protect my Life is a necessary condition to this right, and the right to bear arms is a fundamental component of that right. It is absolutely not sufficent for them to provide a police force capable of punishing a criminal.

One unfortunate weakness in our constitution (or more accurately, the Bill of Rights) is that the right to bear arms to protect Life is not mentioned anywhere. The 2nd amendment is the only one to address the right to bear arms, and it does not address this directly. As a result, gun controls have been passed since they do not seem to violate the 2nd amendment.

The wording of the 2nd amendment needs to be made stronger. Something
like the following would be much better:

The right to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the protection of Life, shall not be infringed. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.

Of course, the right to bear arms is not without limits. For example, if someone has committed an armed robbery or assault (or some other crime), they may have forfeited the right to bear arms.

It is also reasonable to place some limits on when and where it is appropriate to bear some types of arms.

For example, I have the right to bear arms in order to protect my life, but it would not be appropriate for that to include a stick of dynamite since it would be virtually impossible to use such a weapon in a way which did not endanger the life of other innocent individuals. Similarily, it would not be appropriate to use a machine gun for self-defense in a public area... there is too much danger that someone other than the criminal would be hurt, and just as my Life must be protected, so must the Lives of other people who might be hurt by my use of arms (even if the intent is strictly to protect my Life).

It is also not unreasonable to require that a person be properly trained to use a weapon before being allowed to carry it. This also would help to protect innocent bystanders.

Threats from other nations

At the time the constitution was written, the militia consisted primarily of citizens who provided their own weapons. As such, restricting gun ownership effectively weakened national defense.

The situation is very different now. Given the nature of modern warfare, the use of personal weapons to protect us against a foreign power would be nearly useless. The weaponry owned by even the smallest of nations would make it nearly impossible for individuals to protect their lives.

Fortunately, the military has also evolved over time. We now maintain a standing military with weapons supplied by the government using our tax dollars. Although there are a number of valid reasons to complain about specific ways that our military budget is spent, the general purpose for maintaining a military are sound, and perform a necessary function.

The purpose of the government is to secure our rights (including the right to Life). As the individuals' ability to protect their Life from foreign powers has decresed, the government has stepped in to fill that role, and that is actually a very legitimate use of the government who's role it is to secure our rights (even though it doesn't always do it).

Threats from our own government

The third purpose of private gun ownership is to protect our rights from threats from our own government.

The founding fathers recognized only too well how a government could deprived individuals of their rights. They had repeatedly tried to work with the government of England to secure various individual rights, but been repeatedly rebuffed. It is quite instructive to read the Declaration of Independance which lists briefly some of their attempts, and the reaction they received. Ultimately, they recognized that the government of England was not going to recognize their rights, and so Thomas Jefferson wrote the following (from the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independance):

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This, perhaps more than any other reason, was the purpose of the 2nd amendment. The founders of this country recognized the need for citizens to bear arms in case they needed to abolish a government that was depriving individuals of their rights, and replace it with one that would secure those rights.

Unfortunately, as our military has evolved to protect our nation from foreign powers, it has also evolved beyond the point where privately owned weapons will be effective.

The constitution is all about checks and balances. Each branch of the government was given powers necessary to carry out it's function, but checks were placed on it to prevent it from exceeding it's constitutional authority.

Unfortunately, many of these checks are eroding. The use of the military in "police actions" instead of declared wars has been used as a way to circumvent checks. The use of executive orders is used to circumvent the constitutional order of enacting legislation. Recently, there was discussion of making a change allowing congress to override a Supreme Court ruling. The 17th amendment removed a critical check that the states had on the federal government making this amendment (in my mind) the most damaging change to the constitution ever made.

The right to bear arms was a check that citizens had on the government. The government could never feel secure in stepping on the rights of citizens knowing that at any moment they had the means to rebel.

That check also has eroded (though this has been through technological advancement rather than political maneuvering).

The single most important change that could be made to our government would be to somehow restore the checks on power that have been eroded over time.

Some checks are easy to understand (for example, the 17th amendment could be repealed, which would be a good first step to restore that check).

Unfortunatly, I do not know how to fully restore the check that armed citizens have on our government. However, it is absolutely critical that the right to bear arms be maintained. An armed population bearing handguns and rifles would not be terribly effective against the full power of the military... but it's better than an unarmed populace!

Final thoughts

One question which I periodically revisit is the question of whether gun ownership should be mandatory.

I'm sure that many people immediately reject such a notion... and I'm not convinced that it's a good idea, but I'd be more in favor of that legislation than on laws that infringe on the right to bear arms.

Our rights must be secured. Our right to a government that derives is's power from the people is a basis for the fact that we elect officials through voting. It is critical that people exercise their right to vote.

Likewise, it is critical that people exercise their right to bear arms.

We risk losing any right that is not secured and exercised!

Even so, I don't think that it should be a crime not to own a gun (or not to vote)... so at this point, I don't feel gun ownership should be mandatory.

I DO feel though that you are not securing a vital individual right if you do not own a gun!

Obama and the Peace Prize

2009-10-09T07:30:00.001-07:00

So, Barak Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

When I look at the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, or Medicine, they celebrate (as they always have) accomplishments that are recognized by the scientific community as outstanding accomplishments that have revolutionized their resepective fields.

Typically, they recognize accomplishments that have occurred decades in the past and have proven, by the test of time, that they are genuine. Certainly there have been some controversies in these prizes, but almost without exception, they are of the form "someone was overlooked who's accomplishment was even more spectacular". Although it is a shame that some individuals' work have not been recognized, it does not mean that those people who have been awarded the prize did not merit the award.

The award for Literature is harder to guage since the criteria for defining great literature is not something you can define with any level of accuracy. But within it's limitations, the award has been given to people who are recognized as making contributions to world literature, and the awards are typically given after decades of writing, so it's generally accepted that the recipient merits recognition.

Then we come to the Peace Prize. It's absurd to award the Nobel Peace prize to a president less than a year into office. Regardless of whether or not I agree with Obama's policies, he simply has not been in office long enough for any of his policies to yield significant results.

It's true that his policies are "perceived" as being significant... but a certain amount of time is necessary to see what will actually happen.

The Peace Prize should be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or best work for fraternity amoung nations". That is NOT Obama at this point. He should not have even been nominated at this point (the deadline for nominations was mere weeks after he entered the office).

Frankly, Obama was given the award for one reason... he's not Bush... and that's a poor reason to get a primary school award, let alone a Nobel prize.

The Fair Tax

2009-09-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

I am strongly in favor of discarding the current income tax system and replacing it with a sales tax system. One proposal to do that is the current Fair Tax system.

I'm not going to discuss what the Fair Tax system is in any depth. It is described in depth in many places. A good starting point is fairtax.org. Basically, it is a plan to replace all income taxes with a national sales tax. This idea has been tossed around in various forms for quite a while, and there have been a number of changes suggested over time. In general, I'm pretty neutrel on most of the specific variations, but I am strongly in favor of the concept.

I wanted to list some of the reasons that I personally want to see a sales tax used. Some of these are pushed by Fair Tax supporters, others are primarily personal reasons, but I feel strongly about each of them.

Tax consumption, not production

A tax serves, not only as a means of generating revenue, but as a factor that affects some type of behavior. When a behavior is taxed, the tax acts as a natural deterrant to that behavior.

For example, if you increase the tax on cigarettes by a reasonable amount, the behavior (smoking) changes as a result of the tax. Nobody (sane) looks at the tax and increases the amount they smoke because of the tax, so people fall into certain categories. If the tax is small, most fall into a category of people who ignore the tax. They continue to smoke the same amount while paying a smal amount more. This group accounts for the increase in revenue due to the increased tax. Other people may reduce the amount they smoke. Either they cannot afford even the small increase so they are forced to reduce their smoking, or the increase provides incentive to them to reduce (or quit). Tax revenue from this group will decline.

Of course, if the tax is an unreasonable amount, the behavior changes dramatically, but in ways which are usually not desirable. For example, if a $100/pack tax were placed on cigarettes, revenue from cigarettes would fall drastically, since very few people could afford them. Cigarettes would then become the equivalent of an illegal drug (people would start selling them illegally in order to avoid paying the tax), and the primary result of this tax would be to create a new criminal society (illegal providers, and the users). The net affect would be that tax revenue would disappear, but expendature would increase (since you have to add resources to drug enforcement branches to police this).

But let's say that we only tax a reasonable amount (whatever that means) so that we're not creating illegal behaviors, a tax still has a damping effect on a behavior. The damping may be greater with some behaviors than other, and it will depend on the size of the tax, but it will always be there.

Let's compare the current system of taxing income with the proposed system of taxing purchases. What are the behaviors being impacted? With income tax, the behavior that is impacted is that of earning money, of working, or in other words, the behavior of producing. With sales tax, the behavior being impacted in that of consumption.

Some people would argue that the two are similar. The argument that can be made is that if you tax consumption, fewer things are consumed, which means that fewer people are needed to produce those things. Although certainly true, I like to keep things simple and direct. In general, the primary impact will be greater than the secondary impact (unless you make the primary impact so large that a snowball effect is started, and this falls under the category of applying an unreasonably large tax).

So, if we tax income, the most important damping affect is on production. The secondary impact is on consumption. With a sales tax, the primary damping affect is on consumption.

I do not feel that anyone benefits by damping production. I'm not talking about damping the production of one item (we could certainly produce too many loaves of bread, or television sets, or some other item), but of production in general. It is always better if everyone is working.

This reason alone is enough for me to want the Fair Tax.

A simple way to make sure everyone pays

Taxing income is very difficult. The question of what constitutes income, and which types of income should be taxed, and at what rate are very complex (and have been made even more complicated). As a result, there are many ways to avoid paying taxes.

Any type of illegal income (the sale of illegal drugs for example) is not taxed. Many people use many different loopholes (some legitimate, many NOT) to hide income and shield it from taxes.

It is an impossible task to monitor the income of hundreds of millions of individuals, and expect them to report that income accurately so that they can pay an honest tax on it.

The end result is that many people are not paying taxes on income which should be taxed.

The Fair Tax system is so much simpler to administer.

Instead of monitoring every individual AND business, you only need to monitor businesses. That automatically decreases the complexity enormously. Second, you're only monitoring one type of activity: the sale of a product. Every business already does this (though you still have the problem of getting accurate reporting).

Most importantly... everyone pays. Everyone buys things, whether they are drug dealers, illegal immigrants, rich people who can afford great tax lawyers, or your average middle-class citizen. A sales tax makes sure that they are all paying their taxes, and it doesn't require that they report anything.

Easily graduated

Most people believe that a graduated tax system where people who make more money pay a higher tax rate than those who make less.

I'm actually not necessarily a believer of this... I believe that everyone who benefits from living in the country should pay taxes. However, I'm much less interested in this issue than with others, and one benefit of the Fair Tax system is that it can be made to fit either scenario quite easily.

A graduated tax system is available is easy to implement by taxing luxury items at a higher rate than necessities (and some necessities may not be taxed at all).

Tax users of a benefit

Another benefit of the Fair Tax system is that the tax for some things payed for by taxes can be specifically targeted to those who profit from them.

For example, all costs for maintaining roads could come from a sales tax on gas. Any number of regulatory agencies could be funded by sales related to that industry. For example, an agency that regulated radio and television could be funded by taxes on the sales of radios and televisions, cable television bills, etc.

Doing this does mean that the tax rate will vary considerably from one item to the next, but it has the advantage of giving you a lot more control over what taxes you pay.

If I absolutely disagree with a specific tax, I can "refuse to pay it" by not buying items which have that tax while I lobby to get the tax changed.

Immediate knowledge of what tax I'm paying

Under the current system, it is difficult to know how much tax I'm paying. Indeed, I won't know how much income tax I'm paying until next year (long after I've paid the tax). I may know how much is withheld from my salary, but it's not until I fill out the income tax forms that I actually know my tax.

With a sales tax, it is immediately obvious. If the price tag says $100 before taxes, and $150 after taxes, I know exactly how much tax I pay.

As part of the Fair Tax code, I would support a requirement that the tax be listed on the price tag so you could see in advance what the tax is.

In any case, there would need to be a tax site where you could plug in some item's tax code and see exactly what tax rate applied to that item, and what taxes were included in that rate.

Several years ago, I wrote to my congress person asking them to support a Fair Tax bill. I received a letter back saying that they did not support it because, according to numbers given by some agency, that would mean a 70% sales tax.

I was outraged... not that the tax would be 70%, but that the congressperson would thing that it was in my best interest to hide the number from me. I'm paying the taxes already in one form or another. If the taxes I'm paying are equivalent to a 70% sales tax, I want to be reminded of that every day, and I want everyone else to be reminded of it too. If everyone realized just how much they were paying in taxes, perhaps they wouldn't be so apathetic about them.

Of course, I'd also be upset if a 70% sales tax were needed to fund the government... it would tell me quite clearly how bloated the government was. I think that a total sales tax (including both federal and state portions) should be around 25%.

Hidden taxes

When you buy a $20,000 car, how much of that is due to taxes? I'm not talking about the taxes that are added in when you go to pay for the car. I'm talking about taxes that are included in the actual price of the car.

The company that dug the iron ore out of the ground and made steel paid an income tax which they have to cover by including it in the cost of the steel they sell.

The company that bought the steel and used it to manufacture car parts also paid an income tax, which they tack on to the cost of the car parts when they sell them.

Next, the car company that takes the parts and builds a car also pays an income tax. To cover that, they have to charge a higher price for the car.

On top of that, you have to pay sales tax when you buy the car, but an unknown portion of the $20,000 price tag goes to pay the taxes paid by the companies as described.

With a sale tax many of the hidden taxes could be eliminated. I would favor taxing only consumer products and services. By not taxing all of the intermediate products, the hidden taxes are virtually eliminated. They are not completely gone of course... companies make use of some of those end products, and they have to pass the cost on to consumers, but these tend to be a fairly small portion of the cost to run a business, so the hidden taxes would be minimal.

Reduce the size of the government

It would not be possible to get rid of the IRS of course (no matter what form taxation takes, there will still be the need to monitor and regulate it, so there will always be a role for the IRS), but by eliminating income tax, it would be possible to reduce the size of the IRS drastically.

The IRS would have virtually no contact with individuals. They would work directly with businesses (which they already do), but there would be no need to have direct contact with other people.

It can be fixed by itself

So many of the problems in government are incredibly complex, and fixing them involves making so many different changes that it is difficult to come up with a plan to really fix them.

The tax problem however can be isolated from other problems with relative ease. It can be changed in many ways without impacting other government functions. It is also one of the very few systems which could be totally redone without having a large negative impact on the majority of people (tax lawyers and accountants being one of the few groups that would be impacted).

As a result, the tax system lends itself well to a complete fix whereas most other systems (health care and social security for example) will require changes to many different systems, and an "ideal" solution can probably not be achieved in one step (and may not be achievable in many steps).

The Neighborhood

2009-06-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

The other day, my wife and I were discussing the change in neighborhood social structure over the past 30+ years. Heather said she missed the days when neighborhoods were environments where kids grew up playing together, neighbors watched out for each other, and people didn't have to lock their doors at night.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Change in the family structure

50 years ago, the neighborhood family structure was predominantly "traditional American". The family consisted of stay-at-home moms, working fathers, and some number of children. Now, the predominant structure consists of two (hopefully) working parents and children that have gone to daycare.

The impact this change has had on the neighborhood is huge. A single example illustrates this.

Before I got married, I knew a few of my neighbors, but only one of them very well (and that was because I knew them from church, not because they lived next to me). After I got married, Heather moved in and got a job, so for the first year of married life, the neighborhood structure (or at least, how we fit into it) did not change.

When we had our first daughter, Heather and I had both decided that we wanted a stay-at-home mother raising our children, not daycare. So, when our daughter was born, Heather quit her job and stayed home.

I didn't notice much change until our daughter was old enough to walk at least a bit, but at that point, Heather would take her out for little walks around the neighborhood. She got to know all of the close neighbors, and over the next couple years, got to be friends with many of them. Although I don't know them as well as her, I now see them on a regular basis through her.

Heather visits with our neighbors on a regular basis. They often bring over cookies or muffins or some other thing they cooked, and Heather does the same for them. A couple of them bring small gifts to our daughter on a regular basis.

It's only a small niche... and it mainly involves older retired people, because the younger ones are at work during the day, but I can easily imagine how that neighborhood would exapand if there were a stay-at-home mom in most of those homes, many of them natural networkers (as women tend to be anyway, and women who are raising kids are even more inclined to be if only to get a little adult interaction for a few minutes).

I'm not going to go into any detail (at least not now) of the reasons why this change in family structure occurred, either to criticize it or justify it. There were very valid reasons for some of the changes, and some very poor reasons for others. It's unfortunate that it has had such a huge impact on the neighborhood.

Change in children's entertainment

Probably the second most important change has been in the forms of entertainment available to children. 30 years ago, much of the entertainment was outside. Neighborhood children played with each other, either outside, or at each others' homes, and it was inevitable that this would bring the neighborhood together. Even with the significantly reduced adult network, the network of children would still hold the neighborhood together, at least to some extent.

The neighborhood has almost always provided organized events for children (little league, 4-H, scouts, etc.), many of which were run by working parents.

These programs still exist of course, but more and more entertainment is coming from forms that A) involve less interaction between children and B) involve less work for parents.

It's so much easier to buy the latest Nintendo/Wii/XBox than to organize a little league soccer team. When soccer is played on the game box, rather than the field, the neighborhood loses an essential component which could keep it alive.

Massive online communities now provide environments where people can interact with each other in ways that was never before possible. Although not necessarily a bad thing, the new definition of the neighborhood has come at the expense of the old neighborhood. It would be much better if the new definition could supplement the old one.

Change in communication

I just read about a "texting competition" in the news. A 15 year old girl won a contest because she was able to text messages. Earlier this year, there were stories of teenagers who would send tens of thousands of messages each month... often at a rate of one or more per minute every waking minute of every day.

Even without these extremes, for many people, the amount of communication done face-to-face is less than that done in some other way (phone, texting, email, etc.).

When the face-to-face is gone, the physical neighborhood no longer has any meaning.

Solutions?

I have some ideas which would help to reestablish the local neighborhood... but it's a lot of work and social reengineering. Still, I've seen a change in my family due to Heather being at home... it's not the establishment of a complete 1950's neighborhood, but it's more of a neighborhood than was there before, so I know that at least some improvement is possible.

We need to make family and neighborhood a priority. If parents are unwilling or uninterested in being part of a neighborhood, nothing else matters. You can stop reading, because nothing else I can say will make any difference.

I'm very glad that my wife has helped to create a little bit of neighborhood in our life.

We need to include some "old-fashioned" forms of entertainment and communication in our lives. I'm not advocating that we discard the new forms entirely... but we do need to recognize the value of the other ways too.

We need to make sure that at least some of our entertainment and communication is not on the computer/phone/gamestation. It's not even that hard to do. Like my wife, most people look back fondly at that simpler way of life. Just like we did, our children will enjoy the types of activities that can occur outside in the neighborhood, provided they are exposed to them. If a small number of people get together in a neighborhood and organize just one or two small actities, it can rekindle the neighborhood concept.

I really think that we need to investigate the structure of the family. So many people think that the family structure is "expendable". That it's better to have two incomes than two interested parents.

That is not to say that a complete return to the traditional family structure is the only solution. There are several alternative family structures available which preserve the strength of the family and the neighborhood which may better serve the needs of those families.

One alternative that I really admire is a traditional oriental family structure. In that structure, grandparents often raise the children. Parents both work and support both their children and their parents, who live with them. While they work, the grandparents raise the children.

I really like that solution as it expands the concept of family by including an extra generation into it in a way which could potentially strengthen the traditional family structure rather than weaken or replace it.

I also like a more communal family setting. This has been used in many different societies. Children are rasied by a neighborhood instead of by a single set of parents. Some of parents (or even older children) watch the younger children while other parents are working.

I work with two people who practically co-raise each other's children. At least a couple times a week, the children spend time at the other family's house, to the extent that practically any event that involves one of the two families involves the other one too.

Heather and I are trying to do this with some other couples that we know, and it's been a really rewarding experience. The children are becoming quite close to each other after only a short time, and the adults are closer too. We get to share the load of parenting, without ever losing the primary responsibility for our own children. It's a very nice system that I want to continue.

Anyway, there's lots more that I could say, but I think that's enough for now.

Random ideas

2009-06-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

With all the major problems facing America (the economy, social security, health care, etc.), I thought I'd share some ideas I've had about how to improve the situation.

I won't go so far as to say these ideas would actually solve any of the problems... but they should improve the situation in ways that will not conflict with implementing real solutions.

So with that said... if I were in charge, here's some of the things that I would do.

Social Security

I believe that the federal government should not be involved in retirement at all (other than in the role of protecting the rights of retirees). Retirement should be the responsibility of the person who wishes to retire. Period.

Unfortunately, we're now in a situation where people have come to depend on social secutity for their retirement, but since it was never set up as a retirement fund (i.e. a fund that people pay into and then draw out of at retirement), there seems to be no solution. If you cut off social security, retirees will be faced with the prospect of living on virtually no income. If you continue it, it will just propogate the problem.

So, I'd favor immediately changing social security from "retirement" into "employment". The employment would not be physically difficult... but would entail real work. The work would become less taxing (both in terms of the type of work being done, and the number of hours worked) the older you get, but, barring health issues that prevent work entirely, it would continue for the lifetime of the recipient.

There are several objections that could be raised to this:

First, is it really fair to put these "retirees" back to work? I believe in consequences. I believe in PAYING those consequences... NOT in avoiding them. It is an aboslute fact that the social security system, as it is currently implemented, was put into place by people that retirees voted for. The problems with the social security system have been well understood since the day it was founded, but people have chosen to ignore them, and to vote for people who maintained the system, rather than fix it, or (the better solution) abolish it. Is it fair that the very people who have voted for the status quo for their entire adult life be forced to pay some of the consequence? YES!

A second, and far more important objection is this: is it a good idea to take jobs away from younger adults and give them to retirees? My response to this is that the objection is irrelevant, at least in the long term. The impact from such a change will have many ripple affects... and many of those will be positive. Imagine if ten million retirees who were producing nothing suddenly become productive individuals who are producing something of value to society. There is no way that that can be considered a negative. The "retiree" who is required to continue thinking and working (in a capacity for which he or she is physically capable) will be physically and mentally healthier than someone who stops working at retirement.

In short, this system will take a segment of population who were non-productive resource consumers and turn them into productive members of society. I am absolutely certain that the overall impact will be positive.

One side-effect of this solution is that the current working-age population would be required to take responsibility for retirement themselves. If they relied on social security, they wouldn't be able to retire.

One thing to note is that the types of "employment" available for social security recipients would NOT be a "punishment". When a person retires, one benefit of social security would be to put them in a new type of job. Just changing employments would be good for them mentally.

Education

There are several problems with the education system. I have an idea which would potentially improve two things. The classroom size has increased to the point where it's difficult to effectively teach one-on-one.

Budgets can be (and are) stretched (to a point) very easily in education... just increase the student to teacher ratio. If you double the ratio, you can cut your salary base by two. Very few other jobs can be stretched as easily. No matter what you do, a construction worker cannot build two houses in the same time they built one before. A secretary cannot type twice as many documents. But a teacher can give a lecture to 50 students (or 100 or 500) with virtually the same amount of effort that giving the lecture to 10 or 25 students would entail.

This could be solved (at least to some extent) by taking people from the pool of new "employees" created by my Social Security suggestion and putting them in the schools as teaching assistants. They would NOT be teachers, so they would not displace the teachers. A requirement for getting these assistants could be that a school war required to maintain the current number of teachers. The assistants would be placed in the classrooms at a ratio of perhaps 1 assistant per 5 to 10 students. Much of the one-on-one would come from these assistants who had a lifetime of experience to draw on.

Bailout Blues

2009-03-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I added a blog entry. I'm very bad at keeping a journal of any kind. I've debated abandoning it, but I really do like the idea of writing about some topics. I'm just not good at doing it on any schedule.

Also, I've been trying to avoid talking only about politics, but that's the topic that interests me the most at this point in time, at least as far as blogging. There are many other topics that I like to talk about, but I haven't felt the need to write about them. I do feel the need to write about my political beliefs, so I guess that I'll give in to that need, and put most of my time in that direction.

I WILL talk about other things from time to time, but I really want to air some of my feelings about what's going on.

And there are a lot of things to talk about. Bailout issues, federal budget, recession, etc. I'll talk about several.

My reasoning for talking about them is this:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

I have always been very vocal about my political beliefs. It's even more important now since we are being led by two political parties that seem determined to take this country as far from the vision of the founding fathers as possible.

I want to share a few thoughts on the bailout. This includes so many issues that I can't comment on all of them, but I want to comment on a few.

First of all, automakers. I think it's important to make sure that there is a strong automotive industry in the United States. We are probably the largest consumer of this industry, so if we build them here, it provides jobs here, it reduces the impact on the environment from shipping them all over, etc. I'd like to encourage good quality vehicles built right here.

I think there's an obvious solution.

The solution being implemented: throw billions of tax dollars at companies that have a demonstrated history of producing poor quality vehicles and terrible business models.

A better solution: get the government out of the car business. The total tax on a $20,000 car should be the same regardless of the manufacturer. The same environmental regulations should apply, regardless of the manufacturer. Every government regulation should be the same! What will happend? Honda, Toyota, and other companies that have sensible business models, and who produce quality vehicles will actually be free to grow faster in the United States. They will provide jobs lost by Ford, GM and others. It may take a bit longer, but instead of an industry supported by the government, we'll have a healthy automotive industry. It'll be built in America and driven in America. Who cares if it's called Toyota!

I'm going to stop for the moment, but I want to comment about some other aspects of the bailout as well.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

2009-01-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I updated my blog, so I'm just going to post a couple short, and totally unrelated thoughts.

Two of my favorite parts of the day are when I put our daughter to bed, and later, when I check on her.

Most nights, I put Elizabeth to bed. She's really good about going to bed. No matter what she was doing, or how excited she was, she's almost alway cooperative. Even the days when I say it's time for bed and she fights it, as soon as it's inevitable (when I'm holding her in her bedroom), she's invariably calmed down. I usually hold her and pat her back for just a minute before I put her to bed. She has her head laying on my shoulder and her arm draped over my shoulder. As I pat her back, she pats mine. I love that!

Later, just before my wife and I go to bed, I usually go to check on her. She's a pretty restless sleeper the first couple hours she's asleep, and she's often facing different directions, and she's almost always kicked the covers off. As I put the covers back on her, she usually wakes up a bit, but immediately goes back to sleep. She looks very peaceful, which is quite the contrast from the rest of the day, because she is NOT a very quiet toddler. I like watching her for just a minute at that time too.

Another thought. This one is about football. I really wish there was a college football playoff. Living in Gainesville, and as a fan (though not a HUGE fan) of the Gators, it was fun to watch them win the championship game a couple weeks ago. But I'm left not absolutely sure that we're the best, and I don't like that. I'm not too worried about Texas... based on their bowl game, I really don't think they have a huge claim to being the best... but Utah and USC do! I'd really like to see them play each other, and us play the winner. Then I'd feel pretty confident that the winner was actually the best team.

Going in to all the bowl games, I was hoping that Texas, Utah, and USC would either lose, or at least not win in exciting fashion, and that we would win. Then, I think it would have been pretty solid to think of the Gators as number 1. Texas mostly came through for me... but Utah and USC didn't. They both won, and won convicingly. I can't see any way to say definitively that we're better then them (of course, I also don't think there's any definitive way to say that either of them are better than us).

Oh well. We're the champions (whatever that means). Let's see how next year turns out with most of the big names coming back.

Another random thought. Our daughter loves "Barney", "Signing Time", and "Blue's Clues", and therefore, I've gotten to hear LOTS of them. It's not as bad as I feared it would be.

Barney is mostly inoffensive (the same can NOT be said about the other dinosaurs... especially Baby Bop... boy I'd like to get rid of her). True, it's got the rather annoying "I Love You" song (it feels like the world is going mushy every time it plays), but quite a few of the other songs are not bad. Not songs I'd actually choose to listen too of course, but they don't drive me crazy by any means.

Blue's Clues is actually very good. I really like watching Elizabeth watch Blue's Clues. I've read up a bit on the show, and it's amazing at how much thought went in to the show. Other shows oriented to toddlers seem to be just silly, but someone really understood how to make a show that appealed to toddlers, engaged them, and showed them fun and interesting stuff... and Blue's Clues is the result. I'm really impressed.

But Signing Time is the best of all. Many of the concepts that are in Blue's Clues are in Signing Time (the simple animation, of course the educational aspects, the short time spent with any one topic), but there are a lot of other things going for it. There's so much attention to little details. I love how the Rachel (the "host") always wears exactly the same clothes. She becomes very identifiable. And her songs are good! Way beyond the "not bad" level of Barney. Several of them are VERY catchy.

I won't talk about Care Bears though!

Another thought. This one political.

The best job description that I ever heard for politician is that it is their job to amass power. For any career politician (with a very few exceptions that I've ever seen), I honestly believe that their primary motivation is to get power. All the rhetoric and promises are just ways of saying "if you give me power, I'll do XXX for you". XXX may vary depending on whether they are democrat or republican, whether they are running for congress or president, but ultimately, I find very little difference between the various parties.

Until Bush came along, people were mostly reluctant to give too much power to the politician. They got it of course... but they had to be much more subtle about it. They had to make lots of promises (and occasionally even follow though on some of them).

Then 9/11 came, and for the first time in my lifetime, a politician was given nearly carte blance... save us from the terrorists, and you can have all the power you want. And boy did he (and most other politicians) take advantage of the situation. I'd love to think that when news of the attacks came, Bush's first thoughts were about the loss of lives, and the damage done to so many people. But part of me (most of me) thinks that his first thoughts were along the lines of "how can I make this work for me".

Now, people are growing concerned. So what do they do? Along comes the anti-Bush/anti-Republican candidate (i.e. Obama) and people flock to him.

How many people are now saying "take as much power as you need... just save us from Bush"? It's another golden ticket, this time for the other party. Perhaps Obama is someone who saw a problem and stepped up to the plate to deal with it. Or perhaps he's a politician who saw an opportunity.

It remains to be seen what the result will be. It would be wonderful if Obama is one of those VERY rare politicians who actually thing the job description entails more than "get power". But even if that is the case, the amount of power given to the president MUST be curbed, becase even if Obama is everything he says he is... the next president probably won't be.

Same-old same-old

2008-11-05T04:42:00.000-08:00

Elections over. Here are my predictions for the next 4 years:

The national debt will increase all 4 years.

The social security system will stay broken. The medical system will stay broken. The quality of education will continue to decline.

The size of the government will increase. More human rights will be infringed on. The government will continue to move away from the form instituted by the founding fathers.

In other words... same-old same-old.

If McCain had won, how would my predictions have changed? They wouldn't have. These predictions were made before the election occurred!

My wife was a bit upset at me last night. She turned on election coverage and after a few minutes I went to do something else. She asked if I didn't want to watch the election and I told her that I didn't really care about the outcome.

I didn't. And I don't. The rhetoric will be different than if McCain had won. The end result will differ only in terms of WHICH human rights are ignored, WHICH branches of the government will grow the most, WHICH special interest groups will get the most benefits.

I do exaggerate though if I say that nothing about the election interested me. There are a couple aspects in particular that do interest me. The first is how does the makeup of the house and senate look. It's bad. The president is democrat. The senate is strongly dominated by the democrats. The house is strongly dominated by the democrats. I would have been much more comfortable if it had been split (or even if the democrats had had only a small edge), but it's pretty obvious that the American people have had enough of the republican party for now.

It's a shame. It shows that people are tired of the way things are going. It's also a shame that they think that things are really going to improve with the other party in power.

Same-old same-old.

Another thing that interested me was how the third-party candiates would do. Obviously I voted third-party, but how many others feel the same way I do? I had hoped that at least some voters would realize that neither party was going to solve the problems this country faces. Unfortunately, it appears that somewhere around 1% of the vote went to third-party candidates.

Here's what I've found for past elections in the percentage of the vote that went to third-party candidates:


 2008    1.0 (??)
 2004    1.0
 2000    3.8
 1996   10.0
 1992   19.5
 1988    1.0
 1984    0.7
 1980    8.3

So, what we really need is another Ross Perot type to shake things up. I wish that the impact he had on the two elections he was in had continued, but it seems to have disappeared.

I have one wish for this coming term: I hope that Obama proves me wrong. Prove to me that you're NOT just rhetoric, that you actually do want to change things. I'd love to see this happen... but I'm not holding my breath.

There are a couple of additional things that interest me. I'm interested in the fact that Obama is black. Race doesn't matter to me. I've never made a decision about someone based on their race, but I recognize that it IS important to some people. I am curious to see what impact having a black president will have on racial issues in this country. I can see it going either way.

I'm also interested on the impact it will have on the US-World relations. It's no secret that the world dislikes America and hated Bush as a president. I don't think that that is necessarily a bad thing, but the reasons they hated Bush are justified in some respects. America is a sovereign nation. In other words, we do not answer to any other government or nation (including the United Nations). As such, if it is necessary to make decisions that no other country in the world approves of, we have that right, and the fact that other countries disapprove should not be a reason to change our stance. On the other hand, the decisions we make need to be made with the intent to preserve out liberties and our people. I'm not at all convinced that many of the decisions made by the Bush administration (or any other recent administration for that matter) really meet that criteria. So I'm less concerned about public (i.e. world) approval of this country, and more concerned about how well it meets the standards and measures set up by the founding fathers. Unfortunately... the answer is POORLY!

Why I am voting libertarian

2008-10-15T07:27:00.001-07:00

I believe in personal responsibility. The democrat/republican based government believes in bailing out homeowners who bought homes they couldn't afford; financial institutions who's decision making process involved only what would look good on the books this quarter, not what would look good on the books 20 years from now; automobile manufacturers who figured that the way to boost profits was to concentrate on SUVs... at a time that gas was reaching new highs every month; and who knows who else.

I believe in living within my means. The democrat/republican based government believes that a 10 TRILLION dollar debt is acceptable. For the democrats who remember that there was a surplus with the last democratic president (Clinton)... just remember... the national debt went up EVERY SINGLE YEAR HE WAS IN OFFICE!!! The highly touted surplus was ficticious. He ran a deficit for 8 straight years. And Bush (who supposedly represents the "more fiscally conservative" Republican party) has been an utter catastrophe. Many means have been used to make the debt appear less significant (reporting it as % of GDP, adjusting for inflation, etc.), but the fact is that there hasn't been a president in my lifetime who has had a balanced budget. The principle is simple: if I earn $1000, I cannot spend $1001!

I believe that securing personal liberty is the ultimate purpose of a government. I'm not alone in that either. Read the first few paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. The democrat/republican party voted in the patriot act (357 to 66 in the house, 98 to 1 in the senate, so it was CLEARLY both parties) that, in essence, allows the government to ignore most basic civil rights. All they have to do is say "terrorism" and all rights can be ignored. People have forgotten that rights MUST NOT be traded for safety.

I believe in separation of church and state. Both parties appeal to people one way for what amounts to a religious stance. I will illustrate this using one example: the discussion about same-sex marriage. All parties are talking about it. Ultimately, marriage consists of 2 things: a union of two people in a setting which definitely has a religious base historically (but is not bound to any one religion or social organization), and a legal union involving things like property and financial obligations. The government should not be involved AT ALL in the first aspect. Yes, from a personal standpoint, based on my religious beliefs, I agree that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. I also believe that the government should NOT be involved in this at all. I do not believe there should be such a thing as a marriage license. Marriages should not be conducted by government officals. The government (specifically the courts) SHOULD be involved in enforcing legal contracts between two people, just as it is now. If two people want to live together and call it a marriage... it should not be against the law (even if it does not fit my definition of marriage). If those same two people want to sign a contract, then it is enforceable in court. The sex of the two people is irrelevant. On a side note, although I do not regard "marriage" as a government issue, parent/child definitely IS. Having laws which define parental rights and obligations is absolutely necessary. Religious arguments are also made (quite innapropriately) for issues such as abortion, death penalty, welfare, etc. Even where these issues are appropriate topics for government involvement, the religious arguments are not.

I believe in the 10th amendment. In the constitution, it clearly lists the functions of the federal government and states (in the 10th amendment) that all other powers are reserved to the States or the people. What this means is that 90% of the functions of the current federal government are unconstitutional. Some of them are legitimate government functions, but should be performed at the state level, instead of the federal level. Others should be performed by people instead of the government. Welfare, education, agriculture, social security, and many others fall into these categories. The federal government has no right to be involved in them!

I briefly considered voting for the Constitution party (since it appears that Ron Paul has endorsed that candidate), but they violate the separation of Church and State too much. Also, their primary platform is a return to the original constitution. Although an admirable goal, I prefer the philosophical purpose of the Libertarian party: to protect rights. Returning to the original constitution certainly helps fulfill that, but that is not the end goal. It is simply a means to an end.

My wife

2008-10-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything about my wife yet, so I wanted to write down some of my thoughts about her.

I have a theory about marriage (though I don't actually thing there's anything theoretical at all about it; I think it's fairly dead on). If you go into a marriage expecting that you will be able to change the other person in order to correct the things you don't like about them, or to get them to like the same things that you like, either your marriage, or your expectation is doomed. One of them has got to go. Hopefully you realize that in time that the expectation is the thing to go, instead of the marriage. Instead, if you go into your marriage willing to take the person as they are, and you work on a consistent basis to love them as they are, what happens is that you actually start (subconsciously or consciously) changing yourself to be what they want you to be. When both people do that, everything just seems to work out.

Heather and I have managed to be like that for the most part. I try (perhaps not on a daily basis, but pretty often) to find significant ways to make her happy. Most often, that involves "doing" something for her (cooking a meal, or occasionally doing a chore :-). But occasionally it actually means something a bit deeper or more important. I've certainly changed in several ways since I married her.

Heather is a stay-at-home mom, which is the best thing in the world. When I was dating, one of the things I really wanted was someone who would want to do that when and if we had children. I find it sad that so many people have children, and then, almost from the start, hire other people to raise those children for a significant part of the day. Fortunately, Heather felt the exact same way, and from the day we got married, we made sure that we were living such that we could get by without her salary (as a matter of fact, I always paid all the bills, groceries, etc., so that we could lose her salary any time without causing a financial strain). When she got pregnant with Elizabeth, she had figured out her last day at work by the time she was a couple months along. Of course, something that we knew from a theoretical standpoint was that being a stay-at-home mom was still going to be hard work. But the reality is that it's REALLY hard work. Heather's good at it though. Elizabeth is growing up in a wonderful environment. Now, Heather is expecting again, so Elizabeth will soon be joined by a brother or sister, and both of them are going to have a full-time mother.

Another place that Heather excels at is being my friend. It seems like life is so busy now. There are so many things that need to be done that we often spend several evenings a week apart (in addition to the days when I'm gone to work). It never seems like I am able to spend as much time with her as I want. The only time I get to be with her as much as I want is when we're on vacation. For us, vacation is a family affair. When we went to Yellowstone, we were never apart for more than a couple minutes at a time. I wish it could be like that more of the time.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about Heather later.

Vacation (part 2)

2008-09-30T05:49:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to write about everything in Yellowstone. We took some pictures, but not too many for the same reason... it's just impossible to fully capture what we saw, either in words or pictures. So I'm just going to touch on a few things.

First up: bison. We saw a lot of wildlife, but none so impressive as the bison. They're all over the place.

The first time we saw one walking down the road towards us, forcing us to stop, Heather was nervous (actually, that may be putting it kindly). There was nothing we could do but stop and wait while this huge animal (1000+ pounds?) walked slowly by us. Luckily, they are quite used to cars and it barely even glanced at us as it passed. By the second time it happened, Heather was taking picutures of it. The third time was the best though. We had pulled off to look at the Mud Volcano, and as we were getting out, a group of bison wandered onto the main road which was about 50 feet from us. So all of these cars were stopped and these animals kept walking back and forth in the road. They didn't appear to be going anywhere, and certainly weren't in any hurry, and there was at least one young one (calf?) so some of the adults were staying very close. So we sat and watched them for probably 10 minutes while traffic was backing up quite a ways in both directions. Elizabeth was laughing the whole time... I'm not sure what exactly she liked, but to her it was hysterical.

After leaving that area, we drove a short while longer and came to a river, and there was a huge herd of bison. The herd stretched out over probably a mile of river, and I'd guess there was somewhere around 1000 bison there. It was really impressive.

They were definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

Customer Service

2008-09-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

This morning as I was biking in, I was reflecting on the financial and political situations that we are in, and I realized that I knew one important part of how we got here.

Several years ago, in my previous job, I was "asked" to go to a customer support class. Over time, several people had complained about my lack of "people skills", and my manager felt that I could benefit from learning some customer support skills. And boy did I learn! I learned lessons in that class that have stuck with me for years. It was probably the most eye-opening class I've ever attended. Let me tell you about it.

First off, let me tell you why I was asked to go. As I've mentioned before, I'm an engineer at heart. I like working on problems, and I dislike wasting time. My job was a system administrator, so most of my time was spent keepking computers up and running (and I feel that we did a very good job of it), but some of the time was spent in customer support or help desk type situations. People came to me and the other system administrators with questions. I was working in a computer science department, so the people who came with questions were people in the computer field (students, faculty, etc.), so I felt (and still feel) that it was reasonable to expect a certain level of competence from them. When people came to me with questions that demonstrated that they had spent time trying to figure something out, but were missing something important, or that depended on some other information that they didn't have, I was always happy to respond, and I don't believe that any of the complaints ever came from this group of customers. But when someone would come to me with a question of the type: I have a problem, and I didn't bother to research it, can you just tell me the answer; in that case, I was much less helpful. I'd resist answering the question and instead try to teach them something about finding the answer for themselves. I know that this was not always taken well (sometimes it was taken very badly), and I wasn't always the most patient about it either, which compounded the problem, but when someone who's career is based on computers will not spend the time to learn about computers, it really bothers me.

Anyway, after a certain number of complaints, it was off to customer support school. This was a day-long class to teach you customer support skills.

Early on, we broke into groups of about 8 to do some basic exercises. The first thing we had to do was think back to some "good customer experiences" we had had (as the customer) and tell some of the qualities that the customer support person had that provided us with the good experience. We came up with around a dozen qualities including things like good body language; professional appearance; competant; able to answer our questions; friendly; etc.

We were then asked to privately choose the 2 or 3 qualities most important of these and write them down. Then we went around and read them. I chose something like "competant" and "able to answer my questions". Without exception, everyone else in the group chose qualities related to the person being nice to them (friendly, smiled a lot, good body language). As this was happening, I was thinking to myself "what planet are these people from???".

Not to criticize them, but they were responding only to their feelings. They may have associated the "good experience" with a friendly support person, but would they have had a good experience if the person wasn't first and foremost able to help them?

So I learned several things. First off, customers just want to feel good. Competence is perceived as being of secondary importance. Smile at them and they'll overlook many other "real" problems (i.e. not being able to give them the help they need). Second, customers (people) are REALLY REALLY REALLY in need of a little stiffening of their back bone. I realize that there is absolutely no reason to be rude to people, but everyone has a bad day occasionally. If I'm at a bank teller and he/she is having the worst day of his/her life, and as a result, isn't the most polite to me, am I supposed to let that ruin MY day too? As long as they are able to help me, I have had a POSITIVE customer support experience. A smile may make it better... but in all honesty, that's secondary.

I'm sure that many people reading this are probably thinking "my he's cynical", and I would probably agree with you to a point, but in this day where we're told that being a couple of pounds overweight makes us as attractive as Quasimodo (and we believe it), and God forbid if we ever say something politically incorrect because it might offend someone (and as a whole, we embrace that), and by the way, if your breasts are a bit too small, or you have just hair just a little too sparse, no problem, we can fix that because you don't deserve to have that major hardship in your life (and we buy into it 100%).

Anyway, I DID learn from my customer support class. I actually did make a conscious effort to be more polite, more patient, and friendly to people, and as far as I know, it worked. At least, I never had any more complaints (that were brought to my attention). But even though I changed some of the outward stuff, I kept my style of answer the same. When people came to me with questions that they had not done their homework, I would still resist answering it... just more politely.

Anyway, I was thinking about all that this morning, and realized that this explained at least part of the problems going on now. Political leaders are NOT helping the country. Leaders of coorporations are bankrupting the companies. Financial leaders have led us into a recession. And how did they get to be where they are?

Probably because they had "good body language" and were "polite". They got people to support them, vote for them, hire them, because too many people are willing and able to overlook less-than-competent behaviors provided you're well groomed. And I'm sure that those leaders learned the same lesson... put on a good smile, and make people feel comfortable, and then you can do what you want, and they'll leave happy.

It's time to start evaluating people based on their abilities and competency, rather than how they look. Would you rather be in the grocery checkout line of the cashier who is ringing up groceries in a quiet, but very competent (and fast) manner, or the line where the cashier is smiling and happy, engaging everyone in friendly conversation... and taking three times as long. Would you rather have someone in a political office who is flawlessly groomed, impeccably tailored, and a master orator, or one who has run a small business and kept it in the black financially for years.

And on the other side of the coin, collectively as a society, we need to grow a spine! There was a time when men (and women) got out there and overcame problems, who took a country and turned it into the world leader in technology, education, and production. Now, we're so concerned about how much the razor will hurt our tender skin, or the unsightly psoriasis on our arm, that we are willing to spend our time and resource battling these life-threatening problems, and we're unwilling to face the discomforts that changing the current situation would entail. In short... we've become a bunch of sheep, led by anyone who will tell us "my what a nice wool coat you've got there".

Oh well... that's my rant for the day (week? month?).

Vacation (part 1)

2008-09-18T05:10:00.000-07:00

We just got back from vacation yesterday. We spent time in Yellowstone and Utah (visiting my family). There's a lot to write about (and I won't get it all in one post).

Vacations mean a lot to me. I grew up in Utah, and my family went on a vacation almost every summer. Memories of some of the trips we went on stand out as the best memories of growing up. I want our children to have the same experience.

I can remember many different vacations we took. I'll have to write more about some of them later. I've never written them down. I remember swimming in a glacier fed lake and coming out shivering (my parents chose not to join us in the water for some reason :-). I remember the vacation where we took a ferry ride down the coast of British Columbia. I remember the time we were exploring a ghost town that was on a map in southern Utah and we spent all afternoon exploring, then we drove on and a short time later we saw a sign to the town we thought we'd been at, so we'd been exploring a ghost town that wasn't listed on the map. I'll write about some of these later.

Growing up in Utah, the vacations we took all had a similar theme: exploring the western US (primarily Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and into British Columbia), usually camping. For me, that is what a vacation is. I can enjoy visiting cities or museums, amusement parks or historic buildings, but that's not what a vacation is. A vacation is about being outside in the forest, mountains, desert, or beaches of the Pacific.

One of my goals is to take a family vacation at least every other year so that my family has those same experiences. Of course, living in Florida, the places I want to go are a lot harder to get to than they were growing up in Utah, so I don't think we'll be able to go every single year, but at least every other year should be possible.

Two years ago, I took Heather to Bryce canyon. This year was Yellowstone. In a couple of years... who knows.

I'll write about Yellowstone in another post.

Buying a Van

2008-09-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Well, we're now the happy owners of a Toyota Sienna. We bought it on Monday. A lot of factors combined to get us to this decision... but overall, I think it was a good decision.

Factor 1: having a reliable primary vehicle

Heather's car was a 10-year old Honda Civic. It was actually relatively low mileage (only 125K), but it was showing some wear. Our only other vehicle is my truck, and it's 16 years old. I'm definitely of the mindset to drive a car into the ground, but especially for long trips, it's nice to have one that we don't have to have any concerns about whether or not it will make the trip with no problems. My truck is actually doing well... but I'd be uncomfortable driving it on a several hundred mile trip. For around town stuff, it's just fine, and I plan on driving it until it really becomes too much trouble to keep it running.

Factor 2: we'll be doing more driving

Another factor is that it looks like we'll be doing more driving in the future. In the past, the economics of travelling favored flying most of the time. Although marginally more expensive for two people to fly somewhere then to drive, when you throw in the time involved, flying made a lot of sense. Unfortunately, this year, so many things are changing. Plane tickets have doubled in price (by the time you throw in all the extra charges that are being charged, it may be more than that). And in December, Elizabeth turns 2, and at that point, we have to buy a ticket for her. So, flying this Christmas would cost 6 times what it cost last Christmas! Unfortunately, that shifts the economics strongly towards driving. Add in the advantages of not dealing with the severe luggage restrictions that you now face, not having to deal with the TSA rules, not having to get a rental car, etc., and it becomes quite compelling to drive. We'll save almost $1000 by driving this Christmas instead of flying.

Note to Airline companies: I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have figured out these economics! Yes, I'd rather fly. It's faster. But there are so many forces involved which make the costs outweigh the benefits. So many of those forces are beyond your control (the price of gas, the incredibly annoying procedures involved in getting past security, etc.), that you REALLY need to pay attention to the ones that you DO control. Your prices need to rise to offset the gas... but don't turn around and nickle and dime us with hidden costs that make it impossible to calculate the true cost of flying. Don't skimp on the costs that really are irrelevant (removing snacks which weigh virtually nothing, not letting people choose where they sit, raising fees to change tickets, etc.). Yes you can make it appear as if flying were "cheaper" by charging extra for these things... but when you get right down to it, the flying experience has gotten more and more frustrating. The airline companies need to make it more and more enjoyable (within the limitations placed on them by gas prices and regulations), and most of them are failing miserably. It doesn't matter how much you "cut costs". If nobody is flying... you're losing!

Factor 3: car seats

Heather and I hope to have a second child. One car seat in a Honda Civic isn't too bad (though it's certainly not trivial... as Elizabeth gets bigger and bigger, it's gotten harder getting her into the seat). Two will just be more hassle than it's worth, not to mention that that effectively removes our ability to take anyone with us. One adult could sit in the back with the two car seats, but it wouldn't be comfortable. The van can seat 8. That means that we can put Heather and I and two car seats in, and still take four other adults comfortably. That's nice.

Factor 4: safety

Let's face it. If you're going to be in a wreck, it's better to be in a modern van with air bags everywhere, then in a 10 year old compact car which only had air bags in front. This is definitely a case of bigger/newer is better.

Factor 5: the timing

With the end-of-year clearances (coupled with the fact that we got the van on Labor day with extra sales going on), the timing seemed to be as close to ideal as possible. We could afford it.

Anyway, I'll probably post more as we get used to the van.

Why I Am Libertarian

2008-08-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a couple of comments on my blog (so far only from my wife and her best friend, but it's a start :-). One definitely interested me. Initially I was going to reply as a comment, but I definitely want to put some of my political beliefs in my blog, so I'll reply as a blog posting instead of a comment.

Some excerpts from the comment:

have you ever heard of/read: Libertarianism, a Primer

I didn't realize you consider yourself Libertarian. I respect that a lot since I feel that our loss of rights for the sake of Government handling our responsibilities has been suffocating lately! They just love to grow themselves, don't they? And there's not a darn thing we can do about it! Well, other than whine and vote for Ron Paul.

I have not read "Libertarianism, a Primer", so I can't comment on it.

My "conversion" to libertarianism really started shortly after graduating from high school when I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time (I've read it several since then). I have some minor issues with the book itself. It's a little long winded. Okay, I take that back. At well over 1000 pages, it's a LOT long winded. Even so, the philosophy and ideas presented in that book are so important, and so dead on that I cannot see anyone reading it and failing to appreciate it.

As I read that book, I realized that government control of the economy, or personal freedoms, and (perhaps worst of all) morality is a direct route to loss of personal liberty.

Although I had those beliefs (or at least, the beginning of them), they were not well formed, and I wouldn't have called myself libertarian at that point. Over the years though, I've spent a great deal of time formalizing my political beliefs. I've studied some of the political statements of the founding fathers. I've familiarized myself with several political parties and philosophies. The greater understanding I have of my political beliefs, and the more I know about the things that made this country great, the more importance I place on personal liberty. For me, personal liberty is the factor that overrides all others when making political decisions. The Libertarian philosophy is the only one which agrees with that. I am therefore, completely and unreservably libertarian.

I would recommend the recent book "The Revolution: A Manifesto" by Ron Paul. It's a fairly simple and enjoyable read, and it presents many of the ideas of libertarianism in a very contemporary setting, so it is much more accessible to people.

As far as Ron Paul, he's an interesting wrinkle in how I may vote in the upcoming election. I hope it's completely unnecessary to say that I will not be voting for McCain or Obama. For me, it will come down to Bob Barr (the libertarian candidate) or Ron
Paul (if he's on the ballot).

Ron Paul appears to me to be a libertarian who actually wants to get elected, so he calls himself a republican in order to increase his likelihood of getting votes. Bob Barr appears to me to be a republican who does not agree entirely with the party, so he calls himself a libertarian. Ron Paul's actual stance on most issues is almost entirely libertarian. Bob Barr's has been very republican in the past with a relatively recent shift towards libertarianism.

If they're both on the ballot, I'll probably vote Ron Paul. He's demonstrated that he's a libertarian but he might actually draw enough support to implement some of his ideas. Otherwise, I'll vote Barr. I'm not 100% committed to this course at this point however.

With respect to the comment "there's not a darn thing we can do about it"... my response is this:

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Thomas Jefferson

As long as we go along with the flow, the current course that this country is taking will continue. If you disagree with the course that the country is taking... if you disagree with the political views of the candidates... if you disagree with the laws that are being passed, that opinion must be voiced.

As long as we continue to vote for the "lesser of two evils" (whichever candidate of the two you consider the lesser evil), we'll continue to get (at best) the lesser of two evils. Vote for the person who supports your liberty (which almost certainly means voting third party). Tell people you're doing so, and tell them why you're doing so. If we stop being silent... we're doing something. It may not be a lot (and it may not be enough), but it's a start.

Voice your opinion about the laws being passed. Write to your representatives. It's very easy at this point since there are any number of "contact your representative" web pages which can be used to send email to the appropriate people containing your views.

And I'd like to say something to all those people who have a "Proud to be a Democrat" or "Proud to be a Republican" bumper sticker (or flag, or shirt, or whatever). I'm proud to say that in the past 20 years, I have not voted for a Democrat or Republican presidential candidate. I'm not sure what it is you're proud of, but I know what I'm prout of. I am proud to have voted for people who I thought would protect personal liberty: both mine AND YOURS!

I would like to add one sidenote about Atlas Shrugged.

A common complaint about the philosophy presented in Atlas Shrugged is that it seems at first glance to be critical of acting charitably to people who are in need of help, or of trying to do the right thing for personal spritual or moral beliefs. And it may be true that Ayn Rand (a self-proclaimed atheist) presented some of those ideas in such an emphatic manner that they can be taken that way. As a very religious person, who believes in acting in a moral way, and in the responsibility to help others, I can understand this complaint, but do not find that her philosophy contradicts mine. Her philosophy was that we should be free to behave in such a way as we find good, and to do those things which make us happy (so long as we do not harm others), and that the government should not force a set of moral beliefs on the people. In other words, while I find it admirable that someone would voluntarily help someone who was in need, I find it dangerous (at the very least) that the government should be able to say "this person is in need, and you WILL help them or you WILL go to jail" (and this is exactly what the government does when they take taxes from us and use them for any number of social programs). I do not oppose the social program... merely the use of government force in their operation.

Anyway, enough about politics for now.

I Get 1500 MPG!!!

2008-08-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

When gas hit $4 a gallon, I decided to bike to work. I live a little over 5 miles from work, and between stop lights and everything else, I can bike there or back in about 25 minutes. For comparison, in the morning, I can drive in in about 15 minutes (since the traffic is so low), but coming home in the afternoon (even leaving at 4:00), it takes me 25 minutes, so I only spend about 10 additional minutes on the commute. In addition, I save quite a bit on gas (somewhere in the neighborhood of $40/month) and get in over 4 hours of exercise per week. Luckily, the people I work with are in to biking a lot (2 others bike in every day too), so it's a pretty bike friendly place to work.

Anyway, a friend and I were discussing alternative fuels, and in this case, we were talking ethanol. He drives a small motorcycle, and figured that he could get around 50 MPG going 50 MPH on it using ethanol. So, I got curious and started figuring out some numbers.

As a side note... I love math. I got a minor in math, and do math puzzles for fun. I suspect you would have guessed this by the time you get to the bottom of this post.

Anyway, these calculations are just for fun of course... nothing too scientific, so take them with a huge grain of salt.

First off, I went to the internet to find out some information, and learned that ethanol contains 150 calories/ounce, and an ounce is 0.0078125 gallons. A resting human metabolism burns around 75 calories/hour, and an easy biking (10 mph) metabolism is around 200 calories/hour for a 150 pound person. So, biking burns about 125 calories/hour in addition to the normal resting metabolism.

Using simple dimensional analysis (I'll write about that sometime!), you get the following:


X miles     10 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     125 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 1540 miles/gallon

Of course, I'm not suggesting that I (or anyone else) should use ethanol as their main source of calories, but it's an interesting result.

I decided to take it a bit further. If you want to go twice as fast, you don't burn twice as many calories. Instead, it goes up at some exponential rate. So, back to the internet I learned that more strenuous biking (20 MPH) burns around 540 calories/hour (or 465 after you subtract resting metabolism).

Plugging these results in, we get:


X miles     20 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     465 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 830 miles/gallon

A professional biker in the Tour de France bikes 4 around hours a day and burns between 6000 and 8000 calories per day. If you use 7000 as a happy medium, subtract the normal daily metabolism of 2200 calories per day, and divide the result over 4 hours of racing (and yes, I realize that that is a huge number of assumptions and over simplifications), that works out to be around 1200 calories per hour. The average speed this year was 25 MPH. Plug these numbers in and we get:


X miles     25 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     1200 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 400 miles/gallon

Obviously, I don't believe that a biker could actually go 50 MPH (as fast as the motorcycle that this all started with), but what if they could?

The first thing I did was to plot MPH vs. the log of calories burned per hour (since this is exponential). Then I extrapolated to 50 MPH. I realize that extrapolating outside of the range of the data is a horrible practice, given how far outside of the data (which consists only of 3 very approximate data points), the result is almost meaningless... but who cares. This is just for fun.

The extrapolated value gives approximately 10.75 at 50 MPH. This corresponds to 46,600 calories. Plugging these numbers in:


X miles     50 miles   1 hour        150 cal
-------  =  -------- x ------- x ----------------
gallon        hour     46600 cal   0.0078125 gallon

       = 21 miles/gallon

It should also be noted that the motorcycle is pushing the motorcycle and rider with a total weight of at around 500 pounds (remember, I'm talking a small motorcycle). The bicycle and rider is no more than 200 pounds. So, the motorcycle gets somewhere on the order of 5 times better gas mileage than the theoretical cyclist who could achieve 50 MPH.

Anyway, just some fun numbers to think about...

My Daughter Awake

2008-08-09T05:01:00.000-07:00

It's early Saturday morning right now. Elizabeth woke up a little after 7:00... and for us, that's sleeping in by an hour. It was really nice!

Before I was marrired, my preferred sleeping time was about 1:00 AM to 8:00 AM (or sometimes 2AM to 9AM). That's actually been my best sleeping time all of my adult life.

When I got married, one of the things that both my wife and I wanted was to have the same sleeping schedule, so we ended up compromising on about 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, and that wasn't too bad.

Then we had a baby who wakes up at 6:00 AM almost every morning. She's done that almost from the time she was born, and became very consistent when she settled into a sleep schedule (actually, it was 5:00 AM, but when Daylight Saving TIme ended, it became 6:00 AM). So for the past 19 months or so, our schedule has been either 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM (during the winter time) or 10:30 PM to 6:00 AM (during the summer time). The Daylight Saving Time switch was mostly ignored since Elizabeth just kept the same schedule.

Even though I've been doing it for for a year and a half, it still feels so unnatural. If I were on my own for a week (which I don't want), I could slip back into my real schedule in about 2 days.

One huge advantage of it though is that for the first time in my life, I'm working a 7:00 to 4:00 schedule. This means a couple of things. I work in IT, and the majority of people are night people like me, so it's not unusual for me to be there one or two hours alone before anyone else shows up. Also, I get to leave at 4:00 which actually gives me time to do a few things after work that need to be done in the normal 9-5 work day. And it gives me a very long afternoon to spend with my family.

I like the advantages so much, I plan on keeping up this schedule permenantly, even though the sleeping still feels so wrong to me.

Incidentally, my wife created a blog for our daughter. It's called "My Joy" and it's linked in the side bar if you're interested.

Why?

2008-08-02T05:13:00.001-07:00

I usually do things for a reason, but in the case of this blog, I'm not sure why I'm doing it. I'm kind of excited about it... I get to talk about anything I want. Sometimes it'll be stream of consciousness type writing. Other times I'll write essays. I always enjoyed writing essays. But it doesn't really explain why I'm looking forward to writing. Probably just because it will allow me to talk about things that are important to me. Or maybe it's something else that I'll figure out as I go.

Some of the most important things in my life are: my wife and daughter (I'll write a lot about both of them), my church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; aka Mormon), my political beliefs (staunch libertarian), building things (I love to build), my job (computer programmer and systems administrator), etc.

We'll see where it goes.

Maybe I'll start by saying where the title of my blog comes from. I've been called "The Date Man" on a couple of occasions, and I kind of liked it. It doesn't refer to the number of girls I've gone out with. It refers to a program I wrote (and continue to modify) called Date::Manip. It's a perl module... and unless you are a perl programmer, this probably means nothing to you, and is not very interesting.

One of the fundamental things about me is that I am an engineer. I like to build things. I "build" computer programs. I "build" meals (I like to cook). I enjoy carpentry and metal working and have gotten to build a number of things. Some might think that writing a computer program, cooking a meal, and building a shelf are three completely different things, but I get almost the exact same enjoyment out of them.

In each type of building, I look forward to building something "grand" or especially meaningful. Although I've written a number of computer programs, Date::Manip stands out as one of my most important. So when I was called "The Date Man", it was definitely a compliment. Anyway, it came to mind when I was starting this blog, and it stuck.

But don't worry... I'm not going to go into any details about writing computer programs (at least, I don't think I will). I can just see it. An essay entitled "The inner workings of a computer programmer's mind". I realize that it would be thrilling, but you'll probably just have to do without.

Anyway, more later...

First Post

2008-07-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

So, at my wife's encouragement (she loves her blog), I'm starting a blog. We'll see how it goes...