Tried to watch "Tell me you love me".

Not gonna lie: I added HBO's "Tell me you love me" to my Netflix queue because it featured the incredibly hot Michelle Borth...you know, the eye candy on Hawai'i Five-O.

It's no Californication.  It's too real and too depressing and the drama is all about a lack of communication between couples, but in an unfunny way.  If I wanted this realism, I'd be in a sucky relationship.

I can't decipher the point of watching a dispiriting show, when I know what the flaws are with each character, and they happen to be the same with each of them: they're all self-serving people who pretend to be concerned, but they're only halfway concerned about their partner's feelings, and only halfway truthful about their own flaws.

Here's my 30 second rewind of the show's themes:

A: "It's me."
B: "No, it's me."
A: "Don't you understand, it's you!?"
B: "Stop blaming me, you bastard?!"
A: "We're not working out."
B: "I don't know what you're talking about."
A: "Isn't this great?!"
B: "We're not working out."
A: "I love you."
B: "I love you, too."
A: "I hate you."
B: "I hate you, too."
A: "You wanna have sex?"
B: "Hell yeah!"
A: "You wanna have sex?"
B: "Hell no!"

It boils down to tired writing.

Netflix said that I would rate it 4.1 stars; on average, it received 3.3 stars.  I rated it 2 stars, and I couldn't get through the first disc.

It's the first show I've ever tossed out discs from my queue because it was too boring.  I've previously tossed out discs because one was unavailable, making the whole series rather pointless to watch.

Some interesting thoughts on Bitcoin.

Two things, both via Brian Krebs:

• As expected, anonymity, what was supposed to be a hallmark of Bitcoin -- is going away, as MtGox has issued a note requiring proper ID of its users.  This is easy to understand, because if you don't know what's going on in your network (the ledger), the entire network may be shut down by authorities.  Poof.
• As I've argued before, price volatility may make it interesting for investors, but Bitcoin was meant to be a currency used for transactions.  However, even the criminal underground is wary of using Bitcoin and its wildly fluctuating valuations.  In other words, Bitcoin isn't useful as a currency, which was heralded as another hallmark of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has already ironically failed.  I know there are going to be a lot of people insisting that Bitcoin hasn't failed, and true it hasn't collapsed yet, but Bitcoin is no longer working as its intended function.  Bitcoin is now just a fake virtual commodity and nothing like the virtual currency people thought it was.

Genetically-modified organisms can't be controlled.

Remember Jurassic Park, where the intended control of Nature -- switch-off gene that only produced females -- failed to prevent reproduction in the wild?  Well, as Dr. Malcolm said, "Life finds a way."

GM papaya on the Big Island spreads outside of its area.

GM salmon was shown to be able to mate and pass on genes to wild fish, despite claims that it couldn't happen.

GM corn had cross-pollinated with wild varieties, and maize, spreading its modified genes.

GM canola cross-pollinated with natural, wild canola, spreading its modified genes.

GM rice has spread, globally.

GM wheat in Oregon, has spread its genes to natural varieties -- as we just found out this morning.

And, of course, genetic modifications to make crops pesticide-resistant, has resulted in the natural selection of pesticide-resistant super-weeds.  Face palm.

The economy and politics

I was looking at the Gallup daily polls, looking to see if it validated this Quinnipiac poll, or if it was more likely a case of poll bias within the margin of error.  It was definitely within the margin of error, but the Gallup hasn't been updated with the latest, yet, so I can't really say for sure that this is a case of poll bias.  The last Gallup number however, doesn't support the Quinnipiac poll.

Nonetheless, while on the Gallup daily poll site, I grabbed the public's opinion poll of the economy, and popped it into a chart.  The results were mildly amusing.

It turns out, you can see very distinctive marks left by the passage of the stimulus bill (2009 ARRA) and the late Summer of 2011 debt ceiling show down.  Less than a month following the passage of the ARRA, the number of people who felt that the economy was getting better shot up.  Following the start of the debt ceiling showdown, there was a big drop in the number of people who felt that the economy was getting better.

In both of these cases, Republicans were on the wrong side of public opinion, though obviously the ACA turned public opinion against Democrats, at least for the time being, that is.  Having seen the kind of prices that the new health insurance exchanges will have, I am confident that the (red) states that rejected the exchanges will find themselves in a pickle when everyone else is enjoying much lower healthcare insurance rates.

Whereas Democrats in blue states have a political incentive to ensure that the exchanges work well, Republicans in red states have a political incentive to ensure that the exchanges fail.  Except, once people see how well the ACA works in blue states, Republicans might be in trouble for making gross exaggerations of the ACA, and for blocking its implementation in red states.

By the Summer of 2014, we'll know whether the Republican party is going to be overwhelmingly forced back to a more moderate platform, or crushed in the 2014 mid-term election cycle.

Does the newest iPod Touch make any sense?

Curious.

The newest  16GB iPod Touch ($229) costs more than the Nexus 7 tablet with 16GB ($199) and costs the same as a refurbished 4th generation 64GB iPod Touch ($229).

This iPod Touch is different than the other (current generation) iPod Touch devices -- no rear-facing camera -- which makes a comparison with the Nexus 7 and the 4th generation iPod Touch.

What would you buy?

I know that even if I didn't have a smart phone, I'd take the Nexus 7, because it was far more versatile than a device with a 4" screen.  But if I was an Apple fan, I'd take the refurbished 4th generation iPod Touch, because 64GB means I'd be able to load it up with music and never have to worry about being in WiFi range.

Chrome Experiment: Rollit.

Chrome Experiment, Rollit, is a bit of fun but it sucks up your smart phone battery.  I haven't tried it with other browsers or other smart phones, but it works great with Android-Chrome.



Your smartphone is the controller and the Chrome browser on your desktop is the screen where you play the game.

Your desktop / laptop Chrome browser screen

On your smartphone screen

It was a dry and cool night for a walk.

Just a nice walk at The Fields park in the Pearl District.

Sunday was a good day.

YouTube mix: A quiet moment (my Memorial Day tribute)

So, listening to "Don't Look Behind" from the anime Black Lagoon, inspired me to pull together a YouTube playlist that I call, "A quiet moment".  It's not terribly long -- 50 minutes -- but it has a mix of different emotions, all to fit within a theme sitting at night in a quiet, faintly-lit room and listening to some stirring music.

A quiet moment:

• Samuel Barber - Agnus Dei (Adagio for Strings)
• From the anime show, Black Lagoon - Don't Look Behind
• Julee Cruise - Falling (Twin Peaks Theme)
• Annie Lennox - Love Song for a Vampire (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992, Theme)
• Dusted - Always Remember to Respect and Honour Your Mother
• Phobos - Edge of Forever
• Alan Parsons Project - Time
• Moby - 18
• Sasha Lazard - Princess Mononoke Theme Song
• Francis Poulenc - Salve Regina / Dialogues les Carmelites (final scene)

If you don't have tears at some point in the 50 minutes of listening to this playlist, I failed.  But I'm betting that if you know anything about Dialogues les Carmelites, you'll be shedding tears like a waterfall -- a tribute of sorts, to today, Memorial Day.

More love: Paperland Pro

I feel sorry (no, not really) for Windows Phone and iOS users, as they'll never get to know the true joy of home screens with live wallpapers.  Oh sure, there are ways to get live wallpapers on iOS, but your screen is covered with a bunch of app icons.  With Android, you can keep a screen clear so that you can enjoy the live wallpaper.  Which leads to my favorite wallpaper: Paperland Pro.

Still loving it, and even more, now.  Since I initially bought it months ago, they've added live weather support and now, new themes.  Just awesome! :D

Lots of themes to choose from, now.

Love the Beach theme.

Papery Land theme.

Big City theme.

The battery vampire in my Nexus 7.

 Turned it off. Dunno why I kept it on, but NFC's been sucking battery.

Laura Palmer's Theme or Don't Look Behind?

So I'm on an anime blitz of sorts, and constantly hearing Black Lagoon's "Don't Look Behind" closing theme is a haunting beauty...it raises the hair on your skin, but you feel saddened.  So is Twin Peaks' "Laura Palmer's Theme", which, if you consider the chord progressions they're similar.

So which spooks more, is more evocative, or emotional?

Don't Look Behind?



Or Laura Palmer's Theme?



Okay, for kicks, "Falling" from Julee Cruise, the theme song from Twin Peaks. For a personal reason, one very emotionally heavy song.

Political outrage blow back.

Well that was interesting.  According to CNN, the DOJ had in fact informed people at Fox News that they were executing a subpoena on one of their reporter's phone records to trace back the source of a major leak involving secret knowledge over North Korea's response to US actions.  Via the NYT in 2011:

On June 11, 2009, Mr. Rosen reported that “the Central Intelligence Agency has learned, through sources inside North Korea,” that Pyongyang was likely to respond to a United Nations resolution condemning its nuclear and missile tests with more tests and other measures. The news was no surprise, but C.I.A. officials were furious that a top-secret analysis had been leaked almost instantly, according to a former government official. (A Fox News spokesman said Mr. Rosen declined to comment.)

If Fox and Roger Ailes had a real problem with it, they should have voiced it 3 years ago when they were first informed of the investigation, one would think.  Curious then, that there's been a coincidence of "scandals" to pop up in a matter of a few weeks, don't you think?

Now, I'm not saying that it makes any sense to go after the source of the leaks, because the leak itself wasn't a big surprise.  But as the NYT article noted, both sides had been clamoring for some time now, for the White House (both Obama and Bush) to clamp down on leaks.  So what this amounts to, is fake outrage on the right, because they're getting exactly what they wanted all these years, anyway.

Well, let's be honest: They still think Scooter Libby should have been excused from the beginning.  To conservatives, the only inexcusable prosecution is that of their own; everyone else should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, waterboarded and sent away to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite confinement.

Just wait for the blow back.

---

An update:

This is getting interesting. According to Reuters, a DOJ source has told Reuters that, "Consistent with Department of Justice policies and procedures, the government provided notification of those subpoenas nearly three years ago by certified mail, facsimile, and e-mail."

You read that part about certified mail?  This means that if someone performs an FOIA request, we could have absolute proof that Fox News knew and lied about what they knew, and when they knew it.  It's called irony.

US, Germany, Japan and debt.

This opinion piece in Business Insider, from John Maudlin triggered this post.  I'm not saying that I disagree with everything, but there was just one aspect that got the brain churning, today.

There are people on the left, center and right who all believe that government debt is excessive.  I disagree, because, you merely need to look at the long-term trend and see that the US' 10-year rates have been sitting at record lows, dating back 70 years.

via Tradingeconomics, US 10 year bond, 1940 - 2013

No, we're headed towards near-16% rates, I don't care what any politician or jaded economist says, they're not looking at what drives the bond rate; they're anticipating that debt absolutely drives bond rates, which is wrong.  All we need to do is benchmark the US against Germany, in long-trend views.

via Tradingeconomics, German 10 year bond, 1990 - 2013

via Tradingeconomics, US 10 year bond, 1990 - 2013

If we look at a shorter, recent period, the trend isn't terribly dissimilar, either.

via Tradingeconomics, German 10 year bond, 2008 - 2013

via Tradingeconomics, US 10 year bond, 2008 - 2013

Yes, there's currently a difference of 57 basis points, but look back at that 23 year trend (or even within this 5 year comparison) and you see much wider splits, even though the general trends are aligned.  So no, you shouldn't be afraid of the threat of spikes in bond rates, as that of Greece, Spain, etc.

Now, if we look at Japan's case, it gets interesting.

via Tradingeconomics, Japan 10 year bond, 1990 - 2013

In the same (1990 - 2013) time frame as Germany's and US', Japan's 10 year bond rate plummeted sooner and faster, then flatlined at the bottom, more or less.  If you were to compress the period between 1990 [corrected] to today, it looks remarkably like what's happened between 2008 and 2013 in Germany and the US.  You have a drop that led to a bottoming out (more or less) which is now relatively flat, near that bottom.  This should be instructive: terrible or low economic growth leads to low private investment, which ends up being dumped into low-risk government bonds.

2012 Debt / GDP %:

• Japan = ~210%
• US = ~99%
• Germany = ~80%
• Australia = ~23%
• Russia = ~10%

Current 10 year bond rates

• Russia = ~ 7.0%
• Australia = ~3.3%
• US = ~2.0%
• Germany = ~1.4%
• Japan = ~0.8%

Do you see it, now?  Debt has very little to do with bond rates of stable countries.  If it was correlated, you would see Japan with very high yields and Russia with extremely low yields.

[Added: By the way, since we're past the R&R magical 90% debt/GDP ratio and haven't seen anything happen, shouldn't we put this topic to rest?]

Back to Maudlin's piece, surely, as he noted, Japan has a lot of other problems aside from deflation, but I'm quite certain that having sustained growth solves a lot of problems.

For all the problems we still have in the US, our modest and prolonged growth has shrunk our deficits, such that a debt ceiling showdown has been put off -- and that's hugely important.  Without growth, you cannot possibly hope to get out from under your debts -- something I'll explore at some other point in the future. :D

Hezbollah and the Syrian war.

Hezbollah declared their support for Syria's Assad, which is understandable insofar that, along with Iran, he's their biggest backers.  Last week they entered into the Syrian civil war, attempting to fight anti-Assad rebels...and many have since died.  Today, rockets hit Beirut -- seemingly an attack on Hezbollah's home.

Put aside the modern concept of who is a terrorist.  This is primarily a war between Shia and Sunni.

Who's Shia?

• Bashar Al Assad (an Alawite)
• Iran
• Hezbollah

Who's Sunni?

• Most Syrians
• Hamas
• Al Qaeda

Well, you can imagine the craziness going on, and how Hezbollah entering the war, means.  If Hamas enters the war, the Syrian war would include three of the extreme factions -- the violent factions -- of Islam, from both sides.  That'd be a complete mess.  It's not that violent faction against violent faction is necessarily something to weep over, but the problem is that there will be a lot of innocent victims, old and young.  War is sloppy.

So, when you hear US politicians insisting that America arm the rebels, you might understand some of the skepticism and hesitancy on the part of the Obama Administration, to directly arm the rebels.  If the rebels win, but Al Qaeda seizes control thereafter, Syria becomes a breeding ground for extremism and those weapons are turned onto Americans.

Therefore, the best solution is a politically-driven one that has a peaceful transition, and the sooner, the better.

Some random thoughts on designing tornado-resistant structures.

It's too expensive to make an entire structure able to withstand the wind loads of a 200+ mph tornado (or a hurricane).  Just adding in impact-resistant laminated glass, would price out most people, I suspect.  Then you have to double your structural members and anchorage.

Underground shelters / basements are not really that cheap and in some cases, not possible, given the type of soil present in much of the Midwest -- the land is nearly as flat as a Cartesian plane with rich soils, and there's a reason for that.

The pressure differential between the interior and exterior of buildings, creates lift.  You could design for extreme loads and incorporating venting mechanisms to try to narrow the difference in pressure, but that's expensive and an improbable task to retrofit existing homes and structures that make use of 2x4 wood studs at 24 inches on center.

A feasible and simple option, in my mind, is to incorporate those steel storage transport containers bolted down to a slab on grade concrete foundation.  You might see container trucks lifted into the air occasionally, but more common is to see them tipped to their side.  With a bolted down connection to a concrete slab, you don't have those problems.

You can retrofit existing classrooms or incorporate them into new construction, as an emergency shelter -- nothing fancy, but something to get you through, at a minimum, 15 minutes of hell.  There are some additional things that need to be added to them before they can be functional, such as battery-pack lights, indirect ventilation, an emergency beacon, a modified latch that can be operated from the inside, and of course appropriate sound insulation with gypsum wall board and carpeted floor.

If you want to get fancy, you could pop in laminated windows, and, if attached to a home, could function as a temporary residence while you rebuilt the rest of your home.

Chrome 28: The "Do not track" button.

I don't know if many people have noticed it, but the desktop Chrome browser now has a "Do not track" button.  So, if you do not wish to browse using the Incognito mode, you can simply block tracking cookies -- assuming of course that the folks with cookies comply -- to prevent people from knowing where you've gone on the web.

If Microsoft thinks you're being scroogled...

Why is it so desperate to bring YouTube and other Google apps to its Windows Phone platform?

Career and death, football and architects.

For fun, I started compiling names and the ages at death of well-known football players and compared them to equally famous architects and some related architectural theorist / critics.  It quickly became obvious that there is a difference in age -- as one might come to expect -- but without a much wider sampling, I couldn't tell for certain that this was a real phenomenon or just one from an exclusionary bias.

For what it's worth however, there are a couple dozen currently practicing architects who are in their 70s and 80s, including Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster, in the prime of their professional careers.

For certain though, I'm sure this is why my parents banned me from taking up football as a kid.

Rogoff: As easy as writing down debt!

I've been working through Kenneth Rogoff's solution to the ever-present and ongoing Eurozone problem of continued recession and depression, predicating it on the belief that, "There is no magic Keynesian bullet for the Eurozone’s woes."  How does he do that?  Well, he first proposes to write down massive amounts of debt.  Easy peasy, right?

Five thoughts:

• If you write down debt, you cut available credit at banks, forcing sovereign central banks to bail out those banks.  Rogoff says so, too.
• If Germans didn't like the idea of bailing out Southern Europe before, you can imagine what their reaction will be, if asked to cut their own spending and credit, to bail out Southern Europe.  The Germans will continue to point to the moral hazard of writing down debt.  This is where Rogoff seems to be at the opposite end of reality of where Germans stand on bailouts.
• Some people take bigger haircuts than others, when debt is written down.  Can you say Cypriot and Greek banks, redux?
• Writing down debt doesn't automatically allow a country to reboot from a clean slate.  You still have problems of a lack of demand -- a point that Keynes made about the need for monetary intervention -- and in reality, debt will continue to grow once again.  Rogoff knows this, and therefore proposes higher inflation for the North.
• Inflating the North as opposed to deflating the South, equalizes prices and wages -- Rogoff proposes halfway down his article.  But hey, using monetary policy to increase aggregate demand to pull out Europe from recession...why that's not Keynes at all!  ;)

The new Google Maps is not yet here.

But apparently it's about to arrive if you asked for an invite.  I did, and this was on my Maps when I pulled it up just now.

SketchUp 2013 is here!

The Trimble SketchUp blog just announced the arrival of SU 2013.  I've just started playing with it after purchasing the upgrade and filling out all the forms, then downloading and installing it.

Important: If you get rendered views in Layout showing up as mere x-ray faces, you might be having issues with your graphics driver / card.  I had to adjust mine so that my GeForce GT 555M would run instead of Intel's SoC GPU, for Layout and SU.

I thought I'd point out some differences off the bat:

• SU 2013 is now on an annual upgrade (support and maintenance fee) cycle.
• The software remains perpetual license (never expires, even if you service and maintenance subscription expires).
• The upgrade price is the same at $95, but the new software price went up from $495 to $590, because in essence it includes a 2-year support and maintenance fee.  In that respect, the price is the same, but you pay for two years up front.
• The focus seems to be on easy installs of plugins from within SU.
• Layout has some interesting new functions.
• A new pattern function allows you to add construction document drawings with sand, steel, gypsum board, etc. patterns, to shapes you draw directly in Layout.  I guess this is their way of encouraging easy CAD drafting, instead of drawing it inside of SU?
• The new pattern also fills the background of your SU model views, which I suppose there might be some good to it, I just don't know what.
• A quick function to make text "bigger" or "smaller".
• All of the icons in SU have been altered enough to require you to do a double-take.
• Both SU 2013 and Layout 2013 open up faster than SU 8 and Layout 3.

French conservative protests gay marriage law in France through suicide; reveals conflicted dogma.

Ultra-conservative French historian-activist-writer, Dominique Venner, shot himself dead in a house of God -- the Notre Dame Cathedral -- to protest the recently-signed gay marriage law in France.  In one of his last blog entries, he seemed to lament the anti-violent protests of the French Spring (anti-gay marriage movement):

"Les manifestants souvent très jeunes ne sont pas homogènes. Pour une part ce sont des bourgeois catho non-violents, issus des JMJ, séduits par le nouveau discours tolérant de l’Église en matière d’amour conjugal."

 "Protesters often very young are not homogeneous. In part they are non-violent Catholic bourgeois from JMJ*, seduced by the new tolerant discourse of the Church in terms of conjugal love." -- Google Translate

His contempt for non-violence was palpable, then to commit suicide in the House of God, should only be seen as flaunting the Commandment, "Thou Shall not Kill."  I know, I know, there are shades of views on suicide and God, but he was an ultra-conservative who read the Bible literally not figuratively.

I'm not sure how committing suicide in front of church-attending people, somehow moved anyon to his side.  But the imitation is clear: He was trying to be the linchpin of the French Spring, as Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia was for the Arab Spring.  Except of course, Mohamed Bouazizi was protesting the real oppression by Tunisian police and the government, whereas Dominique Venner was upset that other people he found detestable gained new freedoms.

The first reaction from Marine Le Pen, a leading conservative French politician, was to honor his actions:

"Tout notre respect à Dominique Venner dont le dernier geste, éminemment politique, aura été de tenter de réveiller le peuple de France." 

"All our respect to Dominique Venner, whose last gesture, highly political, will be to attempt to awake the people of France." -- sorry, I didn't like Google Translate's version

Followed by Le Pen trying to walk back her comment by talking up the importance of life:

"Il n'en demeure pas moins que c'est dans la vie et l'espérance que la France se redressera et se sauvera." 

"The fact remains that it is in life and hope that France will recover and save." -- Google Translate

How very conflicted these people seem to be with their hypocritical dogma.

* -- JMJ = Jesus Mary Joseph, a slam on parochial school teaching of love and peace.

The sculptures at The Fields park.

A quick post.  There are these whimsical sculptures at The Fields, that are a mix of mechanical screws and snails, all around the park (six in all, three shown below).

Also, I noticed today that Jamison Square was empty, while The Fields was crowded with parents / grandparents and children at the sandbox and playground equipment area.  While the Summer heat will result in kids specifically headed towards the tidal pool at Jamison Square, I think most kids will want to first have fun at the playground at The Fields -- just a suggestion.

The new, fake outrage on the IRS fiasco.

This is laughable.  The new outrage, is that some Administration officials knew a few weeks ago of the IRS fiasco, but didn't tell President Obama -- as if that really matters, considering that the practice had been halted last year.

So now we have people thinking that somewhere there's a lie hidden in what Administration officials said publicly: Did they know ahead of the scandal's public airing?  Mind you, the difference here is 24 days.

But don't you worry: Rep Darrell Issa will get to the bottom of whether the Administration knew 34 days ago or 10 days ago, and who knew what, when and where Waldo was during this scandal.

---

Oh, and on a related note: This WaPo's examination of the truthfulness of Lois Lerner's statements, requires some scrutiny.

"But between 2010 and 2012, we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving, and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012." -- Lois Lerner.

Whereas WaPo's Glenn Kessler focuses on the question of whether there was a surge between 2009 and 2010, let's step back and look at IRS staffing numbers.

Year	R and A staffing numbers	% change from prev year	Number of 501(c)4 applications	501(c)4 applications  / staff
2008	364	not appl	not avail	not avail
2009	366	+0.5%	1751	4.8
2010	337	-7.9%	1735	5.1
2011	332	-1.5%	2265	6.8
2012	335	+0.9%	3357	10

While the number of 501(c)4 applications had gone down in 2010, staffing within the Rulings and Agreements section (which is responsible for processing tax-exempt applications) also decreased.  So if the intention was to focus on possible political groups sneaking into the 501(c)4 category, then, while technically not a surge, the number of applications for 501(c)4 did increase per employee between 2009 and 2010.

Furthermore, you can see that the number of 501(c)4 applications per employee has doubled between 2010 and 2012.

So, her concise statement was truthful.  It was Glenn Kessler who took some liberties in interpreting what she meant, as opposed to her precise words.  She might have been misleading (or misinterpreted), but she was truthful.

Geek out: Space.com tackles Star Trek warp tech.

All I have to say is get your geek on with this best-evah infographic from Space.com.  Click through, to read the text, though -- very important!

Congress wastes time by overlapping laws already on the books.

It's The Stolen Valor Act redux, (following the SCOTUS decision to overturn the original act) and it makes lying about military medals illegal, if used to obtain benefits.

Now, lying about medals of honor is detestable and people who do it should be shamed, but lying to obtain benefits is already illegal.  Go ahead and see if you can lie your way to VA or any other federal benefits, or state and local benefits, and see what happens.

So what is this really about?  Well, if you voted to reduce VA funding, what better way to show your 'I support Veterans' cred than to make it illegal to pretend to be a decorated veteran?

Yes, I'm cynical, but you can see how this is all a waste of time and won't make an ounce of difference for current veterans.  Real support for veterans means giving them better and more support, not making it illegal to lie about military medals while trying to obtain benefits.

Corel steps into the void left by the demise of Creative Suite.

Corel's got their own graphics suite, though it's been years since I've played around with it.  However, now that Adobe has announced the death of Creative Suite updates, Corel has stepped up and into the void and announced that you can do a sideway upgrade to their Corel applications, for the same price as their own user upgrade rates, currently $189 for CorelDraw Graphics Suite X6.

-- Yes, I will try it on one of my computers, and then decide whether to buy it. --

Of course the thing with Corel is, that they also offer subscriptions: The CorelDraw Graphics Suite is $198 / year, which is equal to $16.50 a month, or $24.95 for every 30 days. The point is, if you're going to do subscriptions, you shouldn't get rid of your boxed software sales because you're forcing your customers to either go with subscriptions or leave the platform.

Taking the risk of alienating the very people who built up your platform, is not very smart.

Impressed: Yahoo steps up big time and boosts Flickr.

Flickr on Android phone

This is just amazing: Forget the quibbling over gigabytes of online storage, Yahoo just boosted Flickr's free storage limit to ONE TERABYTE!  That's huge, and a major game-changer when it comes to online backup storage. Most of us will not reach that 1TB limit for years or the next decade.  I know Google (Picasa / Google+ images) won't take this sitting down, but wow, this really changes things.

Also: They updated their image layout, such that it now looks a lot like Pinterest.

More: Curiously, the Android app does not support tablets.  You'd think an image app would support tablets.  On phones though, it's gorgeous.

Post-thoughts: Along with today's announcement that Yahoo was buying out Tumblr, Marissa Mayer is really pushing hard to get Yahoo back into the view of consumers.

"What should they have known", and the pervasive fake outrage.

You gotta be kidding me.  On this morning's Meet the Press, the truth was being twisted so badly, it looked like a circus act of clowns.  All three conservative operatives essentially said that President Obama was responsible for knowing the unknowable.

Representative David Camp (R-MI) on whether President Obama would have been criticized if he had fired people at the IRS before their audit had been completed: "Well there's one thing to mettle in the affairs, but there's another thing to know about it, and the question is, not only about what people knew, but what should they have known."

Peggy Noonan :  "This IRS thing is something I've never seen in my lifetime."  "Is he President or not?  I mean that ultimately, these are executive agencies."

Bob Woodward: "[The President] is constitutionally responsible for the whole executive branch, to be told about things that are going on that are bad."

It really looks to me, that Republicans had passed around a talking points memo to expand the accusations that President Obama is responsible for knowing things that he hadn't known about.

First, this is hypocritical since, to this day, they refuse to hold Ronald Reagan responsible for the Iran-Contra affair, all because he said that he couldn't remember what he knew or did.  Never mind that several government employees with a clear link to people inside of the executive branch violated laws of Congress' own making.  If they were playing fair, then Ronald Reagan should have been impeached for not knowing, or specifically, for not remembering.

And of course, let's not forget that the IRS commissioner in charge at the time, was a Republican (George Bush) appointee.  None of these conservatives on MTP had the wherewithal to consider the possibility that a political appointee might have ulterior motives counter to the President from an opposing party?

Not that I think Douglas Shulman was politically motivated in any way, but these three people -- Camp, Woodward and Noonan -- cannot assert a cover up, without considering that the person involved with the cover up was from THEIR SIDE of the aisle.

And I just have to say, whether coming from Paul Dee at the NCAA's COI, or Rep. David Camp: The suggestion that people have a responsibility to know something that they had no control over, is utterly moronic.  To further suggest that the people at the top should have been control freaks, looking over the shoulder of every government employee, is both untenable and silly.

The outrage looks more like a crazy brand of out of control tomfoolery, where no truth shall be left untwisted, no lies too outrageous, and no analytical thinking to be done.

You know what they're really upset about?  That they can't pin anything on the President.

The Lazy Saturday YouTube Playlist.

From 1988 to 1994, memories of high school and college dorm life...well, mostly in the Architecture studio, it was.  Watch (listen below) or click to the playlist.

Oh, and if you click on the playlist, you get to see the new YouTube One Channel redesign.  It's all about flat.

IRS fiasco: Mainstream media and Republicans want it both ways.

It's funny, right?  The mainstream media (David Gregory tonight on NBC News) and Republicans now wonder why the Administration didn't do more to stop this fiasco.  And yet they're concurrently suggesting that the Administration had something to do with this fiasco.

There is no such thing as too much hypocrisy in politics.

A well-deserved face palm.

When spammers link to your site.

Had to deal with a spike in traffic -- although dammit, no one bothered to click on an ad, really??? -- from spammers using porn.  Ugh.

This is what it looks like when this happens, now the third time this has happened to me.  :P

No, Power ball odds do not decrease or increase.

I was a bit taken aback the other day, when on the news, the mayor of some city said that she was going to play Power Ball with its prize estimated at $360M, despite the odds of her winning having slightly decreased.  That is to say, she believed that the odds of winning had decreased because there were so many people playing.

It's impossible for the odds of winning to increase or decrease, based on the number of people entering the contest; it's a random draw of numbers, not a random draw of a winner.

Match	Prize	Odds
+	Grand Prize	1 in 175,223,510.00
	$1,000,000	1 in 5,153,632.65
+	$10,000	1 in 648,975.96
	$100	1 in 19,087.53
+	$100	1 in 12,244.83
	$7	1 in 360.14
+	$7	1 in 706.43
+	$4	1 in 110.81
	$4	1 in 55.41

It's like watching Leno's Jaywalk All-Stars, but worse: Instead of laughing, I'm just sad.  How can such a simple concept elude an elected official?

While your odds of winning do not change, the odds of having to split the pot with others, goes up as more people play Power Ball.  There is a sweet spot -- so to speak -- where you'd want to enter the Power Ball.

Of course, the point of entering the Power Ball isn't so much as to win, but as to dream about winning.  Hope is very powerful.