Google's early start to April Fools: Pokemon in Maps.

An early start to the April Fools pranks, Google has released an interesting challenge: Collect all 150 Pokemon characters seeded around the world in Google Maps app on iOS and Android.  Sorry WP, Blackberry and everyone else.

I got to 42 85 95, but then I had to recharge my phone.  Also, unfortunately they do not sync between devices.

A follow up to my witnessing of a crime last year.

In the process of cleaning up my recyclable papers, I came across a subpoena from last year -- one of several for the same case -- on this incident from last January, to which I was a witness of, just about 75 feet away in the wee morning hours.  I'd stopped getting subpoenas late last Summer, which would have been attributed to one of several outcomes: plea deal settlement, the guy disappeared or died, or the case was dropped.  Upon seeing the old subpoena, I was curious to discover the outcome, so I did an online search.

It turns out he pleaded guilty in return for a probationary sentence, which appears to be a mental health probation.  I doubt it'll work, though.  He'd been in trouble with drugs for the last 15 years, according to his record, starting just 5 months after he reached 18 years of age.  If he was mentally ill -- schizophrenic -- before the drug use, he's most certainly worse off today and his brain effectively altered.

If drug use triggered his schizophrenia, there really isn't much hope, now is there?  First off, the reason why he got into trouble -- officially categorized as criminal mischief -- was because he admittedly stopped taking his anti-psychotic meds, so the DA explained later on.  This is not uncommon, for many reasons.  But because of his drug addiction -- the root of raised dopamine levels -- he is stuck in a feedback loop.  One consequence of high levels of dopamine: onset of schizophrenia.  So it would seem that he's at a very high risk of recidivism and may be a lost case.

Oh, and one final point: His drug of choice was marijuana.

10 Thoughts for March 30, 2014

1. Russia is going to centralize credit card processing after US sanctions meant that Visa, MC and others could no longer process credit transactions in Russia.  In the future, Russians will be handing over complete financial and personal information directly to the Russian government, therefore.  Fear the KGB FSB.
2. If Russia supports self-determination, will they support Tatars in their move for autonomy?  The opposition to this comes from Tatars who don't want to acknowledge Crimea as a part of Russia.  But let's say they find their way towards autonomy, will Russia allow the Tatars to later seek secession from Russia and rejoin Ukraine?  Imagine if the Tatars found a way to join with Ukrainian Orthodox to take a good chunk of Crimea; Ukraine could eventually take back part of Crimea by using Russia's own arguments: threats to natives, support for self-determination, etc.
3. Interestingly, Russian media states that there is no buildup on the border, though what they've left out is that Russia has blocked journalists from actually seeing the border and Russia had previously blocked OSCE observers from going to Russian-speaking areas in Ukraine, and shots had been previously fired at OSCE observers, stopping them from entering Ukraine.  This is the actual quote from OSCE: "During the three visits, thirty OSCE pS sent 56 unarmed military and civilian personnel to Ukraine. The group attempted to visit Crimea several times, but was unable to move beyond checkpoints at the administrative border, however, based on the observations made of the military activity the group stated that it is not able to dispel military concerns in Crimea."  Then of course, if Russian forces aren't massed up near the border, how can they be conducting military exercises, as Russian officials have said, along the border?  Oops!
4. All about the Russian propaganda machine.  Quixotically ironic: Russians believe that the West supports Nazis in Ukraine, yet as people within and without Russia have noted, Putin's actions remarkably mirror that of Hitler's annexation of Sudetenland.
5. So let's get some unpleasant stuff out of the way.  Here's what I got wrong in the last two weeks: Jared Allen didn't end up at Seattle; defying logic, the extrapolated data shows that MH370 crashed in the ocean somewhere southwest of Australia.
6. Speaking of the NFL, it would be interesting to see if OT Charles Brown ends up playing for Pete Carroll as he did when at USC.  It wouldn't surprise me if Carroll gave DeSean Jackson a 1-year deal, with Golden Tate gone -- remember that he played against Carroll when he was at Cal.
7. Blackberry is toast.  Hmm...Blackberry toast.
1. Q4-2014 = 3.4M (-21% from prev q) phone sales
2. Q3-2014 = 4.3M (-27%)
3. Q2-2014 = 5.9M (-13%)
4. Q1-2014 = 6.8M (+12%)
5. Q4-2013 = 6.0M (-13%)
6. Q3-2013 = 6.9M (-6.8%)
7. Q2-2013 = 7.4M (-5.1%)
8. Q1-2013 = 7.8M (-30%)
8. Microsoft did an about-face on the sanctity of its users' privacy, following the blowback from their unilateral decision to search a user's Hotmail records without law enforcement involvement.  One week ago they said, "We will not conduct a search of customer email and other services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available."  Yesterday they wrote, "Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves. Instead, we will refer the matter to law enforcement if further action is required."
9. Speaking of Microsoft, they're eventually coming out with an Android tablet app for Office, which will push Google hard to speed up development and make Drive much more robust with higher-end capabilities.
10. I checked out Cover Oregon's online website again.  It has changed quite a few times over the last six months.  The new process now provides for online application, but only via fillable PDF and only on IE, which means that they're manually transferring data.  No offense, but Cover Oregon folks need only look at Moda Health and Kaiser to realize that they should have been using IT from these companies to build Cover Oregon's website. 

ACA deadline, explained.

Whenever I feel that the media has done a poor job of explaining something, I decide that I should do research they've failed to do, then explain what was left out.  Therefore, here is a list to explain what the March 31st deadline is, regarding the ACA:

• The deadline refers to the federal requirement that, to avoid penalties, you must be enrolled in a plan that has been qualified as meeting the minimum requirements of coverage and benefits, for at least 9 months out of a calendar year.  March 31st is the latest date you can meet this enrollment requirement.
• If you are enrolled before the deadline (during this month), your coverage won't start until May 1.
• Notice the difference between coverage and enrollment?  The law does not demand that you are covered, but that you are enrolled for 9 months out of the year.
• This open enrollment period for 2014 ends on all state and federal exchanges on March 31st.
• You can enroll outside of the open enrollment periods, under certain circumstances.  This is called the special enrollment period, which lasts 60 days following your change in circumstances.
• Just because you apply does NOT mean that you are enrolled.  Your application must be processed and accepted.  The Obama Administration has offered the promise to allow for extension requests (technically this means you're in a special enrollment period) so long as you had already started the application process by March 31st.  This extra time only extends to mid-April.
• If you earn too much to qualify for subsidies, you don't need to apply through these exchanges, called Marketplaces.  For instance, in Oregon where the exchange is badly broken, the best option is to apply directly through co-ops, private exchanges, or directly from insurers...after you've used the Cover Oregon website to do a rough estimate of whether or not you might qualify for subsidies, and what kind of plans exist.
• The penalty for 2014, if you miss this deadline, is zero if your household income is below $10,150; $95 if your income is between $10,150 and $19,650; 1% of your household income is above $19,650, but capped at $285 per household.  These values increase until they reach their maximum in 2016.
• This penalty applies for EVERY month of the year.  The yearly total -- the prior bullet point figures -- are divided into 12 and applied per month.  If you enroll by March 31, the penalty will be waived for the three months you missed this year -- January, February and March.
• From here on out, the enrollment periods will be from November 15 to February 15.
• Medicaid (poverty-level based income levels) and SCHIP (children) programs do not have deadlines, but then again, if you're this poor you should have applied yesterday, not tomorrow.

You can now find the best strategy that applies to you, which probably means getting an application for health insurance in by March 31st.

10 Thoughts for March 27, 2014

1. So, I finally brought my nearly 7-year old car for its 15,000 mile service.  I enjoyed talking to the service guy about that.  Apparently one is supposed to take a vehicle in for regular service, every 5000 miles or 6 months, whichever comes first.  The only problem is, if I brought it in every 6 months, it'd amount to changing the oil every 1200 miles.  I'll probably just settle for once a year ~ 18 months.  Shorter than that would seem to be a waste when my odometer is just 15,000.
2. While I was at the dealer, I test-drove the Prius C.  My two cents: It's a lot quieter (more so than my own vehicle) than the negative reviews, including that from Consumer Reports, and apparently quieter than the new RAV4; if you're too tall, the folks in the rear seat will feel extremely cramped; I really enjoy the feel of the interior, even if surrounded in plastic (resin extracted from bamboo).
3. Chris Christie's personal lawyer issued a taxpayer-funded report, stating that Christie was not involved and did not know about Bridgegate.  No one believes him.  Makes you wonder if this PR campaign, paid by taxpayers, is itself legal.
4. With everyone (Japan, Thailand, China, France) pointing their satellites at the same area in the Indian Ocean, the first visual in my head was a queue of satellites waiting to get into position to take their turn at photographing the area.  Obviously they're all at different elevations in orbit so that they don't actually hit each other and a queue is obviated.  Nonetheless the point is, it'd be more productive if just one satellite remained in geostationary position and send back photos of the same region every hour, then split the job of reviewing the images by quadrants, between all the interested parties.  Instead, we have what amounts to a race to see who can spot the most debris.
5. Microsoft revealed a free version of Office for Android / iOS.  The caveats they didn't tell you: It's only free for personal use, limited to documents in your personal Microsoft (Live / Sky Drive / Outlook) online account, and it isn't available for your Android tablet, whereas you have to use the paid version for the iPad.  It's a half-measure and one that'll keep Google in the lead in the cloud.
6. Hawai'i reversed itself and will now make it illegal for undercover cops to have sex with prostitutes.  I can't believe this wasn't changed sooner.
7. I didn't see it pop up on the news, but the final Q3-2013 GDP number was 4.1% (over Q3-2012), and the third estimate for Q4-2013 was revised upward from 2.4% to 2.6%.  Meanwhile, exports were accelerating faster than imports, so good news.
8. Butter is back in, baby.  For what it's worth, I stopped using Crisco and margarine a decade ago when it was apparent to me that everything that was previously espoused on food science regarding fats was wrong.  NOT that I go hog wild on animal fats, however, because I prefer the flavor of plant fats such as olive oil.  This follows roughly on the heels of eggs coming back with fruit juices going out.  Eating fruit is good; drinking fruit juice not so much.
9. We're one more step towards creating life from scratch.  This is going to be one of those things where the future will be equally well-served and condemned.  Well-served because it means that we're one step closer towards understanding how to replace bad genes effectively and repair damage, but equally condemned because it means super humans and chimeras.
10. Thomas Picketty has a book out, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", which may or may not be sold out, as it is extremely popular.  A lot of high praise from all over, but at 696 pages of information to take in, there's just no way you can borrow this from the library and get through it in 3 weeks.  Besides, the library has 60 holds on just four copies.  It'll get longer as the book gains publicity.

The 11 nations who voted down UN resolution on Crimea.

Early Thursday the UN voted on a non-binding resolution which called the Crimean referendum invalid and supported the border integrity of Ukraine.  100 countries supported it; 58 abstained; 11 voted against it.  Here are those 11 countries:

1. Armenia
2. Belarus
3. Bolivia
4. Cuba
5. North Korea
6. Nicaragua
7. Russia
8. Sudan
9. Syria
10. Venezuela
11. Zimbabwe

So, five points:

• I don't think it's by coincidence that Russia's closest allies lead on Freedom House's list of least-free countries.  The colors indicate the least free countries, countries that are classified as not free, and countries listed as partially free.
• China abstained, again.  They are displeased with Russia, but not so much as to express this directly with a vote against Russia.
• Ukraine has moved its military force into place to create a physical roadblock if Russia chooses to expand its incursion and annexation of Ukrainian territory.  It's not that they'll stop Russia, but that it forces Russia to face the human, monetary and political costs.  The political costs: a schism with China where China will no longer abstain from UN votes condemning Russia's actions.
• This shows how the west should have seized on Russia's relationship with Syria and gone after a UN resolution to divide Syria into two during the Ukrainian crisis -- what I refer to as a parallel asymmetric intervention -- to provide relief to the 2M+ Syrian refugees.
• Russia's UN envoy had the most hilarious quote: "The result is rather satisfying for us as we have won a moral and a political victory."  Not a single free country voted in support of Russia's actions.

Experts are overrated.

Just wanted to share this except from Tom Friedman's NYT post from last month:

The least important attribute they [Google] look for is “expertise.” Said [Laszlo] Bock: “If you take somebody who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learn and has emergent leadership skills, and you hire them as an H.R. person or finance person, and they have no content knowledge, and you compare them with someone who’s been doing just one thing and is a world expert, the expert will go: ‘I’ve seen this 100 times before; here’s what you do.’ ” Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer, added Bock, “because most of the time it’s not that hard.” Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, he said, but once in a while they’ll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that.

I'll admit to something that bothers a lot of people I know:

I fully understand how to accomplish a particular task in AutoCad, e.g. a wall section and enlarged details, in the same way that 95% of all people have been taught and have been practicing for years.  But I continue to experiment with new ways of completing the same task but with different methods.  It bothers a lot of people because they prefer predictability over novelty and would rather not have to learn more than what is minimally necessary to complete the task.

So, when someone asks me for help on how to do something, I have to take a moment and think it through, because they might be asking me what's the preferred method rather than the coolest method, the fastest method or the best-practices method towards achieving their goal.  If you ask me the same question every few months, my answer might be different every single time and that drives some folks nuts.

Being liberally open-minded, I believe, is very important, regardless of how much experience you've built up.

It's way too early to make midterm predictions.

I'm amused.  Nate Silver has gone all in on data crunching to show that Republicans are now slightly favored to retake the Senate.  The problem is, we haven't even reached primaries, so these numbers are meaningless.

I have briefly looked at RCP's data, and as far as I can tell there are three takeaways:

1. GOP pollsters are finding what they mostly want to find, while Democratic pollsters are mostly finding what they want.  Which is to say that both sides might be fooling themselves if they think they know where the races are headed.
2. If you look at the last three weeks of polling data, Democrats are doing mostly fine.
3. In some cases where a Republican candidate is polling ahead of the Democratic candidate, you will see that that individual is not the front-runner of the GOP primary poll.

So again, it's way too early to make predictions.  The races are extremely fluid with a lot of things going on between today and November.  The earliest one can do a proper prediction is post-May primary season.

Republicans really do believe that the ACA will doom Democrats.  I think they're wrong for three reasons:

1. Despite all of the ACA's troubles in implementation, the horror stories were generally false narratives with people offering politically-driven bias to their personal stories of doom.  When pushed and shown how the ACA had helped them, these same people remain adamant that they're right and everyone else is still wrong.  You can't help people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
2. It's still the economy, stupid.  I'm sure that, were the US to have hit even a mini-recession in 2012, Democrats and President Obama would have had a much harder time winning.  For the rest of 2014, most all economic forecasting indicates continued strong growth in the US...that is, once we get past Winter in the east.  Nonetheless, dude, there are a dozen construction cranes within a 5-mile radius in Portland Oregon.  There is a point to why Janet Yellen signaled the probable increase in rates next year, and earlier this year, the continued reduction in QE.
3. Republicans are known to stick their foot in mouth and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Trust me, the pull from the far-right continues unabated.

10 Thoughts for March 23, 2014

1. Conservatives have warned that the US debt will result in lower credit rating, yet Fitch just removed its downgrade warning, specifically because the US did not have another debt ceiling fight.  But I'm sure conservatives will still point to the US debt as reason enough to slash our wrists and let some blood drain.
2. You can cut off social network media, but that won't block people out from it.
3. Android is on the verge of conquering Blackberry and beating iOS into the White House.  Interesting. 
4. The future of the New York Jets, is in a quarterback whose rookie season record included 12 touchdowns and 21 interceptions.  Backed up, of course, by a quarterback whose age and health increasingly meant that he'd spent an equal amount of time off the field as he did on it, once he got out of prison.  Indeed, the future is exceedingly bright for the Jets. 
5. Conservatives have apparently gotten behind the BS argument that "bandwidth is constricted"...you know, the one that the cable companies have been spreading.  For several years I've been explaining that, once you get to the fiber optic level, bandwidth is only constricted by technical limitations of separating bands of light carrying data.  As it is, there remains an abundance of dark fiber to this day, following the overbuild of the late 20th century.  That's how Google Fiber got started.  But you know, the BS goes even deeper.  Comcast already gets paid by customers to access high speed internet; now they're looking to get paid by the companies whose services you're paying for; you're paying twice to jerks such as Comcast.  If Google Fiber goes nationwide, we won't have network neutrality disputes because Comcast will no longer have monopoly powers over the last mile.
6. I haven't watched a single March Madness game, but we all know now that not a single person remained with a perfect bracket in Warren Buffet  / Intuit's bracket challenge.  We also know that there are approximately 11M American fools who had willingly given up a bunch of information about themselves for an imperceptible possibility of winning $1B.  The remaining prize -- $100K for the top 20 brackets -- is roughly in line with PowerBall odds for winning $10K, except of course you don't have to relinquish any personal information unless you win, and the lottery only collects your personal information to pay out.  Intuit's going to have a field day with this long list of names.
7. I hadn't watched KOIN News in a while apparently.  The other night I saw Ken Bodie sitting in front of a brick wall and a 42" screen mounted on it.  I know times are tough for some folks, but a brick wall backdrop, really?  Just go with the green screen and show us puppies in the background, in that case.  ;)
8. I read a most interesting bit about how Russia tried to encourage China to participate in a coordinated effort to sell off Fannie and Freddie securities at the time that Treasury Sec Hank Paulson was trying to save both institutions and banks from collapsing.  China wasn't stupid as to slash its own wrists.  But even so, everything you need to know about Putin's motivations in Ukraine are explained right there: He'd sacrifice his own economy for the sake of restoring the Cold War.
9. Russian nationalists might think that Russia serves as a counter balance to the US; think again.  The US spends about 7x more, nominally, on the military than Russia.  Combine China and Russia and you're still talking less than a third of what the US spends.  And that's just at the Pentagon.  Add in Homeland Security ($60B) and black budget ($100B) spending on top of the Pentagon's bill ($700B) and you've got nearly $900B spent in the US on intelligence and military.  Russia just doesn't have the GDP to match that of the US.  I'm not saying that the US should be spending this much, but that it is what it is, and it'd take a very long time for anyone to match that of the US' capabilities.
10. Make no mistake: China does not support Russia's actions in Crimea.  On an UN Security Council vote criticizing the Crimea referendum, China abstained.  The Russian media played it as Chinese support for Russia's intervention in Crimea, which again goes to show just how deep the propaganda goes in Russia.  If China actually supported Russia, they would have voted against the resolution rather than abstain from voting.  China rather chose to avoid voting against its own interest as doing so would dilute its claim on Taiwan and Tibet.  In this way, Russia was humiliated at the UN, but was played down by the west and outright reversed by Russian media.

10 Thoughts for March 20, 2014

1. I just ran into someone online who offered an assertion of fact, to which I disproved, then two retorts later, responded that he never wrote such a statement...even though said statement is still posted inline.  #facepalm
2. No, I didn't fill out any brackets, and no, I'm not going to send my information away to participate in Quicken / Warren Buffet's challenge to build the perfect bracket.
3. After the Super Bowl, I wrote that, were any of the Seattle Seahawk free agent defensive linemen to leave, there was plenty of talent out there.  So imagine how big of a smile I have on my face, with the mention of Jared Allen as a strong candidate for Seattle.  If Seattle reaches the next Super Bowl, people will be calling them nonstop to get in the door.
4. Golden Tate expressed his displeasure with the offer he received from Seattle.  But the reality is, that Percy Harvin is the upgrade to Golden Tate.  If they really want another small receiver, they could always resign Doug Baldwin.  Besides, I think Pete really wants to find a big, physical receiver in the draft to replace the cut Sidney Rice, or maybe a dynamic duo to Harvin, with Marqise Lee?  Who'd you cover, if you had two dynamic receivers?
5. The other day I left a comment online about how Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight site with just one woman minority contributor and six white guys was a disappointment.  The point was, that greater diversity hedges against groupthink and surely there were many qualified minority / women to select from.  Today, this in-depth explanation from elsewhere.  The criticism doesn't disqualify the fivethirtyeight; it's just advice on improvement.  BTW, you should read some of the white backlash, with the false choice of either best-qualified or diversity (but not both); statistically-speaking, there should be roughly equally distributed women and minorities who are equally qualified.
6. Hilarious (to me) quote from a fivethirtyeight post regarding Russia's annexation of Crimea: "My Russian friends said they don’t remember, even in Soviet times, such intensive propaganda as on mass media in the last month."
7. Microsoft's legal team has just issued a tortuous explanation demonstrating the irony of its Scroogled campaign: "Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed."  Upon being outed for searching through someone's Hotmail account for evidence of pilfered Microsoft code, Microsoft then issued unilateral rules to apply more stringent restrictions to conduct such searches.  That kind of reminds us of someone else: THE NSA.  Which is why their Scroogled campaign is so ironic.
8. If you are a police officer in Hawai'i and under cover, you can have sex with prostitutes.  But hey, most people from Hawai'i already knew that a good number of HPD already followed the ethos of "do as I say, not as I do".
9. The moment you realize someone is smart and humble, having done a 180 and is now pushing to keep the Fed rate low until inflation rises above target level, rather than move ahead of inflation.  I'm not sure where Janet Yellen is headed, though.
10. You know, someone's going to have to pay for all of that money being thrown around to buy out TWC.  Are you a Comcast sucker customer?

10 Thoughts for March 18, 2014

1. Manage your Google account permissions.  If you're like me, you've granted many sites and apps (including Drive add-ons) some permissions to access your Google account; revoke that access back if you're not using that app / website anymore!
2. USE 2-step verification, people.  You can't afford to be lazy on security these days.
3. This phishing scam based on Google login is somewhat difficult to discern, except to note that in order for it to work, you have to click on a link that sends you to a Google Drive document.
4. The third and fourth invasions of Android are coming.  The first was the smartphone; the second was the tablet; the third is in your car; the fourth is in wearables.  Meet Moto 360, for example.  Windows is dead, dead, dead.  The IOT is being built on open source and Microsoft will not find any profit from it.
5. iPhone 5C sales are apparently (shock!) slow, so Apple UK has lowered the price (saving you £40 / $66) by halving the memory from 16GB to 8GB, and now an unlocked iPhone 5C can be had for £429 / $711. I pity the fool who pays that much for a watered-down iPhone with just 8GB, when you can get the Nexus 5 with 16GB in the UK for £299 / $495.  No wait, I celebrate your idiocy if you buy an iPhone 5C 8GB model.
6. The big bang theory has been supported by physical evidence.  A side note: This NASA explanation confirms that, "the universe should obey the rules of Euclidean geometry."  Sorry future high-schoolers, but it looks like you'll still have to take Geometry and Trigonometry even if you're born on Mars, or Europa.
7. Russia immediately accepted Crimea into its country.  Odd don't you think, that Putin and his supporters claim to give Crimea the right of self-determination, yet would not address their violent crush of Dagestan's and Chechnya's desires to leave the Russian Federation?  I think he's lying and I think Nationalism is driving his actions, not any selfless respect for rights.
8. Speaking of self-determination, Russian Crimeans didn't exactly give other Crimeans a choice in the matter: Vote to join Russia or vote to join Russia later.  I laughed when I saw that 97% - 3% vote margin (again, 97% voted to join now, 3% voted to join later), and others did, too.
9. Watching PBS News Hour, there was an expose on the issue of gentrification in the Bay Area, as a result of a high tech explosion.  Here's my quick 1/2-cent explanation of why opposition to gentrification is wrong: Ask ANY homeowner if they want their homes to be worth the same, 30 years down the line.  Gentrification is good, but requires government investment into affordable housing from the higher tax revenues generated by gentrification.
10. I think the theories that flight MH370 was flown to either Central Asia or southwest of Australia are implausible.  There are eyes in the sky and cellular towers to ping off of, over Central Asia; there's no end point if it flew southwest of Australia over water.  I'm sticking with the failed Somalia pirate angle.  Either arc angle (the Central Asia and southwest of Australia) demarcate pathways around Diego Garcia.

Check out this 3D interactive light sculpture.

Unnumbered Sparks, a sculpture in Vancouver, BC by Janet Echelman utilizes smartphones connected to a special WiFi portal, to allow visitors to direct animations onto a woven mesh floating in midair.  The projection itself, is Chrome browser window, amazingly enough, using WebGL.

As a Kickstarter-funded project via the Burrard Art Foundation, in conjunction with TED's 30th anniversary, this is one cool project!  I had seen a notice about it before, but I didn't realize that it was an interactive, animated projection;  I wish that I had signed up on this to get one of her serialized prints.  Awesome stuff.

10 Thoughts for March 12, 2014

1. I find it odd that Republicans are pinning the FL-13 win on the ACA, seeing as the seat has been Republican since...1983.  In the 2012 elections, Republican Bill Young won this seat by 15 percentage points.  Gloating over winning by about 2 percentage points, what has been a safe seat for the last 30 years is strange don't you think?  Or, it could be a case where Republicans are actually not safe at all in 2014?
2. Oh look...Lisa Murkowski's been acting more like a moderate these days, ever since she beat the Tea Party favorite with a write-in campaign to win reelection in 2010.
3. Google Apps (docs) now has add-ons.  They are basically gadgets from within docs that allow you do more things with your docs, faster, easily.  Looking over the Add-ons, it seems that they educational and enterprise crowds the most.
4. It's hard to believe that the world can't seem to find Malaysia Air flight MH370.  The latest report indicates that the plane's data transmitted back to Boeing points to the plane flying for an additional 4 hours after last radar contact.  There are other ways of tracking location, of course.
5. I'm not going to get too deep into this, but if you keep a smart phone with you at all times, you can turn on location services and track your travels.  If you have Google Now, then you already know this intuitively as Now reports back each month how many miles you walked, etc.  There also happens to be another useful reason for enabling location services: Verifying what time you were at a particular location, for use in forensics. You can delete your tracking data however you wish, whether your entire history or particular days.
6. I had the Pink Screen of Death from Chromecast, and I think I know what may have caused it.  The device was working fine earlier, and then just a moment ago when I was trying to cast a tab from Chrome browser, I got the PSOD.  I checked, and casting from apps worked fine, so it had to be the Chrome browser.  I then checked for an update, and sure enough there was one.  It downloaded and installed, and when I restarted Chrome and tried to cast a tab, everything was back to normal.  It could be, that when an update is waiting to be installed, it turns pink.
7. Toyota just doesn't get it.  First it was Entune with Bing, and in 2015 it'll be Apple's Car Play.  Android owns 80% of the global smartphone market.  You're driving us away from the brand by being such stubborn fools.
8. Remember that retired police officer in Florida who shot a guy in a movie theater for texting during previews?  Turns out he had been texting in the theater moments before...to his son...who arrived at the theater in time to see and hear the gun go off and attempted to save the guy who was shot by his father.  Wow.
9. Google lowered prices for Drive storage while boosting the amount of paid storage.  Since hard drive cost / MB keeps dropping, eventually these plan rates will also drop.
10. Target has a big red target on its back, now that it has been revealed that Target actually knew about the attempted hack for months, and did nothing.  I don't think it's by coincidence that Target's CTO resigned last week -- BBW probably got the ball rolling when they asked for comments from Target, prior to publishing this story.

10 Thoughts for March 11, 2014

1. While we were paying attention to Ukraine and Russia, North Korea threw a tantrum, firing a series of nuclear missile tests.  One of these missiles came within 7 minutes of a Chinese passenger airlines.  That event apparently convinced China to issue a red line for North Korea.  Funny, when existentialism hits.
2. North Korea threw a tantrum because it's the start of the annual South Korea - US war games -- the same one last year this time that triggered a tense war of rhetoric and bad photoshop.
3. Will the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up?  No?  That's okay, because you really don't want to be fingered as the naive guy who wrote up the lousy manifesto on fiat money, esp if you're 60-something.
4. If the Obama Administration played good hardball, they'd have a major press conference at the beginning of the week and thank Russia's Putin for showing the example of Crimea to the world...followed by an announcement that the US will offer two programs up for a vote at the UN to allow both Taiwan and independently-controlled regions of Syria to hold democratically-driven elections to secede.
5. Speaking of Ukraine, you gotta be kidding me, that Sergey Lavrov would call people in control of Ukraine as "radical nationalists".  Look in the mirror and around you, Mr. Lavrov.  Nationalism is universal.  Radical nationalism is nothing more than the same fringe in Russia that exists in Ukraine, France, Japan, China, the US and everywhere else.
6. The BLS jobs number is interesting, in light of the bad late Winter weather across the country. Combined with data showing that there are millions of jobs that have gone unfilled, it seems that the economy is right at the edge of a big boost.
7. I don't like this design for a memorial.  The reason: It reflects minimalism on the face of it, but it's a rather major interruption of Nature.  In some distant future, it will affect its surroundings and eventually lead to death of living material.
8. A peek at some future IKEA stuff, to be released next month or so.
9. Portland cat attacks family?  Not.  Idiot parents allow their baby to chase animals and pull their tails, then are surprised when the cat gets very angry: "The cat never attacked the baby until he pulled on his tail." 
10. Masayoshi Son promises a price war if he's allowed to buy out T-Mobile USA.  Ignoring, of course, that there is a war going on right now, started by T-Mobile.

Crimean ballot is one-sided; former Ukrainian leader wants back.

This is funny, in a seriously effed up way.  That Crimean vote coming next week has a ballot with just two options:

• Join Russia;
• Restore 1992 constitution giving Crimea independence and right to join Russia.

There is no option to say no.

Yeah...democracy now!

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Separately, Yanukovich invokes stupid and says that he's going back to Kiev.  I'm guessing the police will be waiting at the airport to arrest him.

You know what's happening here, though: Russia is using him as bait.  Once he gets arrested, Russia will invite itself to the party in Kiev with a full-blown invasion, with the pretense of "rescuing the legitimate president of Ukraine".

10 Thoughts for March 5, 2014

1. I'd been on a mini binge buying spree of can biscuits.  As I was popping some in the oven, I recalled a childhood memory of making cheap malasadas with these can biscuits.  Deep fried, shaken in a paper bag full of sugar.  So I made some.  Still can't beat real malasadas, though.
2. One part of the ACA included a rule that required drug companies to publicly detail payments to doctors for representations, speaker fees, etc.  Pro Publica reported that many of those drug companies have suddenly slashed their spending on doctors.  When you shine the light, the roaches scramble, right?  
3. Is Microsoft considering a slimmed down Windows OS with Bing front and center, to compete with Chromebooks?  If true, it merely shows how much BS Microsoft is willing to dish out, only to co-opt their own message by following the same playbook.
4. This won't surprise you, but Paul Ryan's been caught -- yet again -- citing research incompletely, this time to justify his war on Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty.  It should speak volumes that someone is this deceitful.
5. Ironic: Armed men in Crimea detaining a UN representative, then forcing him out of Crimea.  Well then, I guess Putin only cares about ensuring that Ukrainians in Crimea don't restrict what Russians can do in Crimea.
6. By the way, Putin was against the Feb 21st pact before he was for it.  Surely this is enough to show that Putin has zero credibility, but yesterday's statement from Putin that there were no Russian soldiers in Crimea was a jaw dropper.  All in all, everyone -- outside of Russia -- can now see bare, the Emperor has no clothes on.
7. I was curious if my posts were turning off Russian readers -- see Nationalism.  Apparently not.  Still getting a lot of traffic...still the second-highest, next to US.  What happened, Canadians?  ;)
8. About Nationalism: The first step of countering it, is to be cognizant of it, then diversify your reading sources; it's the same issue surrounding confirmation bias.  I can't explain it to others without seemingly insulting their intelligence -- no one wants to be told that what they believe in, is a lie.  Hopefully I have some cred, because you know, I am willing to praise people I generally detest, when they do something praiseworthy.  See: Rand Paul on NSA spying.
9. I noticed some interesting language creeping into the criticism of Obama: Nudge.  At some point, the media and politicians realized that Obama was trying to nudge people in his direction -- something I mentioned long ago when Secretary Kerry let it "slip" that Syria's only means of avoiding intervention was dismantling their chemical weapons.  Nowadays, Obama critics find this nudging insufficient.  The way I see it, the real problem is that people hate it when your actions are too subtle to interpret at face value.
10. About Ukraine and NATO.  Back in 2009, Brits and other Europeans suggested that the US leave NATO, because Bush had backed a plan to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.  The fear back then, was that NATO and Russia would be on the path towards a military confrontation.  Further, back then a majority of Ukrainians were against it.  Here we are in 2014 and now a majority of Ukrainians want in, meanwhile former Soviet bloc republics now inside of NATO want a forceful, meaningful push to hold Putin within his borders.  Interesting how a threat of Soviet Russian intervention can suddenly change things, don't you think?  Former bloc members can still feel the breath of the KGB and the USSR on their necks, and it scares the hell out of them.  Do Russians understand this?  Can they understand this?  Nationalism, people.

Quick Malasadas.

So, I'd been on a binge recently on can biscuits, when I recalled a childhood memory of making cheap, quick Malasadas from these.  Not as good, but when you've got a craving and nowhere to get them from nor the patience to make them from scratch, it'll do.

Four steps:

1. Cut the uncooked biscuits into smaller pieces; you can twist them if you cut them into strips.
2. Deep fry them in vegetable oil or lard until light brown.
3. Place on paper towels for a few seconds to get rid of excess oil.
4. Put into paper bag filled with a few tablespoons of sugar and shake vigorously.

Deep-frying strips of can biscuits.

Out of the fryer and onto paper towels.

Out of the paper bag of sugar.

Cut in strips, you can twist them prior to deep frying.

Bachelor Cooking, beginner's level! :D

10 Thoughts for March 4, 2014

1. Best quote so far, on Bitcoin fans: "The Bitcoin masses, judging by their behavior on forums, have no actual interest in science, technology or even objective reality when it interferes with their market position.  They believe that holding a Bitcoin somehow makes them an active participant in a bold new future, even as they passively get fleeced in the bolder current present."
2. That (faux) leather wrapped Chromebook from Samsung became official.  It sure looks like it's a $20 premium for that leathery texture.  It's a competitive market, though.  They won't have much time before the others catch up with similar specs.
3. I find it perplexing that, if Russia wants to be seen as the good guys in Ukraine, why are they running around in full military garb, armed, but without their IDs?  No country patch, no name patch.  Heroes don't go running around trying to obfuscate who they are.  Heroes also don't go around throwing stun grenades to injure people, then run away.
4. Along these same lines, if Russia is the hero, why are they trying to control the message by completely blocking others from broadcasting their views?  In democratically-run nations, we allow dialog regardless of whether or not we agree with it.  The US government may want to control the message, but they do not censor those who speak out against it.
5. Will Crimea end up as Russia's Afghanistan, redux?  I don't think so.  Deaths must be incurred first, and Crimeans must be unified against Russian intervention -- which they're not.
6. I'm not saying, "I told you so," but hey, analysts got it wrong again, expecting iPad to dominate far longer than what history has taught us about the fight between closed and open platforms.  Instead, Android now has 62% of the tablet market.  Apple has 36% and Microsoft a measly 2%.
7. Stephen Cohen was on PBS News Hour again (Monday night) to talk about the Ukrainian crisis.  And again, he demonstrated cold-war-informed thinking and critically, his distaste for American foreign policy.  Unlike last night, tonight he unleashed all of his bias.  Allow me to provide a synopsis of his commentary over the last two nights: The US has no option left; it's the US' fault anyway; the current US actions are creating a cold war.
8. Forget that PBS News Hour interview with Stephen Cohen.  Watch Charlie Rose instead.  Last night he had a group of people to talk about the Ukrainian situation, providing realistic ideas about what's driving Putin and where things stand.  Watch last Monday's show, and note that, contrary to what conservatives have been saying, everyone had been warning Russia against intervening in Ukraine.
9. Like I said earlier, I think the US should push a UN Security Council vote on a declaration regarding Russia's intervention in Ukraine, to see how China votes.  I think they'll abstain, but they are probably not happy if Russia continues, because it gives others such as Japan leverage against China over the Senkakus.  Maybe the Chinese could step in and negotiate a peaceful settlement?
10. What's this?  The WSJ has an article citing positive Obamacare effects on the economy: "Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes."

On second thought, Russia already screwed itself.

The panic has set in, in Russian markets:

• The Russian Central Bank raised its interest rate from 5.5% to 7.0%;
• The Moscow Stock Exchange dropped rapidly, currently down over 12%;
• The Ruble sank by nearly 2% since the close of markets, last Friday.

Russian GDP had already been slowing; with the markets suddenly shrinking and people pulling money out of Russia, it seems a good bet that Russia could be knocking on the door of a recession.

Maybe a substantial, widespread and coordinated economic sanction that was delivered immediately, could trigger a big enough collapse to get Russia to rethink its strategy.  Of course, Secretary Kerry outlined a few more extreme responses including the seizure of Russian business assets and the ejection of Russia from the G8.

But I'm still of the mindset that such actions tend to build up Nationalism and turn a nation inward and more independent, even more belligerent with a bunker mentality.

I'm curious to see how China votes on any UN Security Council vote on the invasion of Ukrainian land.  China isn't too keen on the idea of supporting the foreign invasion of sovereign lands, so they might abstain from a vote.  But doing so sends a strong message to Russia.

Putin does not hold all of the cards; the US has options.

Stephen Cohen from NYU stated that Putin holds all the cards and the US has no options available.  Listen closely to his commentary and you'll notice that he's focused on the fear of an expanding war.  He's completely off base and narrow in thinking, but not alone, as many other people have expressed a similarly narrow view.

Parallel Asymmetrical Intervention, metaphorically.

So, Russia deemed it their duty to respond to the pleas of Crimean Russians to intervene.  Parallel to their asymmetrical intervention, the US and other western countries now have the capacity to declare its goal to immediately split Syria into two, with one-half a protected land that operates independently from Bashar Al Assad.

The key to this card is to preempt the actions of Putin by offering the counteraction as seeking the same justified outcomes as Russia is seeking through its actions in Crimea.  In other words, if it's okay to Russians to use force to intervene on behalf of Crimean Russians, then it's okay to intervene on behalf of millions of Syrian refugees.

It's not that the US would have to put boots on the ground, but that Putin has to deliberate the risks of granting the US the implied right to land boots on the ground, around the world.  With the threat of a Russian intervention, the US has been given the right timing to make this parallel asymmetrical intervention threat.  One should take advantage of it, not to cause more war, but to establish that Russia's actions have long-reaching consequences.

But let's say that Putin tries to call what he thinks is a bluff.  Well, it's not a bluff, because now the US can call on the Arab league to take the lead, and offer logistical assistance to demarcate Syria into two zones.

Parallel Reconstruction and Reinforcement of borders

Somehow or another, many people are upset at the idea that Russia is able to redraw the map at their whim.  These people seem lost at the opportunity for NATO and the West to participate in reinforcing this border (and others) with its own bases and infrastructure to delimit future border movement.

Russia wants to hold Crimea and be held responsible for its future?  So be it.  NATO should step in and negotiate with its own base just outside of Crimea, assuming it is invited by Kiev, and provide reinforcement of the reconstructed border.

Will Russia protest?  Surely!  But the retort is, that if it's acceptable to delineate Crimea separate from Ukraine, complete with Russian soldiers, then it's no less reasonable to expect that NATO would want to cooperate and indeed help Russia maintain that border.

Economic Sanctions are counterproductive

I am personally against economic sanctions against someone that we consider to be an important nation.  It sends the message that we are applying Cold War mentality.  We need to extricate this Cold War mentality permanently.

Economic sanctions create incentives to become more independent.  What did the US do, following the oil embargo of the 70s? We most certainly did not embrace the ethos behind the embargo.  No, instead we chose to find pathways towards energy independence.  There is one basic premise for all this: Nationalism.  You cannot beat back Nationalism by attacking someone directly; you have to undermine their desire to support Nationalism.

The Good Message

Going forward, the solution to any difficult answer is:

• Tacitly accept the actions of the other side;
• Offer your unilateral actions as a sign of good faith to cooperatively assist the other side in reaching their desired outcome;
• Use the other side's tactics in other areas of conflict, as a parallel to reaching a desired outcome;
• Avoid creating incentives towards greater independence and a build up of Nationalism.

10 Thoughts for March 2, 2014

1. A municipal bond is going to defray costs of building a "replica" of Noah's Ark in Kentucky. (I say "replica", because there is no physical or pictorial evidence of what the Ark looked like.)  Apparently people are unclear on the purpose of the separation of Church and State.  So, when a primarily Muslim town in America decides that it wants to use municipal bonds to fund a Center of Islam, will people protest? 
2. Separation of Church and State is just one part of the problem.  Even after reducing the need for private fundraising they're only halfway through; attendance projections are vastly rosy for a project that will be completed in stages; and you have to wonder why they couldn't garner up the funding through the corporate bond markets or directly from investment banks.  So many red flags.
3. Wouldn't it be funny (in a "I'm going to Hell for this one" kind of way) if they built the project in a flood plain, they hit the 100 year flood and the Ark sank?  There are a several rivers and floodplains subject to the 100-year flood within the city, so it's not entirely out of the question.  
4. You know how sometimes you come across someone who writes and speaks with such odd English grammatical construction as to seemingly appear as gibberish?  I have always believed that lazy people simply accept this complexity as proof of higher intelligence while less-intelligent people fall for herd mentality out of fear of being embarrassed that they could not understand what was said or written.  And now we might have such proof.  I think that if you don't understand something, you demand that the person explain it better.  Of course, sometimes when you have to BS your way through an argument, building complex grammar can fool people, so there is that side of the coin.  I admit that I have done this before.  Heh.
5. I would dig this Chromebook, if it were leather-wrapped, not just for the novelty of it, but because of the feel of the texture every time I pulled it out.  I'd be willing to pay a $20 premium, I suppose.  But if the internal specs aren't up to par, the leather isn't worth it.
6. Someone has already rooted and installed the Google Now Launcher onto a Nokia X phone.  It was inevitable, but I'm guessing that the low margins on these phones will only make Microsoft more unhappy with the Nokia X family, Nokia fans notwithstanding.
7. Well, I knew it would end at some point.  The price of my Clear WiMax $35 / mo for unlimited internet access increased in price...by $5.  Sure, I'm paying less than others, including other people with Clear accounts, but when the price hits $45, I'm leaving -- that's Sprint's signal that they really want you off the WiMax network so that they can shift its bandwidth to LTE.
8. Russia went ahead and entered Ukraine's borders, into Crimea.  In trite fashion, people immediately pointed to economic sanctions.  I don't see the point.  It's a weak threat to begin with and takes a substantial amount of time before its effects are felt.
9. If the international community is concerned about Russia's actions, then the United Nations should issue a simple statement: Because of the lack of diplomatic consultations, the UN has no choice but to exert energies into establishing in-field personnel to carefully investigate any and all deaths for possible war crimes and human rights violations, which may result in charging of Russian officials at the International Criminal Court.  Doing so threatens severe travel restrictions for Russian officials and puts them on notice that they need to clarify ahead of time what their intentions are, with the requirement that they place limits on their militaristic actions.
10. Listening to ET in the background -- it was just a carryover from having the news on in the background -- I was sucked in at the commentary over Robin Thicke's marriage, in that open marriages don't work for a simple reason: jealousy.  I've spent a lot of time trying to remove feelings of jealousy.  Jealousy lacks logic; it feeds equally off fear and self-loathing.  It is a mostly useless emotion which probably dates back to cavemen and the need for men to establish their progeny and spread their DNA.  Yeah,  I read a lot of David Buss.