This landed in my RSS reader. If those whales would just learn to eat krill like their big blue cousins, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Archive for the ‘Politics and Local Topics’ Category
More Clever AddWords
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Cheesy Promotion
Monday, January 11th, 2010Kraft Foods is now the official sponsor of the implosion of Texas Stadium.
Have we run out of new stadiums to promote, so we have to promote the demolition of old ones?
Update: Wow.
Texas May have Banned Marriage
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Texas passed an amendment in 2005 with the intent of banning gay-marriage. But they may have banned more than they intended.
The amendment contains the text:
This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.
Logically, it seems like “marriage” is a member of the set of legal statuses “identical or similar to marriage”. Of course, there’s no telling how a judge would interpret the idea of something being “identical or similar” to itself.
Things (I Think) I Heard from Kitchens of Seattle Restaurants Last Weekend:
Friday, October 2nd, 2009Elliot’s Oyster House:
Voice 1: “First rock salt, and now this? No!”
Voice 2: [inaudible]
Voice 1: “I’m not telling you her name.”
Etta’s:
“The zombies were good, but sometimes they fight.”
(Both restaurants were excellent, BTW)
Incandescent Lights: What EISA Really Means
Friday, September 4th, 2009There’s been a lot of press coverage recently of the incandescent lighting provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, and it’s largely been of the form “The US Government is banning incandescent light bulbs.”
While this makes for good prime-time newsvertainment, it’s not really true.
The tungsten light bulb was invented in 1905 as a fairly radical improvement on the earlier carbon filament bulbs, which would generally last less than a week before burning out. The humble incandescent light bulb was pretty constantly improved — both in terms of lifetime and efficiency — until about 1964. At that point in time, a bulb that used 100 watts could put out between 1,300 and 1,700 lumens. And that’s where we are now. The most commonly used incandescent bulbs have seen no real improvements in the past 45 years.
Now, let’s look at what EISA actually says about incandescent bulbs. A careful reading shows that it doesn’t eliminate incandescent bulbs. Far from it. All it does is set minimum efficiency standards for them. The relevant information comes from Pub.L. 110-140, Subtitle B, Section 321 (a)(3)(A)(ii)(I)(cc); the important columns from the table are:
| Lumens | Maximum Wattage |
Effective |
|---|---|---|
| 1490 – 2600 | 2012 | |
| 1050 – 1489 | 2013 | |
| 750 – 1049 | 2014 | |
| 310 – 749 | 2014 |
The four lines in the table correspond roughly to modern 100, 75, 60, and 40 watt bulbs respectively. So, those are certainly aggressive compared to the ’60′s technology that we’re using today. But it’s not a “ban on incandescent bulbs” any more than recent automobile efficiency regulations are a “ban on internal combustion engines.”
In fact, you can already buy, right now in 2009, a number of bulbs that meet these standards. Sure, they’re a bit pricey right now, but so were 13 SEER air conditioners five years ago. When regulations force minimum efficiency standards, economies of scale almost always kick in and drop the prices to be very close to those of the older, less efficient technologies.
On top of this, we’ve seen some extremely promising advances in incandescent technologies, including laser treatment of filaments and coatings that turn waste heat into visible light. Either of these alone would completely blow the EISA standards out of the water, beating them by a margin of more than 30%. And there’s no reason to believe that they can’t be combined with each other for additional efficiencies.
So, before you start writing your eulogies for the humble incandescent bulb, I’d give the industry some time to show us what they can do when given a challenge.
Edit: there are additional EISA provisions that kick in January 1st, 2020; these require an efficiency of 45 lumens per watt or better. This will be more difficult, but the kinds of advances I talk about above are already close to this standard — the laser technique gets you to 35 lumens per watt — so even that isn’t likely to be incandescent’s death knell.
Hit & Run > The Whole Foods Plan for Health Care Reform – Reason Magazine
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009Reason’s Matt Welch points out what I consider the single biggest bang-for-the-buck health-care reform opportunity in his blog on Whole Foods CEO John Makey’s proposal:
“As someone who h-a-t-e-s the health care system, I’ve never understood why de-linking insurance from employment isn’t a central part of every serious crack at reform, given that a preponderance of analysts on all sides of the debate agree that the post-war linkage of health benefits to the workplace is one of the system’s Original Sins.”
Hit & Run > The Whole Foods Plan for Health Care Reform – Reason Magazine
Joe the Plumber to Become War Correspondent
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009No, really, I’m not kidding.
(Via Reason Magazine.)
For Fluffy
Monday, January 5th, 2009
(Credit to R. Stevens)
Rotten Brains
Thursday, December 18th, 2008As the year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on times past.
Back in September of 1997, when the media found out about the various transmissible spongiform encephalopathies that can arise from eating neural material of infected animals, CNN ran a story specifically about the eating of squirrel brains as a delicacy in certain southern US states.
The best part is the graphic they ran along with the story, which helpfully points out what part of the squirrel one should avoid eating:
Have a pleasant new year, and watch out for those squirrels.
We’re In Ur Bank…
Friday, September 26th, 2008
(Via BoingBoing.)
Llama fetus ritual to help Bolivia’s Morales?
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008A “witch doctor” burns dried llama fetuses to support Morales in the Bolivian recall election. I boggle at the fact fact that there is a market for dried llama fetuses in the first place.
Stepping our way to the panopticon…
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007OK, I admit that I can no longer count the times I’ve been waiting for a green light, see the opposing traffic slow and stop, have my light turn green and then see a car whizz past me through the light that just turned red. It’s stupid and dangerous (not to mention definitely a moving violation).
Some cities have begun using automated Red Light Cameras. Some of them have notable misconfigurations enhancing the ideas that it is merely all about revenue rather than safety. There are other devices besides only red-light monitors, and I just have to wonder if there are better ways.
Texas “Body Farm” on Hold
Thursday, May 10th, 2007Sometimes the news is breath-takingly weird.
It seems that Texas State University in San Marcos, TX, had to put their “body farm” project on hold. What’s a body farm, you ask? It’s a location to study the decomposition of, well, bodies. Human ones. For forensic research purposes. There are a couple of these in the USA already, but Texas has a different enough climate to warrant one of its own.
But that’s not the really weird part. The reason this is being put on hold is not the obvious “not in my backyard” argument. Rather, it is the concern that the resulting buzzard density might endanger traffic at a nearby community airport.
Oh, they’ve done it now.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007I wonder if Disney will consider Hamas’ use of Mickey Mouse as an act of war? They should know better than to mess with the mouse! Now we’re going to have to save the world for democracycontent-owners.
This really isn’t funny [snicker]. No, really.
[giggle]
[okay, the strike-through font humor doesn't translate to RSS...]
End of Internet Radio?
Monday, March 5th, 2007The US Copyright Royalty board has approved a per-performance royalty regime for internet streaming. Per-performance means they pay royalties for every _listener_ for each song they play, retroactive to 2006. This puts a far greater burden on internet streaming radio than on conventional radio. In many (most?) cases, the new royalty requirements are greater than the revenue of the stations.
I am a big fan of Radio Paradise. I’ve listened to them for years, and contributed several times. They have posted an essay on the subject.
Of course, there is an easy fix for this. Move offshore. And laugh while our copyright regime completely collapses under its own greed and idiocy.
It’s hard to imagine that _no_ one at SoundExchange and the RIAA gets this.
Skilling Sentenced, Incoherent
Monday, October 23rd, 2006Jeff Skilling was sentenced to a smidgen more than 24 years today. Shortly before the sentencing, he addressed the judge with some of the most bizarre doublespeak I’ve ever seen published in a news article.
“In terms of remorse your honor, I can’t imagine more remorse. That being said your, your honor, I am innocent of these charges. I am innocent of every one of these charges.”
In other words: “I’m really, really sorry that I did all those horrible things which, I must point out, I did not do.”
Wright Amendment: An End in Sight
Sunday, June 18th, 2006After decades of the Wright Amendment crippling Love Field in Dallas, it appears that an end may finally be in sight. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s plea for the involved parties to come up with a local solution instead of dragging the fight into the US Senate seems to have finally yielded fruit: last Thursday (June 15th), American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Dallas, Fort Worth, and the DFW Airport signed an agreement that represents a truce among the parties. Admittedly, this is just the first step in what will be a very long process (it needs to be okayed by Dallas and Fort Worth as well as the DFW Airport board, and then needs to pass through US Congress before December), but it is rather promising.
The good news is that, if everything goes well, the Wright Amendment is going away.
The bad news is that Southwest will still largely suffer under the same restrictions for another 8 years. Apparently, American Airlines, being unused to any sensible competition in the Dallas area, needs that long to plan a strategy that allows them to compete with an airline that can afford to charge about half as much.
Examining the finer details of the agreement: Southwest is immediately allowed to ticket connecting flights to non-Wright amendment states. In other words, you can now fly from DAL to SJC on a single ticket and check your luggage all the way through; but you’ll have to stop in an allowed destination (like El Paso) on the way.
Also, the City of Dallas will be forced, at taxpayers’ expense, to demolish 12 of the 32 gates at Love Field. Of the remaining 20 gates, Southwest will be allowed to use only 16. And if Southwest chooses to fly out of any airport other than Love in the DFW area, they lose those gates as well.
The important thing here is that American Airlines’ insistent and unattractive plea for the federal government to continue to save it from honest competition has failed. Within 8 years, there is significant promise that the cost of flights from Dallas will drop from 48% above the national average to something more in line with it. And really, that’s good news for everyone — at least, everyone who hasn’t been profiting from ridiculous, government-protected price gouging for the past 30 years.
Some Times You Can’t Tell Who to Root For
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006A religious group in Denton, TX, put together a typical religious “tract.” Now, I don’t know if those of you without the good sense to grow up in the good ole South of the USA have experienced these things or not. But, to generalize, they are not exactly targeted to the intelligentsia–but then that pretty much goes without saying when you try to convert someone to your religion using as few words as possible. But sometimes the pictures are really, uhm … interesting.
Problem is, this one looks a lot like a piece of US currency. The US Secret Service does not have much of a sense of humor about that sort of thing. But get this–it simulates a $1M bill, peppered with religious slogans.
The largest bill the US has ever printed is a $100K note. Is it possible to counterfeit something that never existed? Apparently federal law says it is. And to add insult to injury (or is that absurdity to comedy?), someone actually presented one of these to an east coast bank.
If we had a boneheadedness world cup, I think one of the players in this farce would have the cup sewn up. But I’m not sure which one it would be–maybe a three way draw.
Headline of the Month Award
Saturday, June 3rd, 2006Because the first step is admitting you have a problem: President Takes Steps to Reduce Meth Use
The truth will set you free
Monday, September 12th, 2005Qouthe a well-respected canu^Hadian friend of us all (while walking the streets of Stockholm in the middle of the night):