Ron Paul is seriously nuts.

In a face-off debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman, Ron suggested that the end of the Great Depression was the result of lowering of taxes and unloading of debt after WW-II ended.

REALLY?  REALLY?

That's NOT what the facts say.  The fact is, Republicans lowered the top tax rates in the preceding decade before the stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression.  And the Great Depression ended BEFORE the end of WW-II.  Worse, the US entered two recessions within the decade following the end of WW-II.

And then he goes off on how governments outlaw the use of gold and silver as currency.

That's not entirely true.

You can freely barter with gold and silver if you wish; the only time you have to pay $$$ for capital gains, is when you invest in gold / silver, which is the same case as when you buy any other commodity.  Are we to legalize corn as legal tender, too?  Ron Paul's half-truths are meant to give people the right to avoid taxes altogether.

To top it off, Ron Paul insists that low taxes and deregulation will increase economic output.  And by logical conclusion, no taxes and no regulation will make the Free Markets perfect -- it turns out that's exactly what Paul argues for.

Or as every person who has studied US history knows, in a completely unregulated capitalist market, we'll have a major recession every 4~5 years.

Ron Paul just keeps playing loose with the facts, just like George Will has done over the years as a talking head.

Mmm...donuts.

Picked up my Google Offers donuts from VooDoo Doughnuts in downtown Portland this evening.  It's like a Portland must-visit.

It was four specially chosen doughnuts, in an exclusive Google Offers...see the sticker?

Inside, there was the Old Dirty Bastard (upper left), the special Google Offers doughnut (upper right), the Sprinkle (bottom right), and the Toasted Coconut (bottom left).

Even the cast from Grimm know this place...by the way, they were filming tonight in the North Park Blocks.  :D

The Beatitudes, according to the Free Market Capitalist and Conservative

According to the word and deeds of Free Market Capitalists and Conservatives, revisions to the Beatitudes were made:

• Blessed are the filthy rich, for their Gold is waiting in the kingdom of Heaven.
• Blessed are they, who desecrate our dead enemies, for they shall be celebrating in the streets with Southern Comfort.
• Blessed are the bold, for they shall enslave the Earth.
• Blessed are they who used justice for their own means, for they shall profit.
• Blessed are the merciless, for they shall be strong (and Win!)
• Blessed are those with cleaned paper trails, for they shall never see prison.
• Blessed are the war-mongering chicken hawks, for they will be called the missiles of God.
• Blessed are the torturers, for theirs is the solace of hearing screams of pain.

A Beaver in the Willamette.

Saw this today near the Fremont Bridge -- a beaver swimming.  No idea where this fella was headed, but I don't think he'll be able to build a dam on the Willamette.

At first I thought it might be nutria (not that I've seen nutria in the Willamette in downtown), but you could sort of make out the wide flat tail in the water.

Spring continues.

Tulips are halfway through the season.

Cherry blossoms are disappearing fast.

But Rhododendrons are coming on strong.

David Brooks...seriously???

Today's entry in the NYT, David Brooks insists that, "Nearly 80 years later, it’s hard to know if the New Deal did much to end the Great Depression."

Okay then...let's take a look at what happens when you go contrarian to Keynes and do the German austerity thing in Spain: you get unemployment that is now greater than US during the Great Depression.  Twenty-one straight months of recession, Mr. Brooks.  TWENTY-ONE.

Clear enough?  No?

Then how about British austerity?  Thank you very much, double-dip recession.

Everyone is starting to get it...except US conservatives, that is: Onward to austerity, America marches!  (to the gallows)

Paul Ryan -- I loved Ayn before I hated her?

This is very funny.  Paul Ryan's changing his tune on Ayn Rand.

I've mocked conservatives before, on their wholehearted love for Ayn Rand, an atheist (or at least agnostic).  Conservatives like Paul Ryan want to pretend they're libertarian and that the two are interchangeable (conservatism and libertarian), but in reality they're not.  What in effect conservatives want, is to remake government with conservative religious values, as opposed to an agnostic government that lets people choose, even their own gods.

If Ayn Rand were alive, she would recoil in horror, to hear that conservatives use religion as a litmus test for public office.

Yes, she would support the conservative rhetoric of a smaller government, but that's obviously not what conservatives are attempting to do, anyway.  They support increased spending for the military and are willing to add new laws that require additional federal spending.  In other words, government spending priorities change, but not the size.

Ron Paul is another fake acolyte, by the way.  He's drifted over to the religious conservative party of late, in a delusional belief that he could actually win the Republican nomination for President.

I leave you with this:

"But to be a follower of both [Ayn] Rand and Christ is not possible. The original Objectivist was a type of self-professed anti-Christ who hated Christianity and the self-sacrificial love of its founder. She recognized that those Christians who claimed to share her views didn’t seem to understand what she was saying."

Ayn Rand is Missundaztood.

---

P.S. Religion is Collectivist by nature.  Liberalism is Collectivist with or without Religion.

Spring cleaning.

Bachelor style.

Put stuff into ziploc bags.

2012 Q1 US GDP lower than expected...Republicans should be happy, no?

As noted by Bloomberg (among many), government spending has fallen 6 straight quarters, or as CNBC's Jay Carney notes, "Government has become its own worst enemy when it comes to the economy."

Republicans should be cheering, no?

This is the austerity they wanted -- cuts in government spending, to reduce the government deficit -- to inspire confidence in markets.  They wanted to have drastic cuts in federal spending -- 8.1% quarterly drop in defense spending not enough?

Or maybe, some Republicans are starting to understand Econ 101: Total GDP = Private GDP + Public GDP.

Uh oh...I better get rid of my Western movie collection.

I just read this story on a recent settlement by the City of Portland.  $250K is not enough, IMO.

There are numerous, disturbing things about what happened to an innocent man -- tasered five times in the back, broken face, mistaken identity, exaggerated and false testimony by a police officer, failure to question a suspect before using force to take him down.  This one really bothers me: the city attorney tried to use the innocent man's classic kung-fu film collection as proof that he was a violent man.

Talk about a stretch of the imagination there.  I am left flabbergasted that a lawyer would try to use circumstantial evidence that had no bearing on the validity of the lawsuit, to try to paint an innocent man in poor light.  Does this mean that we all have to be proactive and destroy any and all movies and video games that might otherwise color us as violent, too?

Do I have to get rid of my classic Westerns, including my Clint Eastwood movies?

SketchUp: sold to.......who?

This morning, the official SketchUp blog announced that Trimble had reached an agreement to purchase SketchUp from Google.

Who?

Trimble is a GPS-centric company -- says so in its company history.  I'm quite concerned.

Even though the same team dating back to @Last remains, everyone has seen what happened to SU when Google bought it: Explosion of popularity, support and growth of major features, while maintaining the free version.

With ownership changing hands, the first question that comes to mind is: Does Trimble (TRMB) -- whose cash reserves has shrunk each of the last three years, whose P/E ratio is 3x larger than El Goog's, whose EPS is 1/30th that of El Goog's, whose profit margins is about a third that of El Goog's -- have the capacity to maintain what Google has done with the platform, and to top it off, improve SketchUp?

Surely the team was already deep into development of version 9, so it seems unlikely that the software will suffer in the next generation, but after that?

One does get the sense that Trimble and the SU team are looking to integrate stronger BIM capabilities into SU, so that may be a huge plus.  If SU Pro with its LayOut software were improved further, it could replace most CAD software.

Fingers crossed and hope for the best, but deeply concerned.

Economics, by Mitt.

Over the past few months, Mitt Romney has given quite a few speeches, espousing his philosophy on economics.  As a public service, I thought I'd distill it all down to a few, simple, understandable chunks of humor.

Romney Economics 101

• Demand 01: If you give a bunch of rich people more money, they'll manufacture demand for goods by simply adding new jobs.  By feat of fuzzy math, new jobs won't decrease worker hours or efficiency, but rather, will increase efficiency to 110% -- ask Bush Jr.
• Demand 02: If you give a bunch of rich people more money, they'll spend it, which will trickle down and produce demand.  (Shh....if those offshore accounts aren't mentioned, no one will notice the money flowing out of the country!  Quick Ann, move our money to the South Pacific and Switzerland!)
• Supply 01: If the government provides cheap credit (aka quantitative easing and lowering of bank rate), our debt will increase.  The problem here obviously, is WHO you give money to.  If you give it to the government to spend, it'll go into a black hole of debt.  If you give it to the rich people, it'll go back into the economy.  (Shh....if those offshore accounts aren't mentioned, no one will notice the money flowing out of the country!  Quick Ann, move our money to the South Pacific and Switzerland!)
• Supply 02: If you lower supply of dollars spent by the government, you'll increase GDP.  In other words, the money that government employees earn and spend, are worth less than half that of those workers in the private economy.  In fact, their contribution is not part of total GDP, because they're socialist wealth generators and they do not count.  We have separate cash registers for those kinds of people.
• Free Trade 01: Government shouldn't interfere with transfer of jobs between nations.  However, if jobs are exported overseas, it's the fault of government for not doing enough to keep them in the US...like lowering of labor costs and regulations.
• Free Trade 02: If jobs are shipped overseas, the government must allow private sector to lower labor costs.  In other words, if Chinese are earning $360 a month working at an Apple factory in Shenzen, then American workers should be willing to work for $360 a month working at an Apple factory in Kansas City.
• Regulation 01: Regulations cost businesses and jobs.  Those jobs created to navigate regulations and those created to produce products that meet regulatory requirements, are not counted as real jobs.
• Regulation 02: Environmental protections are not needed in a free market.  People will stop swimming in polluted waters once they start dying from exotic diseases and afflictions.  (And anyway, dead people don't vote.)
• Taxes 01: Low taxes leads to a growth economy.  By extension of this logic therefore, no taxes leads to a perfect economy.  Except the poor -- they should have to pay their fair share.
• Taxes 02: Capital flows to the lowest-tax nations.  Again, by extension therefore, no taxes leads to a perfect economy.  Except the poor -- they should have to pay their fair share.

Burdening (or unburdening) future generations?

Imagine a nation, full of responsible people, refusing to burden future generations with the problems of the current nation.

And what if that burden was climate change?

The howls of climate skeptics can be heard from over yonder and 6 feet under.

What they might not realize or are otherwise willing to ignore, is that a prominent UC Berkeley scientist and global warming skeptic Richard Muller, sifted through the existing data and changed his mind about global warming.

Look, it's not going to cost the $1.3 trillion that the Iraq War has cost American taxpayers between 2001 and 2008 -- something that is already burdening future generations, right?

And anyway, let's say that in 2030, it turns out climate change has altered the Earth's landscape.  Now you're burdened with two costs: the cost of damages from climate change and the cost of adaption / reversing climate change.  Because reversing climate change takes decades, regardless of whether it is 2012 or 2030, the costs will always carry over to future generations, as well as the effects of change.

Let me put this into perspective.  The EPA reports that in 2010 America released 6.8 billion metric tons of GHG.  The report states that two-thirds of all GHG emissions comes from transportation and electricity generation.  That means that a large chunk of GHG reduction could be accomplished by one-time changes, from multi-billion dollar investments in clean electricity generation and ultra-low emissions vehicles -- the easy stuff.

Investing in these two areas in fact do not burden the future.  By nudging people into higher-efficiency, cleaner vehicles today, the entire auto industry is nudged towards higher-efficiency, cleaner vehicle production today, for the benefit of cheaper materials and methods in the future.  By nudging people and industries into cleaner energy production, future generations benefit from cheaper energy.  More importantly, our relationship with the Middle East and OPEC changes drastically, cutting down our own spending on wars in the future.

So why not invest into a better tomorrow?

Standing desk temporarily discontinued.

The dog had been staring at me constantly.

I knew what he wanted.

I moved back to the ground and the futon, and he immediately scurried over and laid down by my leg...and fell asleep.

He stayed there for about an hour before moving on.

I don't know which way the relationship is...I hold the leash, but he's got his own heart strings on me.

I feel bad though.

I let him overdo it this afternoon at the park, in 80 degrees.  Dogs don't know how to moderate -- they only know how to express 100% or 0%.

He was limping tonight while going to the bathroom.

He sure enjoyed playing ball though.

WIN Francois Hollande, WIN!

France is headed to the polls Sunday, and Francois Hollande is likely to move forward to a May 6 head to head vote against Sarkozy, unless he can win 50% majority and defeat Sarkozy on Sunday in a field of 10.

If he beats Sarkozy on Sunday, even if he must fight to win on May 6, it will mark an important referendum on conservative dogma that has spread since Ronald Reagan / Margaret Thatcher.

Image via Wikipedia

"He supports encouraging growth instead of austerity programs. He has proposed a 75% tax rate on personal earnings over $1.3 million a year." - LA Times

"And even some right-wing governments in Europe are discovering the dangers of the Berlin-imposed, all-austerity approach to the euro and sovereign debt crisis." - UK Independent

"Hollande threw down another gauntlet to the Germans and the ECB. The Frankfurt central bank, he said, should help fix the euro crisis by lending directly to eurozone governments rather than supplying cheap credit to banks." - UK Guardian


Is this the Euro Spring -- the common man's uprising against Plutocracy -- and will it arrive stateside?

What I'm reading.

• Reading now:
• Cass Sunstein's, "Worst Case Scenarios", from 2007.  --- 3 stars so far (non-fiction writers are almost always verbose)

• What's in the house, and comes into and out of my consciousness:
• Blaine Brownell's first (in a series) "Transmaterials", from 2005. --- 4 stars so far (mostly good stuff, but many are not materials, but implementations)
• Taschen's line of Philip Jojidio's Now! typologies, "Temporary Architecture Now!" from 2011. --- 4 stars so far (some seem more like they could be permanently temporary, like the LA Temporary Contemporary, and in the back of my mind is the nagging thought of where all those temporary materials end up -- trash?)
• Judy Shepard's "Small Stores under 250 sq-m", from 2011. --- 5 stars so far (I love checking out how other people use materials and space, and this one is pure eye candy)

• On tap for the next 30 days:
• Richard Thaler and Cass Sunsteins, "Nudge", from 2008.
• Janet Byrne's compilation, "The Occupy Handbook", from 2012.

• Further out:
• Paul Krugman's, "End this Depression Now!", to be released next week.

The State of Utah has gone nuts. Gold nuts to be exact.

The State of Utah has just passed and signed into law, authorization to use gold and silver as legal tender.  If you're a Ron Paul follower, this may sound reasonable, but for the rest of the world and leading economists, this is downright stupid.

People barter all the time, so this isn't exactly groundbreaking, except that, now the State of Utah is willing to participate in bartering, specifically with gold and silver.  But obviously, this is not about alternative forms of transactions, but rather, a political statement affirming the Gold Standard.  And doing so -- using gold and silver as a means of payment -- will invariably cause problems.

I'll just put it plainly: gold is a commodity.

What happens to other commodities?

At this point, most reasonable people would know what happens to commodities: bubbles and crashes.  Tied to bubbles, as always, are those who follow late in the game -- the State of Utah and others.  It should be obvious where this is going, no?

So think about it.  If Utah chooses to barter both ways (as income and payments) then it has to peg a value to gold.  If it fixes the price of gold permanently but the nominal price of gold rises, people will stop using it to pay Utah, and will otherwise demand that Utah pay them in gold, at that artificially lower value.  Likewise, if the nominal price of gold falls, then people will start paying Utah with gold, but demanding that Utah pay them with US Dollars.

So what happens if Utah chooses to float the value of gold to the nominal market value?  Well then all they're doing is adding another layer of bureaucracy into the system, by having to constantly evaluate receivables and payments for the proper value.  Utah will end up spending more money keeping track of its books and transactions.  So much for smaller, efficient government!

But what if Utah decided that all it was going to do was accept gold, but not pay out in gold?  The answer is, that Utah is going to be the biggest loser -- see above about commodities.  One day, Utah will simply go bankrupt, much as some banks did, when they were left holding the big bag of overvalued mortgages.

Nothing good can come out of their decision to accept gold and silver as cash equivalent.

Well actually there is one good thing: their failure will give many people the opportunity to mock them, and other similarly-minded individuals.

Polls are (mostly) useless, until you aggregate them.

Chicago Tribune talks up about the early polls, showing a wide swath of disparity from Obama +9 to Romney +5.  These broad polls are practically meaningless by themselves, and anyway it's so early in the season that people in the soft middle have no idea what they're going to do.

But when all of the polls put all together as you might find at Real Clear Politics, you can observe significant trends.

Some might suggest that the trend shows the gap is closing; I think otherwise, because again, those people would be focused too narrowly on the short-term, and only projecting what they want to see.

Looking at the last several months - or even the past 14 - Romney has only breached the 46% poll average twice, and has otherwise remained below Obama's numbers.  Look closely at the current RCP tracking -- even when the economy was worse off early last year compared to today, Obama was solidly leading Romney (and all other Republican candidates).  It was not even close.

To get further perspective, just look back at the 2008 election.

Quickly, you can see that McCain had trouble breaching the 46% poll average in the final 14 months prior to the General Election, and towards the end, Obama's margin widened, en route to a landslide.

If you look further back to the 2004 election, you can see what a closer election looks like, in the run-up to November.

You see how, from early on Bush and Kerry swung back and forth in large shifts?  You see none of that in the current election season.

Romney's fighting a massive, uphill battle.

Nokia Q1-2012: The beatings shall continue.

I don't know what investors are thinking, but I think I can distill Nokia's Q1-2012 down to a handful of numbers:

-13% -- Quarter over quarter change in cash and liquid assets.
-24% -- Year over year change in cash and liquid assets.
-39% -- Quarter over quarter change in smart phone sales volume.
-51% -- Year over year change in smart phone sales volume.

Oh, and if you hear anyone talking about how Nokia's North America sales are up 75% quarter over quarter, allow me to disabuse you of any idea that this is important.  North America represented all of 2.2% of Nokia's total sales measured in Euros, and just 0.7% of total handset units, last quarter.

That stat however, does point out that rather than increasing WP market share in North America, Nokia's WP sales are displacing others, since comScore and Nielsen both show Microsoft's WP platform continuing to shrink.

And anyway, all you need to do is look at the chart below, to see that, for whatever reason, Nokia's smart phone sales have resumed their steep decline.

Nikon D3200: The camera that I want.

$700 gets you 24.2 megapixels, at 6016x4000 -- pretty darn fantastic, yes?  It's - predictably - sold as a kit with an 18-55 mm lens, although I don't particularly like kit lenses.  It does 1080p video at 30fps, has an HDMI mini plug, but for the life of me, I don't know why it has a USB 2.0 plug instead of 3.0.  You can read the entire information here and/or here.

Notice the prices are beginning to move upward; now the 3000-level cameras are priced above the 5000-level cameras.  No issue though, because it's a 24.2 megapixel sensor, and that changes everything.

I'd reserve one, but as much as I'd love to get it, I have my eye on a really awesome lens.  This one too.

A note to Mitt.

Don't give me your BS speech about how Obama is pitting American against American.  I was never with you and your BFF Ted Nugent.

• I don't believe that money trickles down.  I believe wealth trickles UP.  If the good folks working at companies that Bain invests in, all decide to walk off the job, you're up diarrhea creek with the leveraged loans that Bain used.
• I don't believe in strapping pets onto the roof a a vehicle.  My dog gets sick riding in the car too, but I would never force him to ride on the roof, in a kennel, just like I would NEVER strap my mother on the roof, simply because she gets car sick (which she does).
• I think women should choose for themselves whether they want to follow a religious - yes I said RELIGIOUS - belief that life begins at conception.  I choose to believe in God, and I think everyone should have that right to review their own conscience.
• I believe in protecting the environment and respect the Earth -- so do the US Catholic Bishops.
• I believe that threatening Iran with war is contrary to Jesus' messages that, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."
• I believe Russians aren't our enemies.  If I had to choose between a Russian pacifist and you, I'd always choose the Russian pacifist, even if he had halitosis, cleaned his nose with his fingers and couldn't speak a word of English.  And I'm no pacifist.
• I don't flip flop.  I most especially have a distaste for hypocrisy.
• I don't say anything.  I choose my words carefully, and I especially don't change my words to appeal to different people.
• I believe in social justice, labor laws, and that the health of a nation is measured in the well being of its people.  That doesn't mean that I support the people who cheat the system, just like I didn't support the folks at Enron who cheated the capitalist, free markets.
• I believe that GDP = private GDP + public GDP, as stated in Economics 101.
• I believe that running a country is not the same as running a business.  A business' motive is profit, but nowhere in the US Constitution's Preamble, does it state as such:
• "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
• I don't believe in confidence fairies who will lavish America with gold, if Republicans are voted into office -- I believe Democrats have always been better for the American economy, by avoiding fairies and searching for truths.

In short, I was never with you.

Travel advice for the Romneys

You put THE LUGGAGE on the roof of a station wagon, NOT THE DOG.

More proof poor people pay taxes (and GOP know squat).

Well I'm not exactly "poor", but for tax filing purposes, my income was below the national poverty level this year, and were it not for the EIC, I would have paid more than 10% of my AGI.

As self-employed, I have to pay what would have normally been an employer's portion of payroll taxes.  This means that some distortions occur with regard to my taxes and taxable income.  Thanks to Democrats and Obama who passed and signed legislation granting a reduced payroll tax, the amount I owed was - ever so - slightly lower.  It was so small, I barely noticed it, actually.  <insert uncomfortable laughter here>

So here's where the distortion occurs: my taxable income was actually ZERO!  So there you go -- I have zero taxable income, but I still paid a big tax, though not big enough to trigger a penalty for underpayment.

And while the Romneys expect to pay about 22% on their taxable income; the Obamas paid about 33% on their taxable income; if I had just $1 left of taxable income, my taxes paid would have been in the thousand-percent range!

Anyway, more proof that poor people pay taxes and Republicans are full of themselves.

Today is WP and Nokia bashing day.

It appears that this UK Reuters article has gotten the internet all stirred up this morning.  In it, the author suggests that Nokia's having a tough go at it with European operators.  Specifically, operators speculate that Nokia's phones would sell better if they had Android on them.

Ouch!  Stephen Elop's not going to take that lying down.

That article pairs with yesterday's announcement that Moody's downgraded Nokia to just above junk status, following Elop's pre-earnings assessment of a bleak quarter.  Some people think that Nokia should stick with Windows Phone.  But Gizmodo unleashed an indictment of Microsoft's execution.

And so you thought DRM was over?  Not a chance.  It turns out, this ZD Net UK reporter ran into a brick wall, trying to have more than 5 devices active on her account so that she could review them during the same period.  The reason why she couldn't, is that Microsoft limits the number of activated devices on an account, as a means for DRM on Zune's digital content.  It's DRM 2.0.

Finally, here's a hint: the Samsung Galaxy S-III unveiling in just over two weeks in the UK is probably going to be the most-watched unveiling, outside of the next generation iDevice.

That pretty much sums up the woes facing Nokia and Microsoft.

Poor people do not pay taxes: a real look.

It's a lie.  Let me show you in a simple example of Joe Sixwhacked's 2011 1040EZ.

$10,000 - how much Joe Sixwhacked earned last year (his AGI since he doesn't earn interest or anything else).
- $9500 - standard deduction for a single person.
=  $500 - Taxable Income.
-   $270 - Earned Income Credit deduct.
=  $230

=   $24 - Tax, based on IRS tax tables.

So you're thinking...sure, but that's just 0.2% tax on AGI, and 4.8% on Taxable Income.  But don't you think it's rather dumb to tax people living below the poverty level to begin with?  All that money comes back in the way of Medicaid and other aid programs...why create the paperwork hassle and the cost of the paper trail, for a bunch of people who can barely put food on the table?

And anyway, it goes to show that conservatives are using speculation when they say that all poor people pay no taxes.

The irony of the online ICC / ANSI A117.1-2003

The irony of the online, free version of the ICC / ANSI A117.1-2003 accessibility standard, is that the site has extremely poor usability.  It was written by lawyers, for lawyers.

Try it and see for yourself.  Here is your assignment: Find out the clear floor space for a toilet. Count the number of clicks. If you do not find it in less than 6 clicks, you've failed the mission.  If you gave up, you've not only failed the mission but you're also required to turn in your Architecture license (no, not really).

It is practically impossible to find a drawn diagram, without first clicking three times.  Most of the time, you're chasing down a reference to a diagram, in which case it'll take you no less than five clicks.  I suspect they did this, in their own self-serving desires to encourage people to purchase the document, instead of utilizing the free resource.

Shoot the lawyers, cut off their tongues, then shoot their tongues.*  And fire them all.

Just saying, you know?

---

* - See reference to Captain Jack Sparrow quote.

Standing up work station.

It's the second week now, and today I haven't sat down on my bar chair yet.  Clearly, my legs are feeling better, as is my back, so no need to rest on a chair.  Standing up while working on the computer requires a transitional period, but I have to say, I really like the move so far.

Note of course, that I still have a separate workstation that I use, depending upon the task at hand.  I also have a netbook for those times that the (17.3") laptop is too heavy.  The thing to take away however, is that standing up has become a nice option to get away from just sitting down all day.

iPhone subsidies to come back down to Earth?

I've mentioned before about the disparity of subsidies between the iPhone and all other phones, and how iPhone users result in losses for the wireless carriers.  Looks like the good times may be ending.

Wall Street analysts believe that carriers may soon cut down on those subsidies that make iPhones price-competitive with Androids, but with a significant loss of return and in some cases a loss for the carriers.  By granting iPhones a larger subsidy, carriers are in effect trying to enforce their profit margins to the detriment of Androids (and to a lesser extent Windows Phones and Blackberry phones).

If Apple needs to boost its sales, it can always lower prices to the carriers, much like Nokia / Microsoft has tried to do with the Lumia phones.

Chrome browser to Firefox browser url drag and drop.

Try this:

From either Firefox or Chrome, select the url in your address bar, then drag it over into the other browser, and release.  It'll open up that url in the tab you drop it into, or open the url in a new tab if you drop it off to the side of a tab.  Neat, huh?

This trick won't work with Opera, and goes only one way between Chrome and IE9, while it won't work at all with Firefox-IE9.

I've been going back and forth so much between the two, that I thought I should try it out to see if it could actually work.  I'm curious why it works between FF and Chrome so well, but not with the others.

Nokia's done with their Beta Testing.

You'd hope they'd be done by now with the beta testing of their customers.  First it was the Meego N9 phone from Nokia.  Then it was the Windows Phone Lumia 800.  Now it's the Windows Phone Lumia 900.

Oh wait, they were referring to the OTHER phones out there, including other WP phones?  Well, you would have never guessed it, looking at Nokia's own lineup.

Don't ask me which one's the Lumia 800 and which one's the 900...I purposely left it ambiguous to make the point!

I don't see how Nokia will increase WP's market share with the Lumia 900.  What's really going to happen, is that the Lumia 900 will displace Lumia 800 and other WP handset sales.

I just checked, and Verizon's carrying just one WP model online: the HTC Trophy in new and refurbished forms.  T-Mobile's got two: the Nokia Lumia 710 and HTC Radar 4G.  AT&T has five models online: Samsung Focus Flash (new and refurbished), Samsung Focus S, HTC Titan and the HTC Titan II, and of course the Nokia Lumia 900.

For those folks in Canada, Rogers has just two WP models online: the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Nokia Lumia 900.  Telus has just one WP phone online: the Nokia Lumia 800.  Bell has no WP phones online.

I'm somewhat taken aback, because I swear there were more models available just six months ago, from all the carriers.

Maybe the carriers are waiting for Microsoft's end of the beta testing period?  ;)

Romney: loves women, hates men.

Seems fairly ridiculous for a Republican, who claims that regulation is the bane of a free market, to complain that women were losing their jobs at a faster pace under the Obama Administration.  If you've been paying attention, conservative economists insist that you can't do anything to make the economy recover faster than some natural business cycle.

So what exactly would Republicans do -- make it illegal to discriminate, based on gender?  Already done under Democrats.  See: Civil Rights Act of 1964 - prohibits job discrimination based on, among other things, sex. Passed by a Democratically-controlled Senate and House, signed into law by a Democratic President, no less.

Short of providing incentives for businesses to hold onto women - in other words giving federal money away in one form or another - and digging deeper into the hypocrite's hole (see: reverse job discrimination), there's nothing Republicans could do.

Are Republicans going to force businesses to lay off one man for every one woman laid off, and vice versa?  Seems pretty stupid that Romney even broach the subject, don't you think?

Behind the scenes, away from the cameras, I can imagine diehard conservatives are foaming at the mouth at the suggestion that somehow Republicans should interfere in a free market.

But let's examine what Romney is saying, because he's only telling you half the story.

If you look at Catherine Rampell's NYT entry on the matter, not only were men the first to lose their jobs, but they were also far more likely to lose their jobs over the last 5 years than women.

Instead of allowing the Romney camp to spread a white lie, just look at the wider picture.

If you use an index where the start of the recession = 100, you can see that men lost jobs FASTER very early on, and by last month, remain BELOW women in employment.  There was no conspiracy against women; if anything women were the last shoe to drop, after men lost their jobs.

(I'm not going to show it, but if you look back at the last decade, women were last to hire, last to fire.  You can visually see part of it in one of Catherine Rampell's referenced charts from the previous link.)

So of course you know what the Republicans would have said, if men continued to lose their jobs while women kept more of their jobs: the Obama Administration hates males.

By inverse argument therefore, Romney hates men.

Nokia issues software update to its Lumia 900 bug...

...too bad it can't push the update out over the air.

It's amusing to see some websites calling the update simple.  Watch the video and count the number of steps you have to perform.

Note how you have to download and install Zune software to your PC, then connect your phone and run Zune software, to check online for updates, then download them, then install them.  Then you have to put your left foot in and your left foot out, your left foot in and shake it all about, you do the hokey pokey and shake yourself around -- that's what it's all about.



You know, there's no step required and no convoluted process in an automatic Android OTA update...it just updates your phone.

And I'm still carrying a smirk every time their ads come up.

If you think about it, Nokia's QA/QT testing should have caught this enormous flaw affecting data access.  It's not like this was some hidden vulnerability which was peripheral and not primary to the phone's functionality.  And if a flaw that affects a phone's primary operation goes unnoticed during testing, what other flaws might be lurking underneath?

Again, Nokia's the one implying that its phone is bug-free, by using ads to tout the end of beta testing.

"List one..just one single piece of software that was out of beta that did not have a bug." - Raygun, Slashgear user.

Taxes and Presidents (and Presidential wannabees)

LA Times has gone deep into the idiot trolling zone today.  Their headline reads, "Obama's federal tax burden drops as book revenues dip."   And just as you'd expect, a bunch of conservative trolls are claiming that President Obama is a hypocrite for not paying his fair share.

These conservative trolls have no clue what they're talking about.  Instead of using either Total Income or Adjusted Gross Income, let's take deductions out of the income, to see what's going on, and use Taxable Income.

• Obamas: 
• 2011 Tax owed / Taxable Income ($496K) = 32.7% tax rate
• 2010 Tax owed / Taxable Income ($1.34M) = 33.9% tax rate
• Romneys: 
• 2011 (estimated) Tax owed / Taxable Income ($15.2M) = 21.2% tax rate
• 2010 Tax owed / Taxable Income ($17.1M) = 17.6% tax rate

This is not what the LA Times wants you to see, apparently, because it divulges the true disparity between the types of income certain millionaires earn, compared to the rest of us.

So for instance, the top tax bracket in the US on ordinary income is 35%.  Now, you'll never see anyone pay the full 35%, because you don't pay 35% on the entirety of your income, right?  For the Obamas filing jointly (and anyone else filing jointly for that matter), only the income above $379,149.99 is taxed at 35%.

(It's an odd twist to the tax system, but the tax bracket is highly regressive for those making above that level. It surely provides an incentive for people barely above that taxable income cutoff level to find whatever deductions they can, to drop below that top tax bracket.)

So look at what the Romneys are paying, in comparison to the Obamas.  The Romneys are EARNING FAR MORE yet they are PAYING FAR LESS in taxes, as a percentage of their Taxable Income.  Remember, this is after deductions to the AGI, so charitable contributions have no effect on this tax rate.

What's going on here?  The millionaire's two favorite tax loopholes: capital gains tax rate and the carried interest rule.

While royalties from Obama's books are taxed as ordinary income, nearly all of Romney's income comes from capital gains and the carried interest from Bain Capital.

People who support the much lower capital gains tax rate (and for a time that rate was zero), insist that this is supporting the job-creators.  So exactly how many employees did Mitt Romney have in 2011 and 2010?

Zero.  Romney has no business; in fact he's classified as a sole proprietor, for tax purposes.  No employees, people.

Frankly, I don't mind the Buffet Rule, but the easier means to resolving this issue, is to make capital gains tax into a progressive tax with different brackets -- 0% for under $20K; 10% for $20K - $50K; 20% for $50K - $250K; 30% for $250K+.

Don't expect Republicans to raise taxes or rejigger the system however...they're clinging to the capital gains as jobs creator rhetoric, no matter what the facts say.

Making the most of Cappy's remaining days.

Cappy's going to sleep on Saturday -- he has an extremely aggressive cancer and is just shy of his 15th birthday.  His brother Toby is just as old as him, and will surely miss him.

Social Security's convenient political myths.

I ran into a wall on the comment boards on Bloomberg's site, over the oft repeated fallacies over Social Security.  I profess, two decades ago I actually understood the issues the same way the media currently sees it...but I was wrong.

Since then, I have spent much time researching various economic (and other) topics, and for the past 6 years, understood that the media generally gets it wrong (on many topics, not just economics).  Part of the purpose of this blog, is to force me to research and report back my findings, as a means to increase my analytic skills and understanding of the world.

You see, these fallacies are political myths that were created to allow the opposition party to create populist friction against a sitting President of the opposite party.  Democrats used it against Republicans, and Republicans now use it against Democrats.  And at some point the myths became so entrenched that the media accepted them as facts.

Anyway... in responding to a misinformed poster tonight, I found a great Media Matters research entry on common Social Security fallacies which the media (and some fatuous talking heads) have oft repeated -- I strongly urge everyone to read it.

Multnomah County: carbon emissions down

From the City of Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, via bikeportland, Multnomah County's carbon emissions has been on a steep decline since its peak in 2000, and is now six percentage points lower than in 1990, despite a 26% increase in population.

We probably have the highest ratio of hybrid and electric vehicles per capita, than anywhere else in the world -- you can't walk a block without seeing one, or two, or three.

Romney: "I'm only out of touch with Obama".

Mitt sez he's out of touch with just Obama.

So Mitt, why don't you reach out, reach out and touch someone?



Well, unless you're just talking smack and devoid of reality, that is.

Way better than James Bond's Little Nellie.

Sure, Little Nelllie was neat stuff, but the PAL-V is way better.

The Smart phone Beta Test is Over...No wait.

This is too funny to be true...but it sadly is.

Nokia and AT&T introduced a new advertisement to open sales of the Lumia 900 Windows Phone, touting the phone's capabilities surpassing all other phones and thus ending the so-called beta test period of smart phones.

Except oops,...it turns out, the Lumia 900 was in beta mode.

Some people were running to the discussion boards complaining that their Lumia 900 phones were having trouble connecting to data services.

It didn't take too long before Nokia identified the problem as a software bug in the phones.  So Nokia's now offering everyone with a Lumia 900 - not just the people who have run into the problem - a $100 credit.  Obviously software bugs are present in all the phones, but that users have only triggered the bug by a specific order of events.

In other words, buyers were beta testers and the phones were shipped without exhaustive QA / QT.



And there you go -- the flagship Nokia Windows Phone that was supposed to surpass all others, in fact is buggy.

How's that for comedic irony?

Matt Groening reveals *where* Springfield is.

To no Portlander's surprise, Matt Groening reveals that the Springfield in The Simpsons, was named after Springfield Oregon.

Just like Reverend Lovejoy was named after Lovejoy Street, Montgomery Burns is a derivative of Montgomery Ward department stores and Burnside Street, Ned Flanders was named after Flanders Street, Mayor Quimby was named after Quimby Street, and the Springfield nuclear power plant was modeled after the Trojan's two cooling towers.

Nelson just echoed, "Ha, ha!"

Google > Apple in poll of Americans.

Via CNET, an ABC/Langer poll of 1007 Americans, shows that Americans view Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter favorably by 82% / 74% / 58% / 34% respectively.

But here's where things rapidly go askew (and become interesting).  A subgroup of Americans, under 30 years old, heavily favors Google over Apple, 92% to 81%.  When broken down further, Google leads Apple by 34 percentage points in the "strongly favorable" category.  That's an 18 percentage point disparity from the general group.

This divergence is interesting, considering how Apple is portrayed in the media (by news reports, blogs, advertising) as the company that produces young and hip products that are easy to use (iPhones, iPads, iMacs, etc), while Google is portrayed as a company that produces reliable, useful tools (search, browser, online advertising, mobile operating systems, a browser, etc.)

As the under-30 crowd grows up, will their tastes change, or will their preferences dictate the direction of outcomes for these companies?  In other words, will Apple's value decline while Google's fortunes rise?

I might have to place a stock bet.

The Doggie Jackpot.

On a sad evening where my BFF suspects that one of her two dogs is possibly terminally ill, I thought I should offer up a short commentary on the lives of dogs. Originally, this came from an idea that sprouted this past weekend as I contemplated the mortality of all living things, my dog included -- that's who I am.

We humans, consider this idea of winning the lottery as a jackpot of a lifetime.  Dogs seem to be indifferent to the quality of your vehicle, your home, or clothing.  I see the same affection in homeless people's dogs, as I see in my own.

My dog is just as happy lying on the sofa, as he is in his bed, or simply on the bathroom rug.  He cares not the difference between a stick broken off from a tree, or a squeaky toy, or even a tennis ball.  Though he recognizes the differences between each object, it does not matter which one he gets to play with, but that he gets to play.

When we come home, our dogs are excited and eager to greet us.  When we leave, they are overcome with either sadness, anxiety, boredom or all of the above.  They are, however, never indifferent to our comings and goings.

To a dog, whose concerns are not of the philosophical contemplation of life and death, but that of yesterday, today and tomorrow, joy is measured in how one's life exists, not how well they are remembered after death.

A dog's winning jackpot is to find a home where one is loved and is part of a family.

As a puppy purchased from a pet store, my friend's dog was deaf.  When she went back to return him they informed her that they would have to put him down. She could not accept that fate of this puppy, so she refused to return him, and instead they gave her a second puppy.  So you see, he already hit the jackpot.

A Dog's Life.

Cappy long ago hit the jackpot.

Don't let Economics get in the way of your politics?

Via The Atlantic, the IGM Forum at the University of Chicago asked its panel of some 41 economists who hail from MIT, Harvard, Yale, U Chicago, Princeton, Berkeley and Stanford, some basic questions about key topics of modern politics, with regards to economics, of course.

Some noteworthy outcomes:

A return to the gold standard -- they uniformly agreed that this was a bad idea.  Dr. Ron Paul clearly has applied his knowledge in medicine to economics, and failed.

Gold as an inflation indicator -- they uniformly agreed that gold prices reflected a lot more than inflation, making it a useless litmus for inflation.  Duh.  Take one look at how gold prices have risen, even while all measures of inflation have remained flat.

Bank bailouts -- no one disagreed with the belief that the bank bailouts helped keep unemployment higher than without them.  Outrage at the fact that they had to be bailed out, notwithstanding...sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do.  And to think Wall Street is crying about regulation!

Gasoline prices -- no one disagreed that market factors were primary causes for changes in the price of gasoline, rather than government economic or energy policies.  Newt Gingrich showed his nutty inner shell when he guaranteed that he would lower gas prices to below $2 / gallon...Mitt's following suit lately.

Free trade -- no one disagrees that free trade has a net positive effect.  Though one has to understand the downside of free trade is that workers whose jobs have been shipped off, require retraining.  It turns out however, that the money is drying up.

Economic stimulus -- 4% disagreed that Obama's stimulus bill kept the unemployment rate lower than otherwise without it; 80% believed that the unemployment rate was lower because of the stimulus bill.  Only the politically blinded cannot see this.

Health care via employers -- no one disagreed that there are distortions in the market place, created by preferential tax treatment for employer-provided health care.  Since you don't usually know the price you're paying, you're more likely to abuse the system, ignore the cost, etc.  If you've never been self-employed or unemployed, you might never realize this point.

Is the iPhone 4S camera LED weak?

Tonight I was at my BFF's place.  Because her dog is nearly blind, she uses her iPhone 4S camera's LED as a flashlight, to help her dog see outside at night.  I thought it would be good if I turned mine on, too, since surely two LED lights will be brighter than one.

I was shocked.

My Samsung Galaxy S-II LED was probably over twice as bright as the iPhone 4S.  If you're wondering, I use the TeslaLED Flashlight app.

It was just amazing at the difference in power, and it made me wonder...who else has compared their phone against the iPhone 4S?  Granted, it may be that she hasn't found the right controls in the two flashlight apps she has -- one paid and one free.

A gorgeous, warm day on Easter.

Today it reached 70 degrees, and everything was out...cherries, bees and all sorts of bugs, maples and, especially noteworthy were the tulips.  Pollen was so high, I had to take a Benadryl on top of the Zyrtec I had already taken.  Still, it was all worth it.

As with all the images I've taken this Spring, they're all done with my Samsung Galaxy S-II phone.

iPhone 4S 4G on AT&T?!?

Android Army, should we go out there and embarrass iOS users with our hardware?

I was helping a friend download GasBuddy onto her iPhone 4S "4G" on AT&T, and it took forever -- in this case, forever was a couple of minutes.  I was annoyed at how long it was taking, so I popped my Samsung Galaxy S-II to show her how GasBuddy works on my phone on T-Mobile's "4G" HSPA+ 42Mbps, and I instantly got a map of all the gas stations near us, and their prices.

When I download apps, even the large ones take just a few seconds at worst.

AT&T's network is more like slow-G or no-G.

And the embarrassing part, is that the iPhone 4S on AT&T is the fastest iPhone out there in the entire world...no LTE or WiMax version.

Now I see why AT&T's iPhone users lead all others in the US, in using WiFi usage.  Now it all makes sense why my friend doesn't use her phone to shoot lots of pictures, like I do, and upload them...takes too long for them.

Took longer to find this image in my Picasa account, than to upload it. 

Spring at McMenamins Edgefield

Wow, it's a mini-arboretum up there, and talk about flowers galore blooming.  Daffodils, magnolias and soon to be out apple, cherry blossoms, and a host of other plants.

I know most of the people walking around Edgefield were mostly there for the golf and the liquor, but the attraction to me, is the landscaping effort they put into their site.

Standing while working.

This week, I switched my working position to standing.  I grabbed my laptop and plopped it onto the bar-height (42") built-in table that separates the kitchen from the living area.  I have a bar chair from Ikea at my side, in case I desire to sit down for a bit.

First thing I noticed, is that there is no way my feet will fall asleep, now.  It also turns out that standing in place is not so bad on the feet, compared to walking (or running).  Standing, as opposed to sitting, also affords me greater incentive to move around more.

The down side, is that the dog can't sleep next to me while I work.  He loves to curl up and fall asleep by my side while I work.  Because I stand in the kitchen and it's the one place he does not like to venture into (probably due to his life before I adopted him from the Humane Society), he does not want to lie next to my feet.

It's been a nice change of pace.

Mitch McConnell caught in (yet) another lie.

Democrats are starting to push the Buffet rule, and Republicans are scrambling with excuses.  Today, Mitch responded that "this is yet another proposal from Democrats that won't create a single job or lower the price at the pump by a penny, but may have the opposite effect."

By default, the money would be used to reduce the debt without cutting spending, as opposed to the effects of Republican plans to cut spending.

Some of the tax dollars collected could easily be used to give out job and education grants or to do a Cash 4 Clunkers II, where anyone buying a hybrid or electric vehicle would get up to $15,000 back.  The first would provide an aggregate demand for education-related jobs, the latter would dramatically lower oil usage in transportation, leading to higher supply and lower price expectations from speculation.

If more federal taxes collected is bad and reducing the debt is good, then why did Mitch all by himself request $300 million dollars for the State of Kentucky, in just a three year period (2008 -2010)?  (If you look at that same three year period, he was involved (cosigner)  in over $1.5 BILLION in earmark requests!)

Apparently the only condition in which a rich person's taxes creates jobs, is when that spending request is initiated by Mitch or another Republican.