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[Jul. 12th, 2009|10:34 am] |
The first thing to note about the financial crisis is that the federal government never had any business intervening in the personal decision of whether you want to own a home. There is no rational economic argument, or any argument I know of, that says the market of buying and selling homes is imperfect in some way, requiring government action. Construction firms have plenty of incentive to build homes and sell them. People who have the wherewithal have plenty of incentive to buy homes if they so choose. For the government to intrude into homeownership was an off-budget, nontransparent, backdoor attempt at redistributing income. And when the policy became a way of transferring income to people who couldn't afford those homes, it was doomed to failure.
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The stunning thing about Obama's spending proposals is that there's almost nothing you could defend from the perspective of efficiency. It's all about redistribution — not redistribution to the poor but redistribution to Democratic interest groups: to unions, to the green lobby, to the health care industry, and so on. At some point these everescalating government interventions will affect the size of the economic pie. If we start looking more like France, with more than 20 percent of GDP controlled by the federal government, output growth and economic freedom will all suffer.
The Case For Doing Nothing, by Jeffrey A. Miron, director of undergraduate studies at Harvard's economics department, reprinted at the Cato Institute website |
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| So far, goodness |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|02:14 pm] |
The weekend thus far, which I define as late Thursday through right now, has been nonstop awesome.
Yesterday: Dinner at El Cholo with subset-of-friends-circle. Though it is tamale season, I decided to spare my stomach some of the calorie bomb and enjoyed a fajita instead.
Then, along with a giant heap of my friends, enjoyed MTLA's production of Cabaret, at the conveniently located Met (not that one) theater. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) furfybird, though onstage only occasionally, was fantastic as I've come to expect. Her gorgeous voice just fills up the room, and she completely owned the end of the first act. I wish she could have cloned herself and simultaneously sat in the audience so she could have seen herself and swooned. One day, science, one day.
This morning: I defied most of my rules for jogging and somehow had a great time. Under the impetus of the running-enthusiasm-generator that is duckierose, I drove up the very end of Encino Blvd to the Mulholland Fire Path. We did a five mile run in the blazin' heat (usually a huge no-no for me) and along a dusty, hilly trail. The view was gorgeous, though; we followed an mountside ridge circling a broad valley of SoCal hillocks and chaparral. I was covered in dust and sweat by the end, but miraculously unsunburned.
After I finished the run, Lance Armstrong congratulated me on my longest run to date. This Nike+/iPod gizmo never runs out of surprises. |
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| The machines have begun to rise |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|12:23 pm] |
Last night my Nike+ module congratulated me on setting a new personal speed record. (Based on its fairly limited exposure to my running history.) Moreover, it wasn't an impersonal robo-voice, but a specific woman who identified herself by name. I don't remember who it was; I assume some celebrity runner.
This is sort of cool, and sort of creepy. I hope Apple never feels the temptation to insert spoken ads into this thing. |
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| Daughters of Nerddom |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|12:52 pm] |
I've been thinking about the Breaking of the Nerd Gender Barrier that happened in the 90s. You younguns may not be aware how few females were into sci fi/fantasy/etc. prior to then. (Any nerd who went to my high school will attest to this with a deep sigh.) Of course, there were always outliers, e.g. a certain girlfriend of mine, whose Star Wars mania dates to childhood. But by and large, women watching Battlestar Galactica or playing video games alongside men is a fairly recent phenomenon.
One causal factor was no doubt the general nerdification of both genders as the web became more mainstream. But I speculate that the turnaround really came from the release of sci-fi/fantasy with either:
1) Pretty boy actors in lead roles, in the case of film/TV (e.g. LOTR and Dr. Who)
2) Heavy emphasis on romantic subplots (Harry Potter, Buffy)
It's safe to say that this is not something that would have happened 20 years ago. (Though I have painful memories of massive women dressing as Klingons at a Star Trek convention.) |
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| Charge! |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|06:03 pm] |
My phone charger may have been a causality of hasting packing.
Does anyone happen have an extra charger for a Motorola Razr? (Since these phones were mega popular five years ago but passe today, I figured it might be worth asking.) |
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| iCover |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|08:20 am] |
So apparently the cover of the June issue of the New Yorker was drawn with Brushes, a graphics app for the iPhone:
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| The Walkman Turns 30 |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|07:42 pm] |
Usually CNET's photo galleries are fluff pieces meant to sell ad space. But this one is kind of neat: a visual history of the Sony Walkman with (and this is the clincher) lists of the top ten songs the year each model came out.
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| Just call me yellow |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|01:11 am] |
Correction: I did do one birthday-like activity today. I went running with my birthday present! (A.k.a. new Nike+ shoes/pedometer/iPod interface.)
I also checked out the beta of the new Nike+ site. One neat idea is a ranking system borrowed from video game communities. Basically, the more miles you accumulate, the higher your rank. From the site:
There are six Levels that correspond to total kilometers run: Yellow (0-49 KM), Orange (50-249 KM), Green (250-999 KM), Blue (1,000-2,499 KM), Purple (2,500-4,999 KM) and Black (5000+ KM).
Since I just started using the system, I am, needless to say, yellow. I figure I'll hit Orange sometime the summer, and maybe Green in the early fall.
It may be a gesture of vanity intended to sell running shoes, but I like it. :) |
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| Vicarious (for now) vacation |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|04:34 pm] |
Here's a sampling of what mixophrygian has been up to at Aspen this summer. Looking forward to my visit at the end of July!
(Click for bigger version.) |
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| Weeds |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|11:27 am] |
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Needing new dinnertime "TV" entertainment, and having finished 30 Rock (thus far), I perused Netflix's streamable content in search of a new diversion. Most of the shows people have recommended aren't available for streaming, but I did find Weeds Season One. I've only seen the pilot, but: I like. |
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| Quick update du lunchtime |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|01:19 pm] |
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Been busy lately with the triple-slam of a) new big orchestral project, b) the musical, c) preparing for my FreeMinds talk. The first has taken the lion's share of my time, a situation which will probably last through most of the summer. The musical is fortunately mostly on autopilot at this point. We made the only remaining adjustment this week, and I think the version 1.1 that'll run this weekend represents the final product at this point in time. The talk's subject matter is so much fun that it hardly feels like work. |
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| A classy exit (as these things go): |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|12:59 pm] |
I don't know anything about the governor of South Carolina, who today confessed to having an affair. But I do give him a tip of the hat for his assumption of personal responsibility:
"I met this person a little over eight years ago, very innocently .... What I did was wrong. Period. End of story," Sanford said.
It's ironic that our standards for public servants are so low that owning up to a misdeed passes for heroism these days. But this simple acceptance of liability is a breath of fresh air from the usual whinging and excuse-making. |
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| Nike+ goes the distance |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|10:57 pm] |
The Nike+ shoes-and-iPod-interface is awesome! Synopsis:
+ The shoes are comfy as all heck. Maybe it's just because I've been using my old running shoes too long, but tonight I felt like I was bouncing. It was like running on a firm mattress.
+ The interface gives you a nice clear display of your time, average minutes-per-mile, and distance.
+ If you pick a time or distance goal, a voice (of the gender of your choice) will let you know when you're halfway done, etc. And, even better, it'll tell you a satisfying summary of what you did when you're done.
+ Your iPod will (with your blessing) auto-send your running data to the NikePlus website, where you get visual feedback like this:
That graph shows my speed over time. And yes, the moon represents the fact that I ran at night.
Once I run some more, it'll populate a history view like this:
(Those stats you see on the lump are the result of mousing over.)
Are there any negatives? Other than the minor inconvenience of putting a small gizmo in your iPod nano (not required for an iPod Touch), there's only one I've noticed.
- The progress voice gets a bit enthusiastic towards the end of the run. Robo-woman counted down the last five minutes, on the minute.
So in short, while arguably something of a luxury, Nike+ shoes/interface is an awesome gift item for a learning or serious runner. I can't wait to use it on my next nontrivial run. |
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| Nike Plus Maiden Voyage |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|09:49 pm] |
Well, I am about to try out my brand new Nike+ enabled running shoes and iPod adapter, a.k.a. my early birthday present from mixophrygian. The idea is that the gizmo embedded in the left shoe will measure running distance and pace, and wirelessly transmit the information to my iPod nano. Then when I sync back up to my MacBook Pro, I should be able to see how lazily I huffed along, and for how long. Then I should be able to make a NikePlus account on a website somewhere, and track my progress over time.
True, it's not that much different than what I've been doing manually, but let's face it: when something is hi-tech and fun, you do it more often. And in this case the "it" is something that will improve my fitness and prolong my life... hey, wait a minute. mixophrygian, you just bought me this to keep me around longer, didn't you. |
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| EXTREMEMLY neat feature |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|04:22 pm] |
of iPod/iPhone software 3.0. The voice recorder app has a "send memo" button, which will email the thing you just recorded to whoever. And since Mail and your address book are all integrated, this usually involves typing one or two letters.
Sure, the technology to do this has been around for years if not decades. But a technology is only as useful as it is convenient, and this just broke the Convenience Threshhold. |
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| Neat little iPod/Phone improvement |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|03:42 pm] |
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I used to get frustrated with long music tracks on my iPod Touch, because it was hard to scrub (ffwd/rewind) to a specific spot - I'd keep overshooting. Now with OS 3.0, dragging your finger down the screen adjusts the rate of scrubbing, so you can either zip along or micro-scrub as you prefer. This makes jumping back 30 seconds in a 20 minute audio track much much easier. |
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| Voice Memo win |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|01:15 pm] |
The new iPod/Phone voice recorder software is great, and works exactly how I hoped it would: when you sync, voice memos are synced with a folder in iTunes.
And boy does it look stylish.
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