Corwin's Rantings

Voting by mail

2009-11-03T08:13:00.001-08:00

I've voted by mail the last couple of election cycles, which has been long enough to see some changes to how campaigns handle that. The 2004 presidential election was the first real push for absentee voting among certain populations. Since then, many states have opened up their absentee processes which made 2008 the top year for such voting. Then states like Oregon, which has been vote-by-mail for years, and Washington, which changed its laws to allow vote-by-mail and most counties have done so, have the entire process by mail.

Campaigns and parties like this idea. A lot. A person who casts their legally binding vote on October 15th, can't take it back (depending on laws) if their candidate gets caught, nude, in a swimming pool with nude underage girls on the 29th. This helps blunt the effects of an October Surprise. And as far as campaigns are concerned, that's nothing but a good thing.

People in absentee-ballot states frequently have the ability to cast a vote in-person that will trump their filed absentee ballot. These are voters for whom an October Surprise is still very much a real concern. Vote-by-mail states don't have this provision, so opposition candidates plotting an October Surprise have to get it out right before the ballots get mailed rather than 5 days before the election.

States like VBM as its cheaper by quite a lot. Polling places don't have to be rented. Election Volunteers don't have to be obtained for the 13+ hours each polling place is open. Ballots can be counted in a few locations rather than in many, which makes deploying new ballot technologies a lot cheaper.

The down side is the requirement to have mail service, and a $0.44 stamp. Opponents of vote-by-mail call this a poll tax. This is why Washington state law requires the presence of drop-boxes for people to drop off their ballots without a stamp.

Things are beginning to change out there. This election saw a very significant increase of direct-mail pieces timed to arrive in my mailbox the same day I got my ballot. This is absolutely needed, since there is a certain large percentage of people out there who vote as soon as the ballot arrives. Conversely, this has not yet changed the TV ad-battles leading up to today's election. Last night one ad in three was a paid political of some kind, which is right up there with car ads. This election is not a major one, so I haven't been getting any robo-calls and therefore can't judge how that's changed.

How will this change in the future? Well, we're already seeing parties and campaigns actively whipping early voters to vote, and that will only increase. I suspect that the prime-time for TV ads will continue to be the week before the election, but the emphasis on the Monday-night before election-day will wane. The consequence of the early voters voting when they do is that the 'decideds' pull themselves out of the race, leaving the undecideds as the people who haven't voted in the last days of the campaign. Voter ID will become even more important as parties track likely early voters in order to exclude them from the last week direct-mail/robo-call blitz, and thus allow them to focus on the voters that still need persuading. I fully expect a TV ad blitz on the three days bracketing ballot-day, just to catch the people who vote when they get the ballot.

All in all, vote-by-mail is probably more expensive for the campaigns because it lengthens the 'final mile' by four weeks in some cases. That said, we're still early enough in the learning process that we just don't know all the ways this will affect things. Political Action Committees were a campaign finance reform in the 1970's, yet these days they're the reviled 'special interests.' These things change.

When GPS and auto-insurance collide

2009-07-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica had a nice piece about some California legislation that will soon require 100% of auto insurance policies to be of the, "pay as you drive," sort where your rate varies depends on miles driven. The problem is how do the insurance companies track this. There are two methods: the driver reports the miles driven (rife with fraud), or use a tracking device of some kind (rife with privacy problems). You can guess which way the EFF desires, and which way the insurance companies desire.

As it happens, I touched briefly on this back in October 2007:

The first area I predict to really come into play will be from insurance companies. Actuaries would LOVE the detailed information provided by a GPS location log and road data. Cross reference the two and you have all sorts of goodies:
What percentage of the time does the driver exceed the posted speed-limits?
How often is the car parked in high vehicular crime areas?
How many miles per day/week/month/year does the car get driven?
When the car gets driven outside of 'normal', such as driving to Grandma's.

As it happens, this is exactly what the EFF is worried about. All of these have an effect on the risk environment of a particular vehicle, and that should have a corresponding effect on the insurance rate. On the other hand, it does give a precise location trail of everywhere that vehicle goes, something that police and divorce-courts would be very interested in. The EFF wants legislation in place to restrict data collected to just miles driven.

Indeed, from the EFF link:

There is real danger that this information would not only be used to ascertain the political or associational affiliations of drivers, but also to charge more if you drive and park in neighborhoods with high vehicle theft and crime rates, to impose higher premiums for people who drive at night or to link your health insurance rates with location data that reveals your lunchtime trips to McDonald's.

Seeing that text about parking in dodgy neighborhoods is a bit spooky for me when I look back at my 2007 post, but it is a very valid concern.

As I've mentioned before (July 2004) Big Brother, Inc. is more of a concern than BigBrother.gov in the US. This is a classic example of that. The insurance industry already had these pay-as-you-drive policies on the books, and it was the State of California that set a must-carry bar for these without defining what the tracking mechanism was.

This will be an interesting debate to follow!

Newsweek hunts for a new audience

2009-06-16T21:53:00.001-07:00

It has become very, very clear that Newsweek is hunting up a younger audience. A couple of issues ago they came out with a new format. A bit lighter on content, another trend in print media these days, but more attractively laid out.

And in last week's issue, they had a guest editor. Their first that I can remember. Steven Colbert. The comedian/anchor.

Nothing says young and hip like snarky.

Happily, the Colbert bits were easy to ignore. Also, I'm not the audience they're trying to attract. I've been reading this news magazine since at least the 1980's, and haven't dropped it in this era of news aggregators. When it comes to news consumption, I'm about 10 years older than my age would suggest. I haven't watched network news in years, but I still get a fair amount of news from dead trees. I'm the audience they're trying to keep not the one they're trying to attract.

Personally, I find the weekly news-magazine convenient. I suffer from short-attention span when in front of a computer, so long articles don't get read. Put a magazine in my hand, and I'll read whole articles in a sitting. Part of this is conditioning, but it features in how I consume news. If I'm going for in-depth reportage, I'm far more likely to read it closer in dead-tree format.

I realize that some change needs to happen to keep these magazines afloat. I can live with the new format, with its slightly larger line-spacing and colorful article headers. Even the occasional 'guest editor' since they're easy to ignore. This is change.

High speed rail dreams

2009-06-07T20:58:00.001-07:00

The Obama administration recently announced $8 billion for the development of High Speed Rail. The Federal Railroad Administration has some facts about that. High Speed Rail as a goal has been around for ages, and many people feel a sense of shame that the Japanese and French can have trains that go over 150MPH when we have exactly one train line, the Acela on the Northeast Corridor, that maxes out at that speed. So finally, the government is doing something about that!

Sort of. Last year former Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant presented before congress what it would take to improve speeds on the Northeast Corridor (NEC). The total cost to improve speeds on the only existing high-speed rail line we have was $7 billion. One of the biggest cost items was land acquisition needed to straighten out tracks in heavily populated areas.

Even so, $8bn will not bring bullet trains to Chicago. Or New York. This particular high speed rail program is designed to upgrade infrastructure first. This is needed because new infrastructure is needed if any kind of train is to travel over 79MPH.

The existing freight railroads have no interest in this particular infrastructure upgrade for two reasons. One, their traffic would never go faster than 79 MPH anyway, and two, their opinion is that these upgrades would not improve freight safety enough to warrant the expense. As passenger traffic is a very, very small part of their rail traffic the needs of passengers take a back seat. It is for this reason that public financing is the only way high-speed rail will come about.

Here is another thing. The first set of upgrades will allow speeds of 89 MPH. The next set will allow 110MPH. These are not bullet trains, merely fast ones.

One of the problems the freight railroads upon which nearly all passenger train traffic takes place outside of the NEC have, is that passenger train service already runs at a different speed. Freight traffic has a speed limit of 69 MPH, where passenger traffic has a max of 79 MPH. This may not sound like much, but this does have a significant effect on rail traffic management. Only one train can be on a given rail segment at a time, and each train has an exclusion zone ahead and behind it. When all trains travel at the same speeds it is much easier to pack the railroad full to capacity.

If you throw faster moving passenger trains into the mix, you now have trains that take up more rail than their much more profitable bretheren. Faster passenger trains mean fewer freight trains can be on a given piece of track, and that means less money being made hauling. BNSF makes far more money with a single coal train coming out of the Powder River basin than it does on a single Empire Builder train.

The host railroads still need to be convinced to let faster traffic on their rails. In Washington State, BNSF has said they'll allow faster Cascades service if WS-DOT will pay for the track upgrades and compensate for lost business. This may be the model that gets adopted nation-wide, if Congress doesn't pass a must-carry law.

True bullet trains require an order of magnitude more money. For true bullet trains you need a dedicated right-of-way for them and it can not be shared with freights. Second, you need long stretches of straight track for top speeds to be accomplished. The Amtrak Acela spends most of its time well below it's top speed due to twisty tracks, and it was fixing this that Kummant quoted $7bn for. Third, there have to be no at-grade road crossings so the rails will have to go over or under things like interstates or county highways. Bullet trains will require obtaining 400 mile long, 100yd wide mostly straight brand new right-of-way with no at-grade crossings, something that isn't cheap even in the American West.

'But France and Japan did it!' goes the cry. Both the French and Japanese systems were under developement at a time when US passenger traffic was plummeting, the 1960's. The 1970's and 1980's saw a lot of existing US track abandoned or moved to single-track, which greatly reduced the overall flexibility of our rail system. Japan and France were both expanding theirs at this time. Furthermore, Japan did it by throwing a lot of money at it for decades, and flying the track over everything or running it in tunnels.

Both the Japanese and French systems were put in place largely through government finance over a period of decades. Congruently, the US is probably 15-20 years away from another sizeable high-speed (150MPH) line outside of the NEC, and that's if we keep funding levels high enough to get there. Some times, high speed rail looks to cost as much as putting a man on Mars.

As the Obama proposal states, this is merely a down-payment on high speed rail. We are years away from seeing bullet trains. We may see 89MPH service inside of five years some places, but that's probably the soonest we'll see anything.

Ammunition shortage

2009-05-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

In my last post on April 22 I went into the ammunition shortage that is happening across the nation. Today CNN posted a long article about that very topic. CNN only talks about the perceived fear, and doesn't go into the political realities that make that fear largely unfounded.

Guns: reality vs expectation

2009-04-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

In the last week I've heard a pair of stories that manage to display both the expectation and reality of gun control laws in this new Democratic era. NPR ran a story that covered a gun-store owner, and talked about what this new era has done for his sales. In short, his business is booming.

It seems the expectation is that now that the Democrats are in control, it's only a matter of time before things like the assault weapons ban is reinstated, or even more draconian anti-gun legislation gets passed. This has caused an ammunition shortage nation-wide, as gun owners stock up on the bullets their guns need before the feds can ban them. Weapons sales are up for similar reasons, buy now while you still can. The shop owner described the amounts of ammunition some people are buying as, "lifetime supplies."

And yet... this last week Newsweek ran an article about how deeply unlikely major gun-control legislation will be passed. The Democratic coalition now includes a certain flavor of pro-gun moderate that wasn't in the coalition back in 1994 when the assault weapons ban was passed, and there are enough of them that such a law has no hope of passing the Senate. This is how the Democrats have a Senator in Montana. The 2008 election brought in a type of Democrat that didn't really exist in the 1992 election, the pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat. These new Congressional members are not going to vote for anything that takes guns away from hunters.

The political reality has anti-gun lobbyists grumbling, while at the same time the perception has the NRA signing up new members and spoiling for a fight. Even though it is the Democrats in power now, the political center of this country as shifted a bit right from where it was the last time the Democrats had unified power. Major gun-control legislation is deeply unlikely, as is any sweeping liberalization of abortion laws. Due to the routine use of the filibuster, outright control of the Senate is 60 seats not 51, so in effect neither party controls that chamber right now.

At some point, perhaps after the 2012 election, or even the 2010 election, the perception will mesh with reality. It'll probably take a prominent gun control bill to get out of committee just to die in the Senate, but the two will mesh at some point. Until then, gun-store owners will enjoy increased sales as people start hoarding against a perceived shortage in the future.

Retirement income

2009-04-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

As I'm in early middle age, and the economy is tanking something fierce, the topic of retirement income has come up. I fully expect the retirement age to reach 70 by the time I get there, still some decades hence, which is what I'm figuring into my planning. The conventional wisdom I've read regarding how much income you need in retirement seems to conflict with other reports I've seen of the true expenses of living while old and not working.

Once upon a time, 70% of working-life income was sufficient. This was based on, in my opinion, increasingly invalid assumptions. Presumably, you'd be living in a home that didn't have a mortgage because it was paid off. Presumably, there is Social Security. Presumably, you have some form of employer based health-care to supplement Medicare.

While this may be true for the current crop of septuagenarians, it most assuredly won't be true for me when I get to that august cohort. By the time I get there, Social Security will definitely be different because by then the Baby Boomers will be dying off, and the system would have been supporting them for over 30 years by then. Health care costs increase double digits every year, even in recession it seems, and that will force some radical change in how it is done in this country. End-of-life care is some of the most expensive care out there, so perversely the last decade of retirement may be much more expensive than the first decade.

Right at the moment, I'm planning on 110% of working-life income in retirement. It may be that this is overly pessimistic, especially if we get some kind of nationalized health-care. It may be that this is optimistic in case the Boomers completely break Social Security. Won't know until I get there.

It is certain that something will happen with Health Care before I get to retirement. What that something is, is not clear. It is not sustainable at current levels of increase, something has to give. Be it single payer or some other government driven cost-containment framework, or even private initiatives created to keep the government from getting involved. Right now I'm presuming I'll be responsible for a good chunk of my health care costs, and that could be as much as $1500/month if not more (in 2009 dollars); which is higher than my current mortgage payment by the way.

The housing cost assumption is also increasingly invalid. Housing prices have risen at a much higher rate than income levels have, which logically increases how long it takes people to pay off their mortgage. It is very possible that I'll still have 20 years left on my house the day I turn 70. It is not uncommon for the elderly to downsize their home to a smaller, cheaper place, in order to liberate some of the capital sunk into the house. If the bank still owns half the house, that reduces the amount of capital available for such a move. There may not even be any capital to make back for such a move.

Long-term-care and End of life care are things that the Boomers are dealing with right now for their own parents. By the time the Boomers start moving into assisted living in large groups, they will change the system the same way they'll change Social Security. We're still a decade or two from that point, and the peak will be less sharp than it will be for Social Security, but it will happen. The sheer size of the Boomer cohort is a disruptive enough force that predicting what long-term-care will look like when I get that far a very dicey prospect.

The boomers are making something of a singularity, beyond which accurate planning beyond broad strokes is impossible. Even so, I'm taking a conservative view with my own retirement income planning. 70% is laughably inaccurate, in my opinion.

Short boys and tall girls, issues of consent

2009-03-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

A friend pointed me at this blog post which is itself a review of another blog post about a book called Normal at any cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Attempt to Manipulate Height. However, the post I linked to goes into some other topics that are more closely related to, "Normal at any cost". Things such as Intersexed babies and fat acceptance.

Humans are a social creature, so the acceptance of our peers matters quite a lot. Standing out of the crowd is an invitation to mockery, especially among pre-ethical children, and no parent wants to put their child through that if they don't have to. If the standing out is due to something medical that can be fixed, the more well to do will fix it medically.

Some things stand out more than others. The 5th grade boy who looks like a 2nd grader, will stand out and get mocked. The 5th grade boy who uses the stall to pee every time because his ureter doesn't go all the way to the end of his penis, an intersex condition, can hide it very easily.

The protocol for handling Intersexed babies is changing these days. Not very long ago, it was standard practice to assign them to a sex by way of surgery; most intersexed babies ended up girls because a fully functional penis is something that you can't make without a good start already. These days there is a strong move afoot to wait until the child is old enough to participate in the decision making process.

Shortness has many causes. In my particular case it was because of a partially deficient pituitary gland, which meant it didn't produce enough growth hormone for me to realize my full height potential. Late onset puberty can be a cause, as the pubescent growth spurt can arrive when the skeletal growth plates are closing. Short can also be completely genetic, in that your maximum possible height may very well be 5th percentile for height. Two of these are treatable these days. Unlike intersex, treatment is best started just before and during the onset of puberty in order to maximize the growth spurt, so the decision to do something about it is made during the teens.

There is another thing that the linked blog post doesn't go into but falls into the same category. Gender dysphoria. As with intersexed babies, the standard response for handling children firmly believing they are somehow the other sex than they were born with was to try and train them into acting like their own sex. In recent years that has begun to change in some areas, where puberty is postponed through drugs so the child can get enough maturity to participate in the decision making process.

The complications of assigning babies to a sex shortly after birth has become more visible now that the internet is around for such adults to meet and talk. The young 29 year old man who experiences very painful erections because a constructed urethra that was long enough at age 9, can't stretch far enough at age 29. Baby girls who had an abnormally large clitoris pared down to more normal sizes report problems with sensation during sex as an adult. It is the adults who've lived with these complications that have helped shift the policy towards such infants.

The complications of training children who express gender dysphoric thoughts and behaviors into behaving in more orthodox ways have also come to light with the advent of the internet. The narratives of some adults seeking to transition to the other gender, usually born male, very frequently include attempts by parents to nudge them into more gender-orthodox behaviors as a small child; most of these narratives also include the phrase, "instead I just learned to hide my feelings." There have been several books on the subject that describe the clinical practices designed to correct children, with the most flagrant examples coming from the 1970's and 80's. In the wake of the removal of Homosexuality from the DSM, such clinics did a quiet business under the rubric of making sure the girly boy turned into a manly boy and thus (shh) didn't grow up to be gay.

The effects of stature is a new one on me. I hadn't heard that some girls were getting treated for becoming too tall. Any treatment for stature has to happen while the body is still growing, so it has to start young. Men who are unusually short are not taken as seriously as those who are just far enough above normal to loom over most other men. Tall women have trouble finding men to date, as the cultural assumption of the man must be taller than the woman is a fairly strong one; an inch or two taller may be OK, but half a foot is too much.

All three of these are areas where the parent is making permanent,body altering decisions on the part of their child. The motives of parents choosing to do these things to their child are all good ones. The intersexed baby will always know what they are, and as an adult will not have to deal with an unusual genital configuration scaring off partners, therefore preserving self esteem and thus ease their life. The short child will be made taller, to more efficiently move through society and thus ease their life. The gender dysphoric child will be taught how to behave, so they don't turn into transsexuals when they grow older, and have to lead that sad, sad life, and thus ease their life.

All three of these are areas where the only, or most effective, treatment is available before the child is of legal decision making age. To get the most benefit from fixing an intersexed condition, the change has to be made before the child even knows there is a difference, or keep reminding them as they grow up that 'different is OK'. To get the most benefit from height treatments, you have to administer such treatments when the child is still able to grow. To fix gender dysphoria, you either have to educate them in correct gender roles before such learning is cemented (which is generally around age 7), or start hormone treatments before the onset of puberty.

To what extent do you involve a child in a decision that will change their body for life? For height and gender issues, such decisions have to be made before the onset of puberty, which means very early teens. For children with an intersex condition, the decision can be made at any time. Are children that age even capable of fully comprehending the entire issue? Legally speaking, the parents have this right until the child turns 18.

Gender issues and intersex conditions are both things that have remediation possibilities later in life. The argument for correcting an intersex condition is largely predicated on fixing it early so the child never knew there was a problem, but urological issues can also force the need. Gender transition later in life is a documented process that involves counseling, hormone treatments to shift the body into a more correct shape, and surgery to fix the things that just hormones can't. Doing the gender transition before puberty allows the body to undergo puberty as the 'correct' gender, which allows the bones to grow in patterns correct for the new gender and results in a much more gender-orthodox body shape than an adult transition.

Overall I'm in favor of involving the child in the decision making process. As all of these issues can be addressed in the early teens, the child should already have a well formed view of the world and how they fit within it and can contribute to the discussion. In the case of the gender dysphoric child, they've already communicated their desires as that's how the condition is largely diagnosed.

Talking about these issues can help foster a sense of self autonomy that children will need as independent adults. Control of your own body is a very important sense to have. I've heard people being critical of parents who pierce their daughter's ears while they're still infants, insisting that the girl should make that decision for herself. I think such things extend to larger issues such as stature, explaining during sex, and what body they want as an adult.

China's human rights record and the economy

2009-02-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

Today on CNN we have this story:

Clinton: Chinese 'human rights can't interfere' with other crises

The take-away from this article is that the US Secretary of State has said unto the Chinese that when dealing with the crises of our times, their human rights record will not be an item they must fix before getting help.

As can well be expected, the community of Human Rights advocates are not happy with this. A global crisis of this nature is exactly the kind of impetus needed to move a country as immovable as China is on an issue like this. The US is the only nation in the world that has the leverage to even possibly make it happen, and here Secretary Clinton just removed us from the running? There is a feeling of betrayal with the Obama administration.

I agree with Clinton on this one. China is a head-strong nation, and it would take a major crisis like this to bend them over a barrel enough for them to make substantive changes to their internal policies. We've tried many times to get them to improve conditions internally, and they've politely declined. Pure 'carrot' methods haven't worked, so why not use a carrot/stick method?

The problem with this is that the global economic crisis is not yet severe enough for China for them to be over the kind of barrel needed to effect this change. US influence on China is not that strong; they're actively trying to build their own global influence, and a good way to do that is to do so at the expense of the US. In this case, the calls that the US is the only nation in position to try and effect this change on China are false. No one nation is.

Because of this, if we do want to continue to influence China we need to not cut ourselves out of the game by setting barriers to our own participation that are never going to be met. This is a practical view of global politics that has effectively conceded the Chinese human-rights debate for another year. We need the Chinese to help out the crises of right now, and we can't have them balking participation due to our insistence that they reform internal matters. Therefore, we'll wait until US/Chinese relations are less critical to have in perfect accord. Considering the scale of the economic crisis, it may be 2013 before we have that chance.

Secretary Clinton's statement is an admission of political reality. Now is not the time for activism, as we are not negotiating from a position of strength just now. Dealing with China's human rights issues will require negotiation from strength; which, by the way, China is aware of and actively trying to prevent.

A bright new day

2009-01-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

President Barack Hussein Obama.

You know, this was better than watching Bill Clinton getting sworn in back in 1993 after 12 years of Reagan/Bush. I was still in High School back then, so I watched it on the evening news. It was also the first Presidential election I voted in, and I got to pick a winner! It rocked! But, this rocked harder.

I'm not of a generation that can fully understand what the Reagan/Bush years felt like and what kind of break Clinton represented. I did, however, witness all of George W. Bush as a tax-paying adult who let the Selective Service know I existed when I turned 18. This makes the change a more palpable experience.

In 1992 we were also in a recession, and Clinton famously won on the, "It's about the economy, stupid!" tactic. In 1992 we also had a Democratic majority in both houses. Unlike 1992, the majority is a fresh one, not one that was over 10 years old. Unlike 1992, the recession is MUCH deeper. These two things contribute to this victory tasting so sweet.

I'm still smiling. Each new day so far has brought new Executive Orders or old Bush ones overturned. This is an early form a progress that doesn't depend on Congress delivering legislation to his liking. I know full well that Obama and Congress are going to lock horns over something, and he'll have to sign legislation that isn't 100% to his specification. Even Bush had to do that, and he had his Republicans under pretty good order. That's how the system works.

I'm still enjoying the feeling. It doesn't happen often.

Living under the sword of damocles

2009-01-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

As I was born after 1950 and before 1986, I lived a significant part of my life with the threat of sudden nuclear war. I suspect this will become a hallmark of my generation. We've lived under the threat of sudden nuclear annihilation, which does affect ones outlook on life.

If you look at science fiction, up until around 1991, all 'near future' fiction had the US/USSR conflict extended into the future. A lot had a limited nuclear exchange as a formative event. I'll even go so far as to say that most of the fiction that was middle distance future had a nuclear exchange of some form take place in the past. After 1991 when the USSR collapsed, the future suddenly had a lot less nukes in it.

In the 1980's I grew up about 2 miles north of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport and the Fort Snelling Military Reservation. This was also about 6 miles south of Downtown Minneapolis. If I wasn't killed outright in the first flash, I was in the, "dead in 3 hours," band. If we had the fabled 20 minutes warning and the roads were miraculously clear, we'd merely be in the, "dead in 2 weeks," band. If we did get the 20 minutes warning, the highways would be a parking lot and we wouldn't be any further away from the nuclear blasts than if we had stayed at home.

This is how I grew up. We knew that if the nukes started flying, we'd be dead. Period. And there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. At all. That nuclear sword could fall at any time, and we'd know maybe 20 minutes before it actually did. That was enough time to be a good God-fearing American; say our prayers and get our affairs in order. Or in true SF fashion, grumble, "So this is it, we're going to die," then lay on the front lawn in our bathrobes with a towel under our heads.

Humor was about the only way to really deal with that. When Weird Al released, "Christmas at Ground Zero," it was taken by my peers in classic bitterly-ironic fashion and sung to the rafters come each December. However, to this day I still can't listen to the end of the song, where the air-raid sirens sound, without wincing and having to either change the channel or hit next-song. Like many dark things in my life, living under the threat of instant death is not something I like to think about.

To this day I still occasionally think about survival bands and the likelihood of targets near me being hit by a nuke. I no longer live in the instant kill zone. With MSP being a major airport it was a high value target in even a limited exchange, a 'mere' low-yield tactical nuke would be enough to reduce my lifespan to weeks. This is not a reflex that people who were born after about 1986 had a chance to learn.

It is hard to describe how it feels to know that yourself and everyone within 10 miles of your location could die instantly (or worse, almost instantly). Mostly you get through things by not thinking about it. This is not something I'd wish on anyone, and I strongly hope we never go through this again; leaving tales of living under the threat of global nuclear war along side tales of surviving the dust-bowl and the threat of lynch-mobs.

The Chevy Volt

2008-10-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica has posted a review of the upcoming Chevy Volt. My first reaction to it was, "WOW, I SOOO need one." But, calming down a bit, its time to look a bit objectively.

1. 40 miles per charge
40 miles is both not a lot, and quite a bit. This is what it can do on a single charge before it has to fire up the gas motor for more electricity. According to the article, the total range between fill-ups should be north of 300 miles; 40 miles on pure battery and the rest on gas-generator. This means it'll have the same effective range as conventional cars, which is critical for consumer acceptance. So when you move from Chicago to Memphis, you can at least drive the car all the way there without having to pay to have it towed.

In my case the 40 mile range is very reasonable. My round-trip commute is rarely over 35 miles, even with side-trips. Weekend errand-runs are another story, but the large majority of the run would be done on electricity sucked down in my garage. So in our case, the effective miles-per-gallon should be very high.

But for people who commute 40 miles each way, it won't buy a lot. It'll probably mean a MPG rating comparable to some of the smaller hybrids, which won't really justify the cost of the car. However, as the article points out these people are not the primary target market for this car.

2. Cubic footage lost to battery
Even more than hybrids, the Volt has a lot of cubic footage spent on housing the batteries. This is not a car designed for road-tripping to Grandma's house, it is designed for trips under an hour. Looking at it, I see potential problems for those who are over six feet tall, or are well-padded in the hip.

For our average usage, this should be just fine. That trunk can handle our groceries and usual errand-swag. For larger cargoes, longer travel times, or hauling passengers, we have the internal-combustion station-wagon. As neither of us are vertically or horizontally enhanced, we should be able to fit inside it just fine. Considering that our current 'commuter' car is effectively a 2-seater, the Volt should be an easy drop-in replacement.

3.0 Glass cockpit
Continuing the trend brought on by the Hybrids, the Volt doesn't have analog gauges for things like speed, it has LCD screens. The thing I noticed is that the driver's LCD is markedly smaller than most dashboard displays I've seen. Considering the technical challenges of this car and the column inches Ars Technica devoted to describing the software development process for the car's hardware, I strongly suspect that early-adopters are going to have to put up with regular updates to that software.

Seeing as how the target demographic is urban commuters who live relatively close to their place-of-work, it is nearly certain that there will be some kind of 3G network available. OnStar is already usable in most of the US. I suspect that this channel could be used to push out software updates to the cars themselves. We'll see how this is handled once it actually hits the streets.

I like the glass cockpit, but I do like a certain density to my information display. At a glance, without twiddling knobs, I'd like to know at least speed and estimated miles before turning on the gas-powered generator, as well as the typical gauges like fuel-level and engine-temp.

And finally, if cars like these do take off, 220v outlets in garages are going to be all the rage in new construction.

PRT and self-driving cars

2008-10-13T11:20:00.001-07:00

This morning I noticed that CNN had an article about a Personal Rapid Transit deployment in upstate New York. If you've been reading me a while, you know my opinions about PRT. In this case, I do side with the critics in that it is largely an infeasible gimmick. For the same reason that monorail systems like Seattle's monorail never really took off, PRT systems will also fail to thrive. This is because these sorts of systems require a separate right-of-way (RoW) to work, and both prefer elevated trackage.

At the same time, ArsTechnica is running a series of articles on the future of the self-driving car. Part One was posted last week, and is a good run-down of the state-of-the-art of automated driving. Part Two posted today and discusses some of the neat things you can do with a widely deployed 'auto-driver' system. Next week they'll cover some of the social issues that may arise. These sorts of systems take advantage of the pre-existing right-of-way we drive on every day.

The only way PRT will take off is through massive governmental buy-in. We can do it with today's technology, the only sticking point is paying for it and the time required to build it out. Any time you create a brand new RoW it costs massive amounts of money and time. The Interstate Highway System took decades to get into place and cost tens of billions. Even the most robust of Commuter-Rail networks took decades to really get to a good saturation point, at least in the areas where commuter-rail didn't already exist such as the Northeast Corridor, and even they started with pre-existing rail RoW already built.

The cost of a fully deployed PRT system can only be paid for by government. No one else has the finances available for a project of that size. An as with the interstate system, it'll take a long time to get the networks up and running. With massive buy in right now, PRT systems could compete with the kind of self-driving technology we're likely to have at grade in 20 years. The US Government certainly isn't going to fund anything this large, though the more socially minded Scandinavian countries may.

Auto-driver systems are far more likely to be present in US cities in 20 years. In my opinion, wide deployment, where most people don't bother driving themselves, may come in the 30-50 range. Once the personal autonomy issues are worked through, such systems have a wide social benefit as the selfish human driver with the limited point of view (only within sight) introduces certain inefficiencies in the highway system. These are the same benefits that proponents of PRT systems bring forward, and they're right. However, the chances of getting such a separate-RoW system in place are minimal here in the US.

Taxes and tax-credits

2008-10-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently posted a short essay about what a tax-credit would mean for her and her family. In short, not as much as you'd think. But, read it for your self:

http://wiredferret.livejournal.com/1453125.html

VP Debate

2008-10-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

My view of the 'winner' of this debate is the same as the Presidential one: they both won.

One of the things I keep hearing about Palin, especially in the wake of the Couric interview, is that they wanted the firebrand who accepted the nomination back. In light of her closing remarks, I think Palin did that.

However, I must point out that the speech she delivered at the Republican convention was written for "VP To Be Named Later" and personalized once there was a name. And the closing remarks were probably written well before hand and memorized. So, in that sense the Republicans got what they saw the first time; a confidant running-mate willing to fight. A well packaged running-mate.

As for Biden he managed to avoid foot-in-mouth disease, which was one of his marks for 'win', and also managed to not come off as condescending. About the only time he talked about Palin directly it was in complimentary tones on topics they agreed on. When he disagreed, the target was McCain. He laughed in self-deprecating ways, not mocking ways.

I say they both won because they did what they were sent out there to do, solidify support among the leaners. People who were deeply worried about Palin but wanted to believe, because the alternative was democrats, saw a confident woman who could field questions on national TV. People who didn't know Biden, perhaps they skipped the Primary debates, had a very complimentary introduction. Those who feared foot-in-mouth disease were reassured that it didn't happen.

In the grand scheme of things, I think this debate helped repair some of the damage done by the Couric interview, especially among likely McCain voters (among Obama partisans, though, there was plenty of new satire fodder). That said, I personally was very impressed with Biden's performance. Much as the last Presidential debate gave Obama a big boost in perceived competence in foreign policy, I think this debate will give the Obama/Biden campaign a similar bounce. So in the end, I think it'll be Biden who will get the longest post-debate bump.

Newspaper habits

2008-09-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a household that had a regular newspaper habit. As I grew up, I kept it up. In college I also managed to get and read a paper of some kind, reading it over breakfast like I did growing up. After college, one of the first things we did when moving someplace new was start paper service. This continued until we moved to place where the newspaper was not delivered to my doorstep, rather to a box on a pole at the end of my driveway.

This killed my newspaper habit, but it took a while. The box-on-a-pole method of delivery is a result of where I live. I grew up in the inner city of Minneapolis, which like most midwestern cities was platted on a grid system. The same was true of our first post-college apartment, and where our first house was. Our current location is not on a grid, it's on the feeder/arterial system with no sidewalks.

Box-on-a-pole requires special clothing to retrieve the paper more than half of the year. This does not happen before breakfast. The doorstep delivery was simple, even when it was -15 outside. At that temperature, the paper-retrieval method of, "take deep breath, open door, grab paper, close door, let out breath," takes all of 3 seconds if done right, and even a mostly naked person won't risk frostbite. Box-on-a-pole requires a jog of many yards to get the paper, and that means environmental concerns loom large.

However, unlike most of my friends if I still had doorstep delivery I'd still be reading a newspaper. This is largely due to habit, a preference for the layout, and a desire to read my comics all in one page without all those blinking adverts, rather than a preference for the dead-tree version of my news.

Newspapers are dying out at a great rate, and it isn't due to box-on-a-pole in the suburbs (though I suspect it does have something to do with that). This is because the dead-tree version of news is anywhere from 4 to 24 hours of out date as compared to online versions of the same news, assuming an over-breakfast reading. For National and International sources there are much more frequently updated sources. For regional or state issues, there are typically local companies, typically TV newsrooms though ironically the largest newspapers also fall into this category, provide this information online as well. The one domain that the newspaper does have dominance is local coverage.

This is bad news for papers like the St. Cloud Times or the Alexandria Echo Press, as they have to compete for State coverage with papers like the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It has been suggested that these sorts of papers can survive by going "hyper-local," covering local issues to the greatest extent and leave national and international news to the online crowd. At the same time, publishing a dead-tree format newspaper is itself much more expensive than doing some form of ad-supported online presence from a distribution standpoint. Whether or not a news organization can survive on the online ad-stream of an expressly local news provider has yet to be proven, though.

The newspaper shares a problem with the big network newscasts, their consumers are still doing it mostly out of habit. Make a point of catching the CBS Evening News some time, and stick around for the commercials. The last time I did that, the top two products being pushed were luxury cars and medications. This suggests which demographic Nielson shows advertisers as the viewership of these news-shows. I know I stopped watching the big network newscasts when I stopped eating dinner every night with my parents.

I'm probably the last generation to consider these media types to be fully valid information vectors. Since smartphones can pull up cnn.com anywhere they have signal, you don't need to plonk down $.50 for a newspaper that's already very out of date. Or even watch the news.

Recycling

2008-08-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've heard from many sources that, "Don't bother recycling. I saw my garbage guy take the recycling stuff and throw it in the same truck as my garbage." One person cites Michael Moore's, "Stupid White Men," as a source of this.

I know for a fact my garbage crews don't do this, because the garbage company has harnessed the power of laziness! I have one of those large garbage pails that everyone has these days, I think it's a 60 gallon bucket. I also have to "bring it to the curb". Right. No problem. I also have to to bring it right up to the curb, because that way the robot arm can pick it up and dump it in the truck. The garbage crew never gets out of the truck unless someone brings it juuuust to the curb but is just out of reach of the arm and they have to shimmy it close enough.

Because of this, putting the recycling in with the garbage would be extra work. Which they don't do, because they are human and therefore lazy. Problem solved!

The down side to using a robot arm is that putting an extra bag of garbage next to my pail will still be there when I get home from work. Before, if it was a reasonable bag they'd just chuck it in the truck no questions asked. All of my garbage has to fit in the pail, period.

Laziness + automation = eco-friendly. Who knew?

Iran time again

2008-07-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

There is much liberal fear right now that we're gearing up for a fight in Iran. This is not without foundation, as we've done some drum pounding about just that. However, I think it is vanishingly unlikely that the outgoing Administration will invade another country as some form of last act.

There is a reason I think this, and it has to do with both military and political calculus. These go hand in hand, of course, so bear with me while I go through it.

John McCain and President Bush are both saying repeatedly that, "the surge is working." The surge is an increase in troop levels coupled with different methods of handling the conflict in Iraq. Both of these men have stated that we're going to be in Iraq for quite some time whether we like it or not.

When you couple the above belief with the Military recruiting problems, you come away with a military that is already fully committed. We've issued stop-loss orders to try and keep people in the service, but even that isn't quite enough to keep our deployment levels where they are right now for much longer. We will have to draw down troops to give them a break, and to try and match our deployment levels with the incoming volunteers.

Iran is going to be a tough nut to crack. The populace already considers America deeply suspect, so we will not be greeted by cheers as we drive down city streets in our tanks. The Iranian regime is the kind that would absolutely prepare its citizens for a long guerrilla war well before we step over the borders. Attempting to commit regime change in Iran will be a bloody, grinding campaign. This is the kind of conflict that would require the undivided attention of the US Military.

Right now we're rather divided militarily. Iraq is occupying a lot of our resources, and most of the rest is in Afghanistan. The best we can hope for are a few 'surgical strikes' on key sites and get the hell out. Unfortunately that would galvanize the Iranian populace against us in ways that'll make our lives very hard in Iraq. But, it is Iran military action we could do with our current force levels.

What's more, with our existing deployment levels in Iraq we simply don't have enough available troops, on even a short-term basis, to pull off a full scale invasion of Iran. And even if we did, both Presidential candidates will come out strongly against the idea. Why's that, you ask?

Because any invasion of Iran will be a long, bloody affair that'll occupy a lot of our military resources. Since we're already in Iraq to the extent we are, additional troops will have to come from somewhere. And that somewhere would have to be a draft. If there is one message a person running for national offices does not want to give, it is, "Vote for me, and I'll abduct your 19 year old sons at gun point and send them to the desert to die." We get this every time draft re-authorization bills come up in the Senate, and some of those Senators don't have to worry about re-election for 4 years.

McCain and Obama are up for re-election right now, and they'll either both have to come out for a draft, or both against it. Considering the anti-war wing of the Democratic party, there is no real way for Obama to support a draft. I also believe McCain is politically savvy enough to see those electoral tea leaves and follow Obama's lead on it.

Militarily, the "best" the war-hawks can hope for is to kick over the Iranian hornets nest and make them really and specifically angry at us. Considering that the US is actually sending a real officially recognized official to Iran, I think even the White House can see the reality on the ground and in the political landscape.

Solar Power Satellites

2008-05-31T08:28:00.000-07:00

CNN had an article up today that was a bit of a blast from the past.

How to harvest solar power? Beam it down from space!

This is something of a blast for me since I did a major report for school (High School I think) on the topic of solar power satellites. As the article says:

NASA and the United States Department of Energy studied the concept throughout the 1970s, concluding that although the technology was feasible, the price of putting it all together and sending it to outer space was not.

That would be during the last energy crisis. As it happens I read some of those reports for that report for school. Since this would have been written around 1992, we were deep in the throws of cheap oil. Desert Storm caused major oil spikes and crashes, but not the sustained high prices we've got going on right now.

As the article says, there are some major engineering challenges in getting solar power satellites (SPS) working. The first is on-orbit assembly. Our robotics are getting a heck of a lot better these days. Better enough that with a concerted effort we could create the technologies to launch modular sections of a larger SPS and have them lock together on orbit, probably within 10 years if we focus. That's just one of the major issues.

The second major issue is how to get the electrical power from orbit to the ground. A 22,000 mile long transmission cable is not in the cards, so you have to use some for of wireless method. The method identified in those 1970's reports was a form of microwave transmission. Like regular sunlight, it does suffer atmospheric losses as it transits the atmosphere, around 7% on clear day if I remember right. Clouds do affect the microwave transmission, though not nearly to the level of visible light.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this isn't the same microwaves you have in your kitchen. Those have been specifically tuned to a frequency that vibrates water. The frequency used to transmit satellite radio (Sirius and XM) is also a microwave, as are the frequencies used for WiFi networks. When the SPS idea gained some traction in the early 1980's environmentalists got up in arms about the idea of birds getting into the beam path and exploooooooding! This is a misunderstanding of how microwaves work, but the image stuck.

The effects of microwaves of that power-level, not frequency, has been studied. When I was writing that report, some studies done during WWII on military ships experimenting with RADAR inadvertently exposed certain people to very high levels of microwave radiation. These are not studies that can be done any more, scientific standards have increased markedly since then, but it is still data. More work needs to be done to fully quantify the effect of high power-level microwaves on mammals.

The third engineering challenge is the microwave receiver. These rectennas will have to receive a beam originated 22,000 miles away. While newer technology may mean that we can narrow the beam scatter more than was possible in the 70's, it still means a rectenna with a diameter measurable in kilometers. It is possible to construct rectennas that large, some of those early reports suggested farming would still be possible under them, but it does require a commercial aviation no-fly zone above the device.

One of the prime reason cited for putting large solar arrays into space is because light there isn't subjected to the same atmospheric scattering light here on the ground gets. Or at least, that was the reason cited back in the day. Now, better reasons are that solar arrays in space don't have to worry about night, clouds, or finding enough real-estate to plant them. The truly grandiose think on large scales, such as this quote from the article:

And so has a 2007 report released by the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, encouraging the U.S. government to spearhead the development of space power systems.
"A single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today," the report said.

That "kilometer-wide band" would have to be a bit over 163,000 miles long. This is not feasible within my lifetime. I suspect this quote was used to illustrate the power available out there, and I strongly suspect their assumption was a 100% light to energy conversion ratio which we simply can't do right now.

In short, SPS are feasible if we focus on the technologies to bring them about. There will be environmental push-back due to the microwave beam required to transmit the energy to the ground, which will further limit their applicability. As we develop cheaper heavy lift capacity at our space-ports, it becomes easier to get the hardware up there in the first place. It'll take significant investment of funds by someone to do it, though.

Impeachment returns

2008-05-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

It isn't torture this time, it's this book put out by the former Press Secretary for President Bush.

McClellan's Grave Charge

Impeachment is a fantasy held by the party that doesn't hold the Presidency. The Republicans ran smack into that fantasy in the 90's when they tried to impeach Bill Clinton. Heck, I routinely held fantasies about impeaching Reagan back in the day.

But the simple, brutal fact of the matter is that if the Democrats can't routinely override vetoes in the Senate, they can't impeach. The only way it can be done is by recruiting significant numbers of Republicans to the Yea side, and that will only happen if Bush does something clearly and unambiguously criminal. And by 'clearly and unambiguously,' I mean, 'clearly and unambiguously to someone who will give Bush the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.'

Neither of these conditions exist yet. Nor will they until after the November election, at which point it will be moot.

The UK Panopticon

2008-05-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

Ars Technicha has a nice article about the closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) that pervade the United Kingdom. In short, they haven't done much of anything to either reduce crime, or increase the effectiveness of crime solving and prosecution. But, folks keep demanding it, so they keep building it. At the moment, this is just security theater.

As the article says, "millions are spent on facial software recognition systems that have yet to be shown to have any merit." These are the sorts of systems that are supposed to identify faces, associate them with a specific person, and mark their location. In theory, if the whole system were working the way it is intended, when someone, "is captured on camera roughly every six seconds," it can provide a very detailed way to track where people go. Unfortunately for the security apparatus, the software systems we have now aren't anywhere close to capable of doing this reliably. You need a high quality, full to mostly-full shot of the face to do it. A simple hooded sweat-shirt, with the hood drawn as far over your head as possible can foil a lot of the camera angles required to get a good 'hit'.

The other problem they're facing is a simple data overload one. So much data is being gathered, that effective sifting technologies don't really exist yet. Especially when asking for footage from privately owned CCTV systems.

These are both problems where sufficient application of emerging technology can help. So long as the security apparatus can resist ripping out all this infrastructure they've built, future storage systems can capably handle the information load generated by these cameras. Couple that with advances in software, and you have the beginnings of an actually effective CCTV system. Computer-based tracking of license-plate numbers should come well before then, optical character recognition in noisy environments being a fundamentally easier problem than facial recognition, which will make tracking vehicle movements much easier as well.

Right now, the system is not very useful. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of ground-work needed for a system that could actually be useful. Once the "back office" details are sufficient, the data flood will become manageable. Once that happens, the utility of all that data becomes much higher.

Financial IQ

2008-04-13T18:11:00.001-07:00

Newsweek had a pair of articles in the last issue that made me think. The first one, "Clues for the Clueless: The mortgage crisis may create momentum for improving our financial literacy. It's about time," is what I'm talking about today. The premise in the article is that the personal financial environment we live in has gotten markedly more complex since 1980 and we're not doing a good job of retraining. The advent of 401(k) plans over defined-benefit pension plans, mortgages other than 30-year fixed, and home equity lines of credit mean what our parents taught us about money isn't always true or accurate, if they even talked to us about it at all.

As it happens, most of what I learned about money came from two sources. The school of hard knocks, and my father in law. I learned about stocks in grade school. Compound interest is a standard math exercise once you get to a certain level (which few do, but I did). Mutual funds? No where to be found. Adjustable-rate-mortgages? Likewise. Debt restructuring? Nada. The prime lesson I got from my parents was a simple one, "Don't go into debt."

Unfortunately, a prime part of the American Experience is managing debt. Car payments for the car you put 10% down on, house payments for the house you put 2% down on, and credit-card payments for the cards you statistically aren't fully paying off every month. The one exception to the 'no debt' rule was a mortgage, since NO ONE pays cash for a house, and I think banks are required to report to the IRS whenever anyone does just that.

A second article, High Finance Laid Low, goes into a bit more depth about how things have changed:

Consider mortgages. In 1980, they came in one flavor: 30-year fixed-rate loans. Because fees and closing costs were so high, it was hard to refinance into a cheaper loan even if interest rates fell. The rule of thumb was that rates had to drop 2 percentage points before refinancing made sense.

When I covered compound interest in school, the 3o-year fixed was one of the examples. When we bought our first house in 1997, there were a few more options, such as the 15-year fixed, and 3 and 5 year adjustable-rate-mortgages. But still, I was told the 2% rule by many people. That mortgage was 7.25% if I'm remembering right.

Now we have a lot more options such as 40-year fixed rates mortgages, interest-only loans (eeeeeviiiiill), and many more types of ARMs. Part of the reason we're in the housing crisis is in part due to a lack of complete understanding, on the part of the consumers, of the risks involved in an adjustable rate mortgage. This is due in part to the fact that these instruments didn't exist even 10 years ago, and it hasn't entered our ancestral memory yet.

More fun figures:

Personal investment choices have mushroomed. In 1980, households had half their financial assets in bank deposits and savings accounts; only 34 percent were in stocks and a meager 2 percent in mutual funds. Since then, Americans have diversified: in 2006, 25 percent of household assets were in mutual funds, 28 percent in stocks and 28 percent in bank deposits and savings accounts (the rest were scattered across bounds and money-market funds).

The demise of the defined-benefit pension plan in favor of defined-contribution 401(k) style plans has forced an entire generation (or two) into the stock market. The boomers had this transition happen mid-career, depending on the sector they work in. Generation X, like me, has had 401(k) plans from the get go or were one of the last to get the defined-benefit plans, but had zero preparation for 401(k)'s in our schooling. Generation Y (also knows as the Millennials) has had 401(k) as the standard option since they entered the workplace, but they at least get the benefit of the collective folk wisdom of the rest of us; I have no idea if these concepts are covered in school these days.

As I mentioned before, I had a class unit in 5th or 6th grade where we were given $10,000 fantasy dollars and were to play the market. The prime lesson here is that stocks go up and stocks go down. If you choose good, you can make money. If you don't choose good, you lose money. It did not teach us about SEC filings, 10-Q reports, or any way to analyze whether or not a company is on sound financial footing.

Because of this lack of formal preparation, we are prone to folk wisdom and herd mentality. We do not teach risk management in school, and instead leave it to intuitive processes. This has some problems, as described in the, "Clues for the Clueless" article:

Finally, when it comes to investing, behavioral economists put part of the blame on "loss aversion." That describes how the average person suffers more pain when losing $10 than pleasure from gaining the same amount; the phenomenon explains people's unwillingness to take risks.

A 24 year old just getting into the market by way of their employer's 403(b) plan (a 401(k) plan for non-profits) may chose a bunch of 'balanced' or bond-funds simply because they want the steady income and don't want to be bothered by losses. Even though they're 40+ years from retirement, and are in the single best position to reap the rewards of 'growth' funds. When the stock market started well and truly tanking this year, I had friends who made a real effort to NOT LOOK at their portfolios; specifically because they knew that if they saw how much they'd lost, they'd be tempted to Do Something about that. Intuitive investors sell low and buy high.

As I alluded to above, part of our problem is that debt has become such a major proportion of our financial lives. As the housing crisis has shown, a vast majority of the average American's net worth is non-liquid real-estate, or non-liquid retirement funds. Therefore, credit becomes a major player. When I buy a car, I do so on the promise of the wages I'll be earning for the next 3/4/5 years. College students routinely come out of college with mortgage-sized debt loads, and it may be decades before their net-worth is positive.

In my specific case, "don't go into debt," has actually worked out. Due to financial planning, a shrewd choice of college, and getting through college on time, I managed to get through without any student debt. The first loan I ever signed up for was my mortgage, which we managed to put 10% down on, and managed to drop PMI 3 years after inception. The first car we bought by way of a loan was a new car, and we still managed to put about 50% down. Having been scared about credit cards by my parents, I didn't get into trouble there; a lesson that was reinforced several times watching friends dig themselves out of exactly that kind of debt-hole. When we get windfalls, we don't immediately blow it all on buying stuff. We have several long term savings goals that we're saving for, and document the contributions.

We are not the average US saver.

Were it not for my father-in-law, chances are good that the financial windfalls we received over the years would be in passbook savings earning a whopping 1.75%. That is very, very safe (thank you FDIC) but not very wise for the bottom line in the long term. My first job was in the public sector, and had a defined-benefit plan (and still do, last I looked), so I didn't have to look at the stock market like my .COM friends were having to do. That plan earned a guaranteed 5% yearly rate, which was kind of nice to know when the memories of the 1991-93 recession were still fresh.

The first time I had to look at the stock market was when I started my new job, in 2003. This job has a defined-contribution plan as the only retirement option. By this point I already knew quite a bit about mutual funds thanks to my father-in-law, so it wasn't the steep learning curve it would have been. Seeing as we were just coming out of the .com bubble-correction in 2003, I probably would have ended up entirely in 'income' stocks rather than where I did.

I know I would have been better served knowing more about how money works. Mutual funds existed in the 1980's, and even 'no load' funds existed. The plethora of mortgage options didn't exist, but more abstract examples of various debt instruments could have been used to illustrate how money works in our economy. "Don't go into debt," served me relatively well until I built up enough financial IQ on my own to be a lot more sophisticated in how my savings works for me.

A word that needs to be left behind

2008-02-20T09:48:00.001-08:00

On the CNN front page today there was an article-teaser I object to:

Coed? What is this, the 1970's? To their credit the actual article is titled, "Underwear left near body, possibly a taunt to police," which is much more acceptable. But, coed?

"Coed" is short for "Co-educational". It came into use to describe students of the opposite gender being educated along side the traditional gender at institutions of higher ed that formerly were single-gender only. As the prevalence of all-male colleges were much higher than the all-female variety, 'coed,' came to be synonymous with "college-aged female".

I object to 'coed' as a synonym of woman. Its use as a descriptor of a place of education is much more acceptable; for instance, the US military academies went co-ed in 1976. When used as a proxy for 'woman' it implies that women in higher education are something to be noted, as if they didn't belong there until recently. It is a form of condescension, and should be scrubbed from common usage. I would be very happy if I never saw it used by a news outlet ever again.

Update: It would seem on first glance that CNN may have caught some flack about it. Right now it shows:

However, the title of the article is now, "Underwear found near co-ed's body possibly left to taunt police."

Sigh

What to do with a tax refund

2008-02-07T14:32:00.001-08:00

According to CNN, the Senate just passed the economic stimulus package passed by the House (plus some changes). Passage is expected to be 'swift'.

We've already discussed what our $1200 is going to be used for. It'll be used to pay for an unfunded federal mandate: a digital TV.

In case you hadn't heard, the FCC is forcing over the air television broadcasts to go all digital real soon now. HD TV is a digital signal, and is the one remaining reason households have TV antennas in this modern era of cable and satellite TV. What the feds are not doing is paying for new TVs, instead they gave the TV stations long enough to get there that 'market forces' would force the change.

And it kind of has. A lot of my friends have HD TV now. The 'early adopters' out there, who plonked down $2000+ for a TV, may need to upgrade though. Those people who still have analog TVs can use a converter box to switch the signals. Those of us with cable or satellite TV already have one, and we won't even notice the change.

We're still using the same 27" CRT we bought in December of 1998. Works great, and fits in the entertainment center. This federal windfall is something we can use to upgrade it, though. It'll pay for the TV and part of a new entertainment center since the current one won't support the now-default widescreen form-factor. See us, stimulating the economy of two countries!

Addendum: It would appear that the Feds ARE subsidizing some of the conversion.

Why pro-choice matters to me

2008-01-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

The simple answer to this is because I was raised that way. That simple thing probably informs most people's base view on the pro-life/pro-choice spectrum, but doesn't show the whole of it. Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade, which means whole generations have grown up in the post-Roe world. Some of us who were born shortly after Roe have children of choice ourselves. If those children were had early enough, those same children of choice are hitting puberty themselves and the debate now becomes personal for them.

Pro-choice is more than just pro-abortion. Pro-choice means being in favor of having control over reproduction, and abortion is just one more tool. Because the biology of reproduction costs women far more than men, having children is a far bigger event in the lives of women than it is for men. Having choice about reproduction means greatly enhanced life options.

Pro-choice is about being able to chose when to start a family, and even having the option of not starting one at all. Abortion provides the 'last resort' to ensure this choice. Some argue at length that adoption is a much better alternative, but pregnancy itself imposes a major burden on a woman. Adoption is just another tool in the pro-choice toolbox, it isn't a replacement for abortion.

English Law clearly establishes that maternal liability for harm caused in utero does not exist. Some US states are based on Common Law so may also have this protection. The US Federal Law is not based on common law, so instead we have to rely on laws and judicial rulings to define whether or not a mother can be held liable for harm caused in utero. Science is getting better and better at figuring out what actions a mother can take to cause harm, or reduce harm, to a fetus. The US system of law allows a mother to be held liable for harm incurred in utero, as happened to a Wisconsin woman in 1995 who was confined to a hospital by the state in order to prevent her from using illegal drugs and harming her fetus (Angela M. W. v. Kruzicki).

Therefore, if a mother is forced to carry an unwanted child to term and give them up for adoption, rather than abort, it can open her up to liability. Thus, a mother carrying to term HAS to 'do it right', even if she doesn't want the child. This presents a significant burden to the mother. In the US, this means that the unwanted child has to receive adequate pre-natal care which is a health-care expense. Therefore, adoption is a viable alternative to abortion only if the mother is willing to endure the expense of adequate pre-natal care.

I consider reproductive choice a fairness issue. This is one area where nature clearly dictates distinct differences between the sexes, which is why I believe that modern technology can be correctly used to equalize this. Until science can perfect a uterine replicator, and therefore free women from the duty of bearing the children of choice, there will always be a disparity; but at least it can be a disparity of choice. We are tool users by nature, so this seems quite fair to me.

Women deserve as much of a chance to live their lives as they see fit as men do. Reproductive choice is a major part of that goal. This is why pro-choice matters to me.