Official US propaganda coming soon to the US?

Not that government propaganda has a place in the world, ever, but this is downright scary.

There is an amendment in Congress, HR 5736, which would fully break down a 64 year old barrier that prevented US propaganda from being disseminated within the US.

Under current 22 U.S.C. § 1461, "[propaganda] shall not be disseminated within the United States, its
territories, or possessions" except by request from members of the news media and scholars.

The proposed change states that "[propaganda] may be made available within the United States and disseminated, when appropriate."

So I guess this means lying to ourselves shall be acceptable.


I have a great life, I am free, no one is watching over my shoulder.

I have a great life, I am free, no one is watching over my shoulder.

I have a great life, I am free, no one is watching over my shoulder.


Or you can sign the petition or write to your senator, demanding that the US Government not be allowed to lie to its own people.

IE9 ads...are they annoying you, too?

I really don't know why they keep showing up in Hulu ads, even though I keep down-clicking them.  They annoy me and they should annoy you too, because IE9 is OLD!

I've pointed out before that the ad's quote in which NYT declares IE9 to be fast, came from 2010.

Now, let me direct you to the USA Today quote in the same ad they've been running for the last three months, stating that IE9 is, "a major step forward".  Don't be surprised, but that quote is also from 2010.

You want absurd?  The Digital Trends quote they used, which states, "IE9 will change the web forever" is over two years old.

And again, just to show how ridiculous Microsoft's ads are, I ran IE9 64 bit and Chrome 20 through some tests.

Chrome 20 scores 413 on the HTML5Test and a 59% passing rate on the CSS3Test, while IE9 scores a measly 138 and 33% respectively.  Chrome 20 ran 178ms on the 0.9.1 Sunspider test (javascript), while IE9 ran a whopping 862ms!

IE9 is dated, slow and downright embarrassing!  Have you no shame, Microsoft?

Disposition of my current reading list.

  Just finished "The Occupy Handbook".  Took me an extra week longer than I anticipated because of work, but it was fascinating.  Here's a quick review.

While obviously the book leans liberal, it covers a wider spectrum of ideas outside of US economics and politics.  It is broken up into three parts: "How we got here"; "Where we are now"; and "Solutions".  Because of the nature of the beast, in each section there really is overlap as writers try to pull context into their contribution, and no author can resist but to offer a direction about how to move forward, even if they're writing about "how we got here".

I do question the purpose of Brandon Adams' contribution of three pieces in the collection -- the problem I have, is that each one is easily invalidated by pedestrian arguments.  In one of his three contributions, he cites the decline of culture (and not deregulation or a failure to spot a bubble) as the cause of the economic decline.  He says that if you want to blame someone, look at yourself and your tattoos and obesity for the short-term thinking that has pervaded our culture.  While true - that short-term thinking is pervasive, he does not bother to look as to what caused short-term thinking.  I can think of one: income inequality and a gamed system.  What's the point of saving money (and thinking long-term), if you know you're just going to end up on the losing end of a rigged game called Global Capitalism?  It's called behavioral finance, but it's in its infancy and it shows.

Some notable entries:

• David Cay Johnston -- offers up a very solid examination of the evidence of tax policies that favor the ultra rich and the policies.
• Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez -- provide a technical and logical argument that a top marginal tax rate between 50~70% would not discourage people from becoming wealthy.
• Robert Buckley -- explains why politics matter, if you care about Capitalism, by citing the Soviet Union's long road from Capitalism to Capitalism.  Hint: reform politics now or else follow the same, long path  as the former Soviet Union.
• David Graeber -- explains what Anarchism is and its crucial role in delivering true Democracy to the people, even as we are oppressed by the Republic in which we live in.

I strongly recommend reading it, because it has such a diverse scope of knowledge behind it, and you're offered access to it at a cheap price.

Onto the next book: Paul Krugman's "End this Depression Now!"  I have to put "Nudge" and "Worst-Case Scenario" on the backburner while I do some work and get Krugman's book completed -- there's a huge queue for his book at the library and if I don't tackle it now, it'll be Fall before it'll be available again.

Want to separate Romney from his new BFF, McCain?

Ask Mitt to state concisely, if waterboarding is torture.  And keep asking him, in venue after venue, every day until he stops equivocating and talking in ambiguity.

SSD price wars...it's here.

That rumored SSD price war to kick out the low-end competitors, is here.

If you're paying $1/GB, you're paying too much.  The prices have dropped, such that many of the 120GB SSDs are now selling for under $100, and some selling below $90.  Likewise, 256GB SSDs are selling below $200.

But I'm holding off for Intel 330 series drives to drop below the $1/GB level -- it's very close.

GS-II LDE Gingerbread T-Mobile -- an update to the update.

So I've noticed a few things have changed, with the T-Mobile interim update for the GS-II.

First, to answer / reject phone calls, the slide UI has been replaced with the Honeycomb-like circular, unlock screen -- I'm going to guess this is a response to an Apple lawsuit.  Unfortunately, it seems that screen capture won't work at the same time as an incoming phone call is up on the screen, so I can't show it.  Still, if you've played with a Honeycomb tablet, you'll more or less get the idea.

Second, the live wallpapers have changed.  The Nexus microbe wallpaper has disappeared, replaced with live weather wallpapers -- I'm guessing this is a Samsung thing because it is tied to Accuweather, which shipped with the GS-II phone in an exclusive widget.  As the weather and time changes, so does the live weather wallpaper.  The folks at Samsung ought to go stare at a real beach, because their live wallpaper does not come close.  I do like how it shows raindrops if it's supposed to be raining outside, though.

Third - but I'm not sure about this - but there seems to be some additional widgets.  I can't tell if these were already there to begin with, but I've never used these dual analog-style and digital-style clocks -- they don't have alarms, so they're not useful to me.

Oh yeah, and if you look closely, the phone icon (green tile at the bottom left) changed ever so slightly. It didn't have the light border around the tile, and it wasn't subdivided into 9 squares before.

No austerity miracles. (You've been lied to, repeatedly.)

If Ireland represents the fiscally responsible nation, then I hope the US never becomes as fiscally responsible as Ireland.

In order to make some visual sense of employment trends, I adjusted the employment rates of selected nations, and created an index, where Q1-2008 = 100.  It is not a perfect means of telling the whole story, because it does not take into account the baby-boomer retirement wave (US figures are not cut off at age 64 but the EU's figures are), so some might read the index incorrectly.

A quick look and you can see that Ireland is at the bottom, and Spain, Greece and Portugal are hoping to join it in economic despair.  A second look shows that Spain and Ireland followed practically the same path with large job destruction.  It so happens that both Spain and Ireland embarked on early austerity.  Coincidence?  I think not!  A third look and you'll notice that the US and UK somewhat mirror each other...dropped a bit, but then hasn't really grown -- that's a topic for another day.

Back to Ireland.

A superficial look would suggest that Ireland has hit something close to a bottom.  But that's not exactly the case.

I created two indices of population growth to illustrate my suspicion: one where the year 2000 = 100, and a second one where 2008 = 100. You can see population growth accelerating in Ireland, ahead of the UK and US, during the economic (banking) boom. In the second index, you can see that suddenly that population growth has slowed dramatically.

It should be somewhat obvious, Ireland has not bottomed out in the employment rate -- it is a result of slowed population growth due to people leaving Ireland.  To confirm the migration pattern, I checked Eurostat and it shows that Ireland lost a net 60,000 residents in two years (2009 and 2010), compared to a net peak gain of 66,000 in 2006.

And there you have it: No Irish Miracle and austerity does result in a deepening economic crisis when the economy is not in a good mood.

Sources of data: Eurostat, BLS and US Census Bureau.  Sorry no links...go find them yourself!  :D

Rich guy says Greek exit would cost over a trillion Euros...conveniently ignores the cost of staying with the Euro.

If someone told you that, by staying on the same course you've been on for the last three years -- which has resulted in nearly 25% unemployment -- would deliver at least another two years of a shrinking economy, increasing debt, continued rising unemployment, lowered wages and real deflation, what would you say?

The media has responded by giving overwhelming attention to this idea that a Greek exit would be tremendously damaging to the European economy as well as the rest of the world, and would be very expensive -- to the tune of over a trillion Euros.  It is true, that there are real costs and concerns with an exit from the Euro, especially if it were a disorderly exit.  But I'm shocked at how little attention is paid to the opposite scenario of Greece (and other periphery nations in trouble) staying with the Euro.

As leading German economist Hans-Werner Sinn points out, something big happened following World War I and a lack of concern over an economic catastrophe: the rise of the Nazis.

But hardly anyone -- certainly not those working for the banks or Wall Street, or the politicians born and raised on abstract, capitalist theory -- has given much thought that another two years of austerity and growing unemployment could result in a dramatic political revolution.

In cases of major political upheavals, you never read about how power was seized at the national level so that capitalism could be expanded with unregulated, free markets.

Or put another way: rich people ought to be wary of irony.

Microsoft: Do as I say, not as I do.

This is amusing: earlier this week, Google expanded its transparency further, by letting us know who had requested URLs to be removed from search results due to copyright violations, how many requests were made, and their disposition.

It turns out, while Microsoft spent time and money searching for such offending URLs and then forwarding them to Google to remove, Microsoft failed to follow through in some cases, with its own search engine, Bing.

So to help Microsoft out, I thought I'd give them an almost-ISO9001-compliant protocol:

1. Find copyright-violating content using Bing.
2. Compile list of URLs of violating content.
3. Remove them from Bing.
4. Screen the list of URLs on other search engines.
5. Send list of URLs to other search engines.

A couple of million URL requests, and you'd think they'd have it figured out by now.

Side note: I was cropping the list of copyright owners, when I noticed "BangBros"...no such thing as modesty, I guess.  After a little research of some of the names on the list, it turns out there are quite a few porn businesses upset about the spread of their copy-protected porn on the internet.


To think, it was just 25 years ago when pornographers were hunted down by the US Attorney General Edwin Meese.  Today, pornographers are hunting down individuals who watch their content for free.

Floppy-eared rabbit.

Went to the Oregon Humane Society this afternoon to stare at the dogs.  Some of the rescued Shar Peis were still there.  It was sad to see them with their treated injuries / ailments, thinking about the sort of life they lived in a puppy mill.  Also saw a pair of older dogs together in the same kennel, unhappy to be there -- their owner died.  There were quite a few small dogs and puppies there -- I guess Chihuahuas and Chihuahua-mixes are popular these days.

The highlight however, was in the small pets section where the rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice, hamsters and birds are located.  There was this one five-year old floppy-eared grey rabbit, whose eyes were obscured by hair, who really loved affection.  He came up to the front of his cage and offered his head to be petted.  He reminded me of my dog.

That was special.

Where are my eyes?

SpaceX, first commercial space vehicle docks to ISS.

Some 29,000+ people were watching live on NASA TV UStream channel this morning, as the commercial SpaceX vehicle was retrieved by members of the International Space Station.  It took a long time to get to that point (a couple of hours), as they have a laboriously cautious approach, where they have multiple check points that must be cleared.

Some screen captured images of the docked SpaceX vehicle to the ISS arm, in case you missed it.

T-Mobile GS-II update (not ICS) out.

So, it's not Ice Cream Sandwich, but a few days ago T-Mobile began pushing out an update to Gingerbread on the GS-II.  Not being one to want to wait for the over the air update, I went ahead and followed the instructions to download Samsung's KIES and grab the update for my phone.

LDE is the updated firmware version (GINGERBREAD.UVLDE).

There's no new functionality in the update, but it does fix some bugs and more importantly, some security vulnerabilities.  Once such vulnerabilities are out in the open, someone's going to try to exploit it, so I didn't like the idea of having to wait as late as June 22nd for the OTA update.

That June 22nd date is also disappointing, in that now we know that we'll have to wait until after that date, for ICS to be available.

Sucks.

Arizona, home of the Birther government.

Wow.  Arizona is severely messed up.

It's a bit difficult to figure out what Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's appointed Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, is thinking.  In February 2011, Bennett seemed to accept that Obama was legitimately born in Hawai'i.

But until a few days ago, Bennett refused to put Barack Obama's name on the ballot until he received a confirmation from the State of Hawai'i that Obama was indeed born in Hawai'i.  Apparently the State of Hawai'i was not amused, and just ignored what it thought was surely just another idiot.  After all, it's not as though the State of Hawai'i hasn't replayed this nightmare over and over.

So finally, with the threat of Obama's name actually being excluded from the ballot -- messy federal lawsuit making fun of Arizona averted -- Hawai'i sent Bennett confirmation that, for the millionth time, Obama indeed was born in Hawai'i.

But wait, the story doesn't end there.

Crazy Joe Arpaio (the sheriff who has feds on his tail for a series of civil rights violations) had decided that, by golly, the State of Hawai'i was involved in a conspiracy to hide the truth behind Obama's birth certificate.  Nope, Crazy Joe's not going to take this standing...he sent a posse to Hawai'i to confirm in person that Obama's birth certificate is real.

The posse sat down with the deputy director of health and a deputy attorney general, who then explained that there was a legal meas to access the records they were searching for.  Sorry Joe, but you have to follow the laws of Hawai'i just like anyone else, no exceptions for jackasses!

I'm just curious: did they fly first class, on last minute bookings?  They may have wasted Maricopa County several thousand dollars when all they needed to do was call ahead of time.

Well, Joe's not happy, so it's not likely we've heard the end of the Birther Tales.

Mitt backtracks on unemployment.

Mitt said today that he'd get unemployment down to 6% if he were President.  Earlier this month he said that, "Anything over four percent is not cause for celebration."  Not to rehash that previous post I made, but it sure seems like he's backtracking.

So let's take a look at peak unemployment, and see where the US is trending so far, assuming that Obama's policies were kept in place and Republicans didn't hijack the US economy by driving debt ceilings, shall we?

Whoops!  Looks like Obama's unemployment rate is trending LOWER than Mitt's reset, low bar!

Yes, there are many mitigating factors and so that trend line does not portend anything resembling reality.  But it's worth noting in itself that Mitt's own economic team has probably already done the charts and know that setting 6% as their target is more than reasonable.

So much for doing the tough work of reaching full employment, eh?

Google's going all Industrial Design on us.

It's starting to make sense now.  According to Core77, Google has just purchased the industrial design firm Mike and Maaike -- designers of the first Android prototype and the follow-up device, the first commercially available Android, the G1.

On the heels of closing the Motorola deal and displacing Sanjay Jha with Dennis Woodside, I'm sure some will question whether this portends poorly for an open Android platform or whether this signals Google's intention to compete directly with its Open Handset Alliance partners.

I see it slightly different.  I see Google's actions motivated by two desires:

1. Buying up an ID firm gives them the ability to test out ideas much faster than communicating externally with its manufacturing partners.  An in-house ID firm also gives them a stronger ability to communicate exactly what they expect from their manufacturing partners.
2. Google wants to expand beyond Android in the consumer electronics market.  Project Glass and Google Driverless Car are two examples.  Having an internal ID capability boosts their ability to expand rapidly, even if they outsource manufacturing to partner firms such as Samsung, HTC, etc.

This is really exciting news -- I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this purchase!

Greek nightmare or Greek rebalancing?

I've been reading a few horror stories of what might happen if Greece chooses to leave the Euro currency.  In particular I'm amused (and confused) as to this Reuters article.  It prefaces a Greek exit by describing the current woeful state of affairs for Greeks, then goes on to say that if Greece were to exit the Euro currency, things would get worse for the indigent.

I'm curious how the current state of affairs is supposed to get better, when the EU is demanding Greece cut deeper, before it will provide more loans.  It's as if Angela Merkel, walking around in a $1000 suit looks down on a homeless Greek family and tells them, "I know you're suffering, but you need to suffer more, and you will be better for it!"

Or maybe what they're saying is, that next month miracles will occur and the indigent shall suddenly find money in their pockets from the confidence fairy?

Yes, there is great uncertainty in what would occur and there will be some chaos, but to prophesize that more suffering would necessarily ensue, is more a scare tactic than reality.  Or to put it in another way: Greece will never recover until its balance of payments are adjusted properly, but staying with the Euro will ensure that it will be a very long and painful process.  At least if Greece leaves the Euro, they have a fighting chance to avoid a decade-long Depression.

The problem as I see it, really comes down to rebalancing Greece's balance of payments.  Take for instance the chart below, juxtaposing a handful of EU nations with their balance of payments.

It is glaringly obvious that Germany's BoP stands in stark contrast to several other Euro countries.  Germany heavily benefited from the transition to the Euro, starting in 2000.

When you look closer at Germany's BoP, you can see just how dramatically positive the move to the Euro has been for Germany, moving from a mild deficit to a massive net positive.

Meanwhile, the opposite is true for Greece.

It is true that for some time before its move to the Euro, Greece had been sliding downward with a net outflow of payments.  But the move to the Euro exacerbated its condition.

Now look at how international trade as a percentage of GDP compares among those same nations.

Some things to note:

1. For the most part, European countries more or less tracked along with each other until the Euro was introduced, at which point Germany's economy diverged from most everyone else's.
2. With nearly 45% of its GDP reliant on international trade, you can understand why Germany might be concerned with a successful Greek exit that would pave the way for other periphery nations to leave the Euro currency.  If Greece and other current Eurozone nations were able to float their own currencies against the Euro, their cost of debt and their cost of labor would decrease, and Germany would lose out.
3. A basic tenet of capitalism, is that there are winners (Germany) and losers (Greece and others).  So far the EU has only kicked the issue further down the road.

For Greece to stay in the Euro, it has to become price competitive.  Sounds simple in abstract terms, but in practice...well you already know the state of Greece.

USC Trojans 2013 football recruiting class looking good.

Justin Davis capped a great week for USC that included Ty Isaac also committing verbally to the Trojans.  All seven are in Rivals 250; five are in the ESPN 150.

Next up: Su'a Cravens on June 6th?

#6	Kenny Bigelow	DE	Eastern Christian Academy (MD)	5 stars	6'3"	322
#8	Max Browne	QB	Skyline (WA)	5 stars	6'5"	202
#18	Ty Isaac	RB	Joliet Catholic (IL)	4 stars	6'3"	215
#48	Justin Davis	RB	Lincoln (CA)	4 stars	6'1"	195
#81	Kylie Fitts	DE	East Valley (CA)	4 stars	6'4"	260
#159	Chris Hawkins	DB	Rancho Cucamonga (CA)	4 stars	6'0"	170
#245	Eldridge Massington	WR	West Mesquite (TX)	4 stars	6'3"	205

We've got an interesting phenomenon going on, here.

Because USC is limited to 15 scholarships (18 total after including 3 early enrollee slots that are available) and a maximum roster of 75 players, USC has no choice but to search out and recruit guys who could play from day 1.  Whether as a starter or back-up, every guy will be counted on to make a contribution on the field.

Now surely, there are a lot of players across the country that could fit the bill, but with the 18 recruit upper-limit, it's a first-come basis.  If you drag your feet and put off verbally committing, that slot might disappear as soon as USC fills its need at each position.

So while USC has more than double the scholarship offers out there than they have space for -- and surely many of them are contingent offers -- it wouldn't be a surprise if USC had its recruiting needs locked up long before LOI signing day, especially if they have an exceptional season this Fall.

The TRUE job creators, as told by a venture capitalist.

"Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it.  In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous."

I do not understand why people are so willing to fall for the fallacy that rich people are job creators (and therefore deserve tax breaks or otherwise lower overall taxes).  Many who profess their support for capitalism, seem to willingly ignore the most basic of concepts: supply and demand, when they insist that the rich are job creators.

So then, it's refreshing to hear a rich person -- Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer -- come out and explain that income inequality is very bad for our economy, and that it is not the rich who are job creators, but the middle class and poor.  But there's a back story to all this.  You see, that story from Nick Hanauer comes from a speech he delivered at TED, but it ended up getting buried, out of the fear that it would be seen as too politically charged.

Such voices can be deemed dangerous when they challenge the orthodoxy of Reagan-inspired economics.  Makes you want to read it even more, doesn't it?

---

Update: Business Insider has picked up the slack and received Nick Hanauer's slides which were used in his TED presentation.  Some noteworthy slides:

Nick Hanauer slide

Nick Hanauer slide

This 12 year old Canadian girl may be smarter than most adults.

Wow, I think she has a future in governance.  What do you think?

The New Yorker: Supreme Court exercising judicial activism.

This is something I've been complaining about for the last year, now.  The New Yorker has published a great piece on the specifics of how the Roberts court has been transformed into one of conservative judicial activism.

"The case (Citizens United), too, reflects the aggressive conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Court. It was once liberals who were associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court’s own precedents."

I'm surprised more media outlets haven't yet caught onto the actions of the current Supreme Court under Roberts.  So far, the Roberts court has been willing to throw out two long-standing (one was 90+ years old at the time) decisions.

If not for Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, I wonder if Democrats would have taken on Roberts for lying to Congress, with a full blown impeachment?

"At the argument of a death-penalty case known as Cone v. Bell, Roberts had berated at length the defendant’s lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, for his temerity in raising an issue that had not been addressed in the petition. Now Roberts was doing nearly the same thing to upset decades of settled expectations."

"Roberts, during his confirmation hearing, made much of his judicial modesty and his respect for precedent. If the Chief had written Citizens United, he would have been criticized for hypocrisy. But by giving the opinion to Kennedy he obtained a far-reaching result without leaving his own fingerprints."

He may not have written the majority opinion in Citizens United, but Roberts voted to overturn long-held precedence, repeatedly.

"In less than five years, the pair of Bush appointees (Alito and Roberts), joined by Scalia, Thomas, and, usually, Kennedy, had overturned many of the Court’s precedents."

Common sense has disappeared.

Remember the Brian Tierney shooting?

In the middle of the night on the 205 freeway, his car is spotted on the side of the freeway, and he is shot -- no explanation as to how or why.

Well this story out of Mississippi sounds suspiciously similar.

Useful, interesting stats about elections.

No, I'm not going to give you a bunch of charts or numbers.  I'm merely pointing to two sources of national election information and registered voter demographics -- stuff you bookmark under a political folder for future reference.

• Annual elections -- The Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives has tracked each election since 1920.  It includes a vote breakdown by state.
• Voter registration demographics -- The US Census Bureau tracks the demographics of people who register to vote, and whether they reported back that they voted.

Useful stuff, if you're into politics.

Auto break-in, in the Pearl -- just as I passed by.

What a crazy 45 minutes it's been.  I thought I'd go out on a night bike ride in the cool air...sure, 2:45 am why not?  There's no traffic on the roads or on the sidewalks, and it's cool enough to ride.  Things didn't go the way that I planned, however -- here's my story.

As I rode my bike north on 12th, I heard a sound that resembled a loud thud.  I looked back in the direction of the sound, and saw two guys near a car.  As I started to ride off, I had this feeling come over me that the sound I heard was that of a muffled glass break.  I thought okay, if I turn around and observe their behavior as I shine my light on them, then I'll be able to tell what the situation was.

My helmet vs. a motorcycle officer's helmet

An aside: I have this giant, white sixsixone helmet that will freak out people who apparently may hold guilty consciences of a crime currently being committed or have committed in the past. You see, it resembles the white helmet motorcycle officers wear.  Never mind, of course,  that Portland Police bicycle officers wear traditional black bicycle helmets and reflective yellow / white and black uniforms.  As they say, criminals aren't very attentive to details.  I strongly urge people to buy a white helmet like this...at the very least, you'll be amused by the reactions of some people.

As I turned around and up onto NW Kearney, they stopped what they were doing.  I directed my bike headlight towards them and my suspicion was verified -- they started walking away quickly.  So here's the dilemma....call the police or follow them on my bike?  I decide that if I follow them on my bike, I'll figure out a way to call the police at the same time.

This is going to seem strange, but have you ever seen a comedy sketch where people are trying to run away on foot, chased by a bike?  That's what I was doing...but I couldn't tell if they had a weapon, so I had to chase them slowly, staying about 100 feet behind them.

At this point, I'm trying to call the police while on the bike -- didn't work.  They split up, I followed one guy, and kept trying to call the police, when I saw a security guy (they look just like Portland Police on bikes) on his bike.

Okay, don't do what I did next: phone in one hand, I used my other hand to brake suddenly, front brake no less.  You can guess what happened, right?  Well, on the ground, I'm telling the security guy to go chase the guy in the hoodie who just broke into a car.  Meanwhile, I finally talk to police, and tell them what's going on.

Whew...got through to police.  But wait, I crashed the bike!  Thankfully, it appeared the only problem was that I pushed the alignment of the gears off, and I could fix that; a couple of scrapes (no blood), no big deal.  But now I felt that I should ride back to the broken into car, and wait until police arrived, so off I went back to NW Kearney and 12th.

I got back there and realized that they had broken into the rear passenger side window...my heart's still thumping when the police finally show up and I flag them down.  It's not easy to think and talk straight when your adrenaline is pumping.  I offered up a repeat description of what the two guys were wearing and off I went on my bike ride.  Actually, I wasn't sure whether to continue or go back -- after all, my gears were not aligned well.  I rode a few blocks, then decided heck, I'm going to circle around and see if I can't spot one of the two guys.

I got all the way to NW Couch and 12th, but I didn't see anyone, so I started back home.  As I cross NW Everett, out of the corner of my eye, there was a skinny guy wearing a light grey hoodie with a dark backpack.  Not the same hoodie, but the same backpack and the same build (thin, about 5'-9 or so), talking on the phone and walking up on NW Everett.

Again, I figure I'll do the behavioral test on this guy.  I stop, then turn around, and pull my phone out.  Sure enough he looks back at me and starts walking away from me.  He keeps looking back, so I called the police one more time to let them know that this guy may be the suspect and that he changed his clothes.

Okay, good enough.  I rode back home, and heard a car alarm go off in the direction of the vehicle that was broken into.  There's no way I'm going to let it go...I'm too damned pissed at my neighbors in the Pearl who generally suffer from apathy, and won't get up when they hear a car alarm going off.

So I followed the sound, and it was the police who set the alarm off to get the owner of the car (whose window was broken) to come down and grab their stuff from their car.  So I ask you, what's wrong with this picture?

First, the car owner left a BUNCH of stuff in the rear seat of the car, which is why someone tried to break into it, in the first place.  Second, why the hell didn't the car alarm go off when those two guys broke into the vehicle?!?

I felt bad for the owner of the car, that his / her window was broken into, but at the same time, damn....you left a bunch of stuff in the car and on top of that, used a crappy car alarm or had it set improperly.

So the bottom line is: I prevented this person from losing a bunch of personal stuff, even though I couldn't prevent their car window from being broken into.  The result on my end, is a couple of scrapes and a misaligned bike.

Crazy night.

And you know what I kept thinking about, while chasing on bike?  I don't want to be a George Zimmerman.

Explosion + cut one actor = CBS finales.

I guess the CBS writers had their creativity dry out, or the big boss has told them to do the same thing.

Hawai'i Five-0 ended the season with a big explosion and a Bruce Wayne dilemma (two hostages but only enough time to save one) from The Dark Knight.

I did the big eye roll when bad guy Frank Delano (Billy Baldwin) said, "Eh, don't bother stopping to call HPD or your buddies McGarrett and Williams; they got all the lines covered, you understand?"  Wow...way to go to close up the gaps in the story, people.  Just a cell phone call to Kamekona or Joe White -- these guys aren't in Frank Delano's sphere of knowledge -- and all is taken care of.

Looks like Criminal Minds, NCIS and NCIS LA are all going to have building clearing, main characters in jeopardy, big boom explosions, too.

Bleh.

Got US Samsung Android and want to know if you're getting ICS?

Via TmoNews, Samsung released some confirmation of which of its devices would be ------ eventually ------ getting an Ice Cream Sandwich update:

AT&T	Galaxy S II (SGH-i777) Galaxy S II Skyrocket (SGH-i727) Galaxy Note (SGH-i717) Captivate Glide (SGH-i927) Galaxy Tab 8.9 (SGH-i957)

Sprint

Nexus S 4G (SPH-d720) ICS Update is Available! Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (SPH-d710)

Verizon

Galaxy Tab 10.1 (SCH-i905) Galaxy Tab 7.7 (SCH-i815)

Wi-Fi

Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Wi-Fi (P6210) Galaxy Tab 8.9 Wi-Fi (P7310) Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi (P7510)

T-Mobile

Samsung Galaxy S II (SGH-t989) Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G (SGH-t769) Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (SGH-t869) Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (SGH-t859)

Of course, most everyone already knew or suspected their device was going to be upgraded.  What we were waiting for was confirmation of WHEN we'd get those updates.

Today, May 14th, was supposed to be the day that GS-II owners on T-Mobile received an update, according to a leaked T-Mobile roadmap.  Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

Dogs like to spoil photos.

From UK Mail, some photos of dogs butting into portraits -- there's more if you click thru.

"FYI, you were on my favorite spot, so I am going here instead."

"Honey, would you get me my favorite drink..?"
"Hey, sex on the beach!"
"No, no, no...Campari and soda."

"Honey, this is MY Christmas present to you."
"Oh dear, not in front of the humans!"

Ship tugged past the Broadway Bridge, Portland.

It was a clear, warm weekend in Portland. Saw a giant grain cargo ship tugged through Portland.

Oh yeah, and played outside -- despite being a bad allergy weekend.

Paul Dee dies. ESPN moderator goes nuts.

Paul Dee, the former athletic director of Miami, just passed away.  He was scheduled to give his deposition in the Todd McNair case, but he may have been too sick to travel to the trial's venue to provide his testimony.

With his death, some answers may never be found.  And let's be honest here...many hoped that Todd McNair's lawsuit would act as retribution against the NCAA's COI under Paul Dee (assuredly one of the 50 Does listed in the lawsuit was Paul Dee).  Without belaboring the case, I'll just note that everyone - not just Trojans - have worn down Paul Dee's substitute name, Hypocrite.

So you can imagine there was a lot of people wanting to vent their displeasure on ESPN's boards -- hardly anything new.  If you've seen the ESPN boards, any controversial person / action generates thousands of responses within a few hours, with all sorts of name-calling and offensive adjectives.

But the ESPN moderator, for whatever reason went off the deep end and deleted comments seconds after being posted, and booted people from the boards.  Six hours after the news broke, there remains just 26 comments -- an improbability.

The ESPN moderator was so offended, he or she began deleting any comment outside of hosannas of Paul Dee -- see image below to see the extent which the mod goes.  In addition, the moderator booted people off, and deleted all of their comments from the entire ESPN site.

This goes beyond political correctness and illustrates two problems: (1) moderators are allowed to use biased judgment at ESPN to eliminate voices that he or she disagrees with; (2) but if they aren't supposed to use bias in their jobs as moderators, then ESPN has no process to monitor out of control employees.

The ESPN mod deleted cannonballjamaal's second comment.

And the ESPN mod didn't like this one from cannonballjamaal, either.

And then cannonballjamaal was booted altogether.

I keep referencing Bill Safire's old words, but at the risk of being a broken record, he warned us of the dangers of Media Gigantism.

This is the future of America.

---

Update: 9 hours after the story was first posted, the mod was either been reprimanded (following complaints) or was replaced.  A close look at the time stamps of posts will note that changes resulted in a quick succession of new posts, especially in the morning hours, Monday.

Superjet 100 video

I said I wasn't going to post any more on the subject, but this video from Lystseva Marina is heart-breaking.  It shows the Superjet 100 #97004's flights prior to the crash, as well as the people who boarded the plane on its last flight.

At 1:56 the flight attendant that is shown, died in the crash.  The Russian woman you see at 1:32 reaching out to shake hands, and again at 5:55 talking to a client, also died in the crash.  At 6:55 you can see the final boarding of the plane.

Very sad.



And yes, one American died. Presumably, this was some of his belongings -- notice the US $1 and the $100 bills.  That was probably him in the video at 6:37.

Dropbox Dropquest -- earn 1GB for free!

Q: What's Dropbox Dropquest?

A: It's a scavenger hunt of sorts, looking for answers to clues, and figuring out what do to with the answers, all in the hopes of winning a prize, or just gaining 1GB of space on your Dropbox account.

Everyone thinks that they're smart, so everyone starts off trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  And after a puzzle or two, most people either realize that they have no clue what's going on, or just can't bother to spend the time to figure the puzzles out.

My brain hurt a little, but most of all I didn't want to spend the next 12 hours trying to figure this stuff out.  Oh sure, you could follow the clues and such from other people who were working on the puzzles, but that gets tiring after a while, too.

Cheats...sort of: here mostly, but also here.

You will discover that not all the answers / methods to solve the puzzles are straight-forward.  You might have to read through to figure out how to use the answers.

In the end, you have three basic options;

• Spend 12 hours, a day or maybe more (maybe forever), solving all the puzzles;
• Spend about an hour deciphering / following the cheats;
• Not bothering to lift a finger to get a free 1GB of space.

Right now I'm up to 7GB of free space, and with this free 1GB, I'm still about 76% full.  :P

This is why there is no religious litmus test for public office.

Ever since the Republican Party embraced the Religious Right in the 80s, we've been inching closer and closer to a religious litmus test for public office.  It's no surprise therefore, that this story from WaPo came along.

Washington Post covers a story of two students at the ultra-conservative Liberty University - yes the one that was founded by Jerry Falwell who spoke against racial integration in 1958 - and how their views diverge when faced with Mitt Romney coming to speak at the school's commencement.

One is excited to see Mitt, the other plans to avoid the event altogether, saying that, "People get so blinded by their party that they forget principle."  What principle is she talking about?  Religion.  She remarks that, "His theology goes against my faith. I’m not going to vote for him for that.”

She speaks as if being Mormon is a pejorative!  Is Buddhism a pejorative, too?  Is Catholicism?

Imagine living in a country where the only way you could ever get into office, is if you were Muslim, and a conservative Shi'a one at that.  Also, the guiding principles for government was determined and dictated by religious leaders.  You'd be in Iran.

And that's where we're headed in the US, as conservatives have argued for chipping away the separation between church and state, and have proudly worn their religious credentials on their lapels.  All you need to do is swap out Islam with Christianity, and we'd have a nation that was the mirror of Iran.

We're better than that.  Or at least, we should be.

I'm not saying that I'm against hunting...

But posting a picture online, posing with Bambi's mama after you've killed her, and on Mother's Day weekend?

Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash -- final notes.

Jakarta's tv One News has a list of all the passengers on the ill-fated flight, here.

The site's slope is reportedly as steep as 85 degrees.

In a different Superjet 100, a Russian journalist last year posted about the quality of the interiors.  I'll let you decide what to make of it, but you can tell that in between planes, the interior was updated to remove deficiencies.

One thing to note about those deficiencies -- Lystseva Marina has a photo from her trip on one of the two planes in Jakarta, and well, you can see what I saw, but haven't talked about.

This other Russian is trying to track everything that is going on, including photos from the ground, of the search and rescue effort -- showing the difficulties of getting there.

And that's it.  The Russians (hint to Mitt: Russians aren't our enemies) and Indonesians are covering this quite well, so if you're interested, just follow the links.  And if you need help translating, I suggest using Google Translate -- not perfect, but good enough to figure out what's being said.  It automatically figures out what the source language is, just copy and paste.

Romney was a bully as a teenager.

I believe people have second chances, and I would suspect Mitt's not the same person he was -- none of us are.  We all do stupid things when we're younger and we're all prone to group-think.  Still, this story about how Mitt led a group of young men in prep school to pin a fellow student down and cut his long hair, because he thought the guy looked gay, is a bit more than what most people would do.

Even though Mitt has apologized, he does not remember the incident.  That's a bit troubling for me.  Most of the time, we remember those types of incidents because we are plagued by guilt over our actions, which we realize as adults were wrong.  Not remembering such things, may be a sign of a lack of a guilty conscience.

It's telling that the first response came from his campaign speaking for him on the matter, publicly denying any memory of such an incident.  Yes, he eventually apologized during a hastily-arranged radio interview on a Fox News radio affiliate, but it was clearly a politically-motivated reaction to tamper negative media coverage, and it didn't sound very sincere.

"Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that."

Obvious?

Chickens lay eggs -- that's obvious.

The sun rises from the East -- that's obvious.

That Mitt would apologize for his bullying of a possibly gay young adult, 40 years ago -- is it unequivocally obvious?

Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash.

By now you've heard about the lost plane.  This is a little bit more information than what you'll find on the local news.

Lystseva Marina, a Russian photojournalist who was a member of the world tour of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 - 6 countries in 12 days - was not on the fatal flight.  She did document the worldwide trip starting in Russian, and ending with the Superjet's final takeoff in Indonesia.  You should check out her blog - in Russian - for all of the details.

One of the many photos that Lystseva had taken, includes this one of several flight attendants.  Nine of them were apparently on the flight that crashed.

Seeing the faces of those who may have perished, removes any abstraction of this tragedy.

Also with her was Sergey Dolya, another photojournalist.  Both Lytseva and Sergey are using their Twitter accounts, in Jakarta, to provide updates.

Here's Sergey, on one of the planes that were used, on a flight prior to the one that ended in the deadly crash.

An image of the crash site taken by rescuers, has been released through local Jakarta television, showing a steep hillside covered in debris.

The Jakarta news has also reproduced the last known radar contact and the location of the crash - Mt. Salak - with Google Earth.

Following a search of the coordinates that were provided and based off the map from Jakarta news, I've recreated that Google Earth map, but with a clearer view of how the flight may have ended up -- something that isn't so obvious if you look at the map provided by the news.

Reports say that the plane was at 10,000 feet, and at the last point of radar contact, had requested to drop down to 6000 feet.  The crash location is at about 5200 feet.  If you follow the Google Earth map, to turn and end up where it did, it's quite plausible that the plane turned directly into a nearby peak at 7200 feet and clipped its left wing.


It's all just theory, but one can imagine that, in the middle of heavy rains with low clouds (as was the case at the time), the pilots could not visually see the mountain peak.  Having clipped the mountain's ridge, it may have lost control, losing its fight to stay aloft.

Again, all conjecture, but quite plausible.

---

Update: Looks like that photo making the rounds is not of the Jakarta plane crash, but that of the Islamabad crash from two years ago -- you can compare here.  I had my doubts earlier, because of the way the mountains in the background did not match up to the pinpointed site in Mt. Salak and how clean the site was, with no visible signs of being soaked from rain, but I deferred to the widespread usage of it, from various sites.

---

Update 2: Nope...that photo of the crash site IS correct; the crash coordinates were updated, and now the background hills in the photo fit the crash site. It does not appear that the 7200 foot mountain peak had anything to do with the crash; the crash occurred very close to the last radar point - see Google Maps image, updated with new coordinates below:

---

Update 3: Final, final, final map of the crash. Mt. Salak's peak remains part of the picture.

Portland General: tracking your daily energy use.

I stumbled upon this, while paying for my bill online: a nifty tool that allows you to track your daily energy usage, alongside the days of the week and that day's temperature.  You can even export the data to create your own, long-term chart / tracking.

The first thing I noticed, is that my energy use uniformly plummets on weekends - lighter blue bars.  It's the 'I work at home, but not on weekends' effect.

Also, temperature has not made any difference in the usage of energy.  I can attest to this fact, because I have my thermostat turned off most of the time, opting instead to simply turn on the AC/heat when I feel like I need to.  My temperature control is the window.

If you're a customer, log in online, then on your account main page, you'll see an energy tracker.  Underneath it, click on the "your energy use".  You'll find there are lots of different ways to look at your data, besides the one chart I've highlighted.

Bipartisanship: It's my way or the highway.

This honest tidbit from Dick Mourdock, after winning the Republican Indiana primary for US Senator:

“My idea of bipartisanship [is] a Republican majority in the US House, in the US Senate and in the White House [where] it’s going to be Democrats coming our way."

Driving the bipartisanship bus.

In other words, it's my way or the highway.  An unabashedly truthful moment from the Tea Party's candidate who defeated long-standing Dick Lugar -- something we saw all of last year when we lived through a series of debt ceiling crises and the penchant for a scorched Earth policy.