Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a wonderful satire that is much more rich than the Lilliputian kids book I recalled. Written from the perspective of Gulliver, the book recounts meetings with 4 groups of "people": small people, big people, flying people and 'wild' people that are subservient to intelligent horses.

The entertaining tales of his visits to the various groups, however, are secondary to the sly commentary on 18th century British (and European) life. By comparing other societies with the English, Swift is able to bring out additional subtleties that would be much more challenging than saying them outright. He also spends significant time discussing child-raising and societal mores - with an obvious view of what he thinks superior.

Gulliver presents a naive optimism throughout the stories. He is willing to go with the flow to properly live with the many different groups. However, he is not exempt from failing to grow from others' shortcomings. In particular, with the Laputians, he observes the society that is obsessed with advanced math and erudition, yet can't see past this learning to apply the practical knowledge. His next trip to the Houyhnhnms leaves him with a great distaste for "Yahoos". On return to society, he applies the "Yahoo" label to all humans, including his own family. He attempts to live a life apart from humans by adhering to the higher social plane of the horses; he does not realize that by doing so, he is failing to apply his great store of knowledge and committing a fault similar to those of Laputa.

Winners and losers in NCAA conference expansion

The Big-10 is exploring adding an additional team. The Pac-10 is looking at expanding. The Mountain West would like a BCS bid. Who will be the winners and losers?

Most Likely Winner: Utah. In almost all scenarios they would end up ahead. If the Big-10 poaches a Big-East school, that will improve the position of the Mountain West vs. Big East. A team like Pitt would be almost impossible to replace. If the Mountain West added Boise State it would make them shoulders above the Big East and just about guarantee an automatic bid (perhaps even replacing the Big East's bid.)
If the Pac-10 expanded, Utah is one of the most likely candidates, geographically, economically and culturally. The only Pac-10 expansion scenario that wouldn't include Utah would be an unlikely Texas bid - which could leave Utah in prime position to take a spot in the Big-12.
The worst-case scenario for Utah would be for Notre Dame to join the Big 10. This would free up a "basketball only" spot in the Big East, and let the Big East grab another basketball/football team. While replacing Pitt with East Carolina would hurt the conference, adding East Carolina would help the conference in football.

Most Likely Loser: Big-12. The Big-12 could very well be on life-support if the expansion scenarios play out. The top candidates for expansion are schools on the periphery of the Big-12: Missouri and Colorado. If either of these leave, they take a whole state with them, with little opportunity to get it back without stretching way beyond the current 'footprint'. There is pretty much no other big program in Missouri. In Colorado, the conference could attempt to hold its position by seeking Colorado State or Air Force. However, they have much less sway on the Denver TVs than Colorado. And if the Mountain West gets an automatic bid, they would have little incentive to switch conferences.

TCU, Houston, Rice and SMU would be good candidates to join the conference, bringing it closer to the old Southwest Conference. They all have shown signs of life, playing competitive football in at least one of the last two seasons. TCU is the powerhouse of them, and could probably compete for the Big-12 championship right off the bat.

The big problem is that they don't add any new markets to the conference. With Texas and Texas A&M, the Dallas and Houston markets are well covered. While TCU adds the Ft. Worth market to the Mountain West, they add pretty much nothing to the Big-12. A move to the conference would be a media loss for both.

Assuming Colorado and Utah go to the Pac-10, BYU would probably be the best possible replacement. They travel well and have a significant following, without being two far out of the conference footprint. They would also fit nicely in the northern division.

If Missouri and Colorado leave, things get dicier. Perhaps the conference says goodbye to markets and goes for TCU and another Texas team (or even all 4 to expand to a 14 team conference) Or perhaps the conference becomes west oriented with Air Force and BYU. At least that gives them a presence in those markets.

The timing matters: If the Big-10 said today that Pitt really is going to join the conference, the Big East would have to start moving quickly. With the eight non-football teams, the conference really can't easily expand to a 12 team football conference. Perhaps they "combine" with the Mountain West to create an east-west championship game for a BCS bid. This could forestall a Utah/BYU jump. Or maybe the Big-12 jumps the gun and invites TCU in as an insurance policy. Or maybe there is a total left-field move with unexpected teams jumping conferences.

The End of Overeating

David A Kessler: The End of Overeating
The first half of this book is mouth-wateringly good. He vividly describes "highly-palatable" foods, and all that goes in to making them irresistible. Foods are reduced to a proper combination of salt, sugar and fat, blended with the proper flavors to entice us to want more. I found myself craving all sorts of food as I read this account.

If anybody is reading this book as a "diet book", it would probably be best to s kip to the end. Otherwise, you'll probably find yourself simply wanting to eat more and more.

The second part of the book details his theory of "conditioned overeat". People become conditioned to notice food cues and eat, even when they they don't have the needs. Food is used as a "reward" for the brain.

Then the book goes on to describe methods for setting plans to reduce the "addiction" to food. This part seems fairly sound, and offers methods for coping with the stimuli that the food industry sets up for us. After all, their goal is for everyone to get as much of the highly-palatable, high margin food as possible.

While the first half of the book describing the food industry and desirability is vividly written, the remainder of the book becomes more dryly scientific. I'd prefer that the author eliminates the 'self-help' section, and simply focus on the food industry and his theory.
Some of his "fixes" at the end would be problematic. He would like to see calorie counts posted on all menus. This may be trivial for chains with fixed portion sizes. However for the "mom and pop" chains this will be a significant expense that will add very little to the dining experience. The irony of calorie labeling today is that the food that is most adequately labeled (such as processed snack foods) tends to be the most fattening, while whole fruits and vegetables tend to go unlabeled. It's hard to see how labeling would make much of a difference.

Xenocide

Orson Scott Card: Xenocide
Xenocide picks up right where Speaker for the Dead left off. The story telling is improved, and the content goes heavily in to science, religion and personal relationships.

Its interesting that this world, 3000 years after the first book is still substantially recognizable to people that were around thousand of years before. Catholicism still seems the same. Government has been similar for the past few thousand years. Even technology has not been significantly changed. Now imagine if we went back just a 1000 years. We would hardly recognize it. Go back 2000 years, and two of the largest religions do not even exist. How could these last for so many thousand years?

Though perhaps the stability of instantaneous communications along with the relative difficulty of long distance travel can serve to stabilize. The "life extended" power of near light-speed travel is known to everyone. However, nobody thinks that Ender would really be the same person from 3000 years previous. I wonder what would happen to ship captains and traders? They would travel a lot, and could easily come home to see their great great grandchildren. Were these so rare that they were not readily considered?

Though perhaps they can serve as a stability factor. A ship of people coming from another planet would have their time period in mind. They could help mix the past and the present together. The Beatles could go on a "worlds tour". However, while they might do home in 60s, they wouldn't get abroad until the 2010s. This could help reinvigorate the future and tie it more closely to the past.

The instantaneous worldwide communications could have a similar stabilizing impact. This could help keep a stability across all worlds. Since travel is difficult and time consuming, there would be a strong incentive to keep plugged in to the world and thus cultural evolution would be slowed.

These travel themes are in both this and the previous books. This book, however, goes in more detail to the binding of people, things and world. Different views of the creation and evolution of life are explored along with cultural tricks to encourage subservience. Ethics of species annihilation (xenocide) are explored. Is it ok to wwipe out an intelligent virus?

The end of the novel fairly nicely wraps most points up. It would almost seem to be a nice self-contained work if it weren't for a few key strands that were left open. These strands provide some of the greatest "weirdness" of the book, and also set it up for its second part. (The next book in the series, which was created by "chopping" what was a 300,000 word novel in to two.

Stirring It Up and London Fire

Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirshberg
Stonyfield yogurt tries to be environmentally friendly. The story of the company would make for a nice business school case study. However, its not enough for a book. So, the author did some web surfing and called on a few friends to fill in details about other companies. (He even has a positive section on Wal-Mart, that he acknowledges came straight from the website.)

This book is 'pop-environmentalism' at its best. It will probably be fairly popular with "green" crowd. After all, it reads like a "who's who" of green companies. However, if your not in to the whole green thing, then you're probably not going to pick up the book anyway.

Which, is somewhat of a shame. Many of the most reasonable "green" things mentioned make basic sense for any business. Paying suppliers a sustainable rate over the long term may cost a little bit more. However, it helps keep the suppliers in business and keeps quality high - which can help cut costs and increase revenue. Reducing and eliminating waste is not as noticable as recycling - however, it provides the greatest monetary benefit.

At times the book even casts blows at "fake greenery" - things that have a green reputation, that really aren't that great. However, the blows tend to be rather soft. The hard blows are saved for the government farm program.

Overall, there is not a whole lot here that could not be obtained from browsing a few websites. The book is fairly well put together, and a quick read. The history of Stonyfield and their "marketing" takes up only about a quarter of the book, with the rest about other companies. While most of the Stonyfield content is at the front, some of the story is told throughout the book, making you read it all to get the full story. Maybe the b-school case study would be better after all.

Neil Hanson: The Great Fire of London
My favorite part was the description of how fires worked and spread. The story of the actual fire started pretty much with the day of the fire and ended with a Frenchman being hanged for it. The brief sections before barely give us a before and after picture. The actual fire story is based heavily on original journals and at time starts to feel like reading a jorunal.

Super Freakonomics

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner continue right where they left off in Freakonomics. This book is a very quick read that tackles a number of unconventional economics topics. It does quite well when it focuses on the data. However, at times it ventures off in to the realm of pet projects that don't really have the data.
It presents a great chapter on car seats. The data shows that a child above the age of two is no more likely to die in a car crash when wearing a seatbelt than when in a car seat. Yet we have increasing mandates for carseats. Why is this? Car seat manufacturers have a vested interest in selling more car seats. They often support this interest by showing car seats make children much more safer than leaving them unrestrained. There is also a possibility that they may be less likely to suffer a serious injury. However, the safety would be much greater if we just had child-sized seat-belts. This would also be a much cheaper alternative. (Since the majority of the people riding in the back are children, why not optimize for them? Adjustable seat belts would also be beneficial for smaller sized people. Unfortunately, there is little lobbying effort for this, while there is plenty for car seats. Even adjustable seatbelt makers can be ambivalent. (They could sell the belts with or without a carseat mandate.)

Parents can also be irrational when it comes to safety measures. They would be adamant that they do the "safe thing" for their kid and keep them in the car seat, even if that $50 could help the child's safety in many other ways. (Flame retardant regulations also come to mind. Children's pajamas and furniture are required to be filled with carcinogens to help provide a small delay in the remote chance that they catch on fire. A significant amount of "sure harm" is exchange for a remote possibility of reduced harm. Eliminating cigarettes in the house has proven much more effective. However, flame retardent chemicals let both the chemical industry and the tobacco industry increase sales - while providing a further revenue stream for the health care industry down the road.)

Other sections, however, are much less convincing. A discussion on global warming is especially poor. At the start of the chapter the authors discuss the "dangers of global cooling" that had worried scientists 40 years ago. Today, of course, the worry has turned to global warming. They present a little data to say that "its happening, but its not the end of the world." Then they proceed to speak in favor of piping chemicals to the stratosphere to induce global cooling.

From that discussion, it would seem to follow that we'd want a couple of pipes, one to spew out greenhouse gases and the other cooling gases. Then we could regulate the earth's temperatures. Only, we don't even have models that can accurately predict the weather for one location a week in advance. How do we expect to predict and manage the world for years? The "solution", unfortunately, could become a big part of the problem. (And could lead to many geopolitical issues, depending on who controls it.)

Agriculture discussions are also somewhat week. Ammonium Nitrate is praised as allowing great population booms. However, the externalities are not mentioned. The localvore movement is criticized because the small scale. However, no data is given to back this up or discuss other differences. (You could easily critique inappropriate local food as being wasteful [corn in the desert]. However, moving beyond commodities, local produce will likely be differet, and could even be grown on a greater scale than the industrial produce.)

The pitty of these shortcomings is that the book acknowledges the same shortcomings in other sections. The problems of "unintended consequences", externalities and detailed data analysis are all given ample discussion in the book. Unfortunately, many of the cases fail to take these in to account. This leaves the book bouncing around from rigourous pieces to fluff, and even investigative journalism. It's all entertaining, just not entirely convincing.

Misc. Books: Salmon of Doubt, Waiting for Aphrodite, summary of Das Kapital

Sue Hubbell - Waiting for Aphrodite: Journey into the Time Before Bones (1999). This is part nature book, part narrative of life changes. She has intriguing account of a number of 'less-studied bugs' (such as rolly pollies and centipedes.) Parts of the book get a little slow. However, it does open up interesting questions about the interrelations in the ecosystem and the presence of 'superfluous' living things that are not needed for the survival of other species. She guesses that there may be very few of these, with perhaps man being the most notable. I would think otherwise - man's absence would surely have a negative impact on many of the domesticated plants and animals that would not be able to survive without his intervention. (Not to mention the many microorganisms and bugs that depend upon him.)

Louis Rekeyser - Karl Marx: Das Kapital.(1992)  This purports to be a brief summary of Marx's key work. However, it is more a critique of Marx himself and the shortcomings of his economic philosophy.

Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt. (2002) The intro states that this book is essentially a posthumous dump of Douglas Adams' hard drive. The contents span a couple decades and include many great short essays. Most memorable are ones detailing the absurdity of driving law enforcement and critique of the multitude of "little dongly things (power supplies)". About half the book is devoted to the actual incomplete "Salmon of Doubt" book. This is easily the weakest part of the whole collection. Though it has funny parts, it is obviously not in a complete state and doesn't stand up to the great essays.


( These below are added to another post) 
Voltaire - Candide. Life is a Journey, not a destination. Everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong, yet Candide remains an optimist. He even gives up on the city of gold and peace to try to find and marry the girl of his dreams. Through it all, he keeps on a face of naieve optimism. Alas, even that starts to go wrong, but he remains happy until he finally sinks in to a dull life on the farm. Finally the "lack of something bad" becomes the one thing that makes him question the "best of all possible worlds". It turns out that bad things actually kept life interesting. It is monotony that is the true bad.
Voltaire takes hilarious jabs at royalty, church hierarchy, society, and just about everybody. Its amazing that it survived all these years. As I was going through it, I kept hearing Bernstein's Candide overture in my head. So, I listened to the CD and ... well, I still don't have anything more than the overture going through my head.

Stephen E. Ambrose - Undaunted Courage. This is primarily a biography of Merriweather Lewis, with extensive coverage of the Lewis and Clark exploration. The superlatives and endless complements of Lewis get tiring. It reads more like a family tale, attempting to place the family member in the most positive light, with his adventures being the most important in the world. The laudatory prose gets very tiring.

Orson Scott Card - Speaker For the Dead
This is much better than Ender's Game. The story telling is much more "together" and riveting. It presents some interesting questions. Humans secure intergalatic peace, and in doing so bring their technological and social evolution to a veritable 3000 year stand still. When they do encounter other intelligent life, they look at it through there own condescending eyes. They don't realize that the others may have many abilities that they don't recognize. Furthermore, they also expose the futility of an "observe, not disturb" mantra in science. Any observation will lead to some change in the observed, even if the observer does not notice them.
Then there is the human interaction aspect. A quest to eliminate potential harm may bring about many external damages - while still letting the undesired harm take place.


Tom Stoppard - Arcadia
This funny play is filled with mathematical references, while at the same time taking jabs at literary critics and biographers. History is storytelling through the eyes of the historian. Their biases and time period can have a significant impact on the story that they tell. I think I'll be exploring other Stoppard plays.

Great Tales from English History

The great English king Richard, immortalized in a statue at Parliament, spoke French, not English. "Robin Hood" was originally a lowly bail dodger, who's name gradually came to mean any one who disappeared after committing a crime.
These and other tidbits are present in Robert Lacey's Great Tales from English History.
The book primarily covers the middle ages in England (with a bit of available "early" history. However, it is not a history book per se, but more of a story book. It has a rough chronology of interesting stories of English characters. Some of the stories concern events and characters that shaped history at the time. Others are stories that were less significant (or even never happened), but later become part of the social fabric through myth and exaggeration.
History is, after all, is made to be applicable for the time it is written. Minor events from hundreds of years prior, suddenly become historically important because they fit a modern need or sensibility. Thus, looking at the "mythological" history from a given time period can probably tell you as much (if not more) about the time than the actual "facts" can tell. This book does a fairly good job of presenting interesting stories from the perspective of "our time" as well as other times in the not so distant pass. Now I want to dig up even more Medieval history.

Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game has a great ending, which almost makes up for the rest of the book. I struggled to get through the start of this book. The writing seemed fairly vulgar and juvenile - almost as if it were written by the young children it was about. The general theme also seems overdone today. I was thinking Harry Potter as I read about the initial "trials" of Ender. He was a kid that adults expected to lead the military. However, he still wanted to find a way to make it through his youth. (To give credit, Ender's Game was written a decade before Harry Potter. Maybe it took a decade for authors to develop a more readable style.)

The part that I found most interesting was the story of Ender's two siblings. Their characters were much more richly developed. I found their subplot of attempting to take over the world through the "nets" more intriguing than the main plot of Ender's adventures in school. (The use of the internet makes this book seem like it was written more recently than 1986. However, the Soviet-American rivalry puts it squarely back in the cold war era.)

It is not until the end of the book that Ender finally starts to develop as a character. However, he suddenly seems to jump from being a young child to being an adult. (Though, I'm sure many children would love the opportunity to save the world by playing video games.)
The book does have some interesting ideas, however, those ideas may have been better off in the original short story.

Pac-10 Expansion Scenarios

The Pac-10 has mentioned that it is joining the Big-10 in being 'open' to conference expansion. The decisions made could lead to a spiral effect in all the conferences.

Big 10: Add Pitt (They have a good market, so they'll go for another big Pennsylvania school to balance with Penn State.)
Pac-10: Add Utah and Colorado. (They'll go for entering new TV markets with major research schools.)

In this secenario, the Big East, Big-12 and Mountain West would have to scramble for new teams. The Big East may go for Memphis to replace Pitt. They may not have many choices. With a large basketball-only portion of the conference, the Big East would have a tough time adding any additional schools.
The Mountain West would quickly add Boise State. Teams like Fresno and Nevada may be next on the list. With the loss of Utah, the Mountain West may have a tougher sell for a BCS inclusion. However, the formation of 5 'mega-conferences' may be beneficial. The Big East and Mountain West could form their own lose 'mega-conference', with the winner of each conference playing for an automatic BCS birth. (This would also provide a nice little bit of additional revenue, and help forestall demotion of the Big East.)
The Big-12 would have bigger conundrum. TCU would be an easy choice. However, with Texas Tech, Texas, and Texas A&M, the Dallas/Ft. Worth market is already covered. Thus TCU would not add any new markets. It would also create a mess with the south division. Another alternative would be to add TCU, SMU and Houston. This would revive the old Southwest Conference (minus Rice). This would allow for an all-Texas south division. Or alternatively, they could try to get Memphis (or even BYU.)

What should be the criteria for picking schools for a conference?
Some useful stats could be:
1) Home football and basketball stadium size and attendance. These are the big money earners for a conference. It would be best to have a team that could hold their own here.
2) Director's Cup Standings. This is an indication of the breadth of the overall athletic program. The Pac-10, always ranks high here. Having a team that fields teams in a large number of sports helps to keep all things viable.
3) Football and basketball rankings. A team that has good postseason runs to add the the conference coffers would be ideal.
4) Us News Ranking. Though there are a million gripes about these rankings, it does put an easy number on the quality of academics at a school. Most of the Pac-10 schools rank high here, so a similar academic heavyweight would be desired.
5) Non-overlapping TV Market size. This is a little more tricky. You can look at the local area and assume that a lot of the locals would be fans of the team. However, you also have to look at where the aluni and other fans are. For example, there are probably more Texas grads in Ft. Worth than TCU grads, thus there is little new market added with Texas and TCU in the same conference.
6) Culture, Synergies, rivalries and other intangibles. TCU could probably sell a lot more tickets to games vs. A&M and Texas than New Mexico and UNLV. BYU's conservative culture may clash with the liberal Pac-10 culture. The Pac-10 has schools in twos, thus adding BYU and Utah may be a logical fit.

Data: Singular or Plural

The data indicates we have a problem. The data are bad.
What is it? Is data singular or plural?
Going strictly by the latin roots, data is the plural of datum.
However, roots only get you so far. After all, "peas" is supposed to be the singular. However, since peas just sounded like a plural, a singular "pea" was manufactured.
Similarly, to non-scientist types, "the data is bad" sounds better than "the data are bad."
To a scientist, however, data really are a collection of individual data points. A single "datum" could be identified and checked for accuracy.
For a lay-person, however, the individual datum is long since lost in a layer of abstraction. The "data" is now a collection of abstract information, similar to the atmosphere. Sure, the atmosphere is a collection of individual molecules; but, it is a noun referring to the collection, not to individual molecules. Similarly, in common usage "data" has become an abstract collective. Thus, "the data is" becomes a correct way of referring to the abstract collective. The "data are" will slowly find itself limited to the area of scientific jargon.

Bait and Switch

While reading Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch, my immediate thoughts were "wow this sounds like something fun to do." She creates a new persona and tries to land a new career with this new "person". Then she goes on to really botch things up and pontificate on her beliefs. Her methods of searching for jobs seems to be to pay people money and fly all over the country.
I guess if that seems fun, go for it.
In this world, however, there seem to be a lot of depressed people, and not much in the order of real jobs. But, hey, she wasn't really looking for a job. She was looking for a way to "infiltrate" the white color world and report on how evil it is.
Unfortunately, her failure to actually land a job make it more of an exposé of the "job transitions" industry. (Perhaps people really were able to pick up that she was only doing this "artificially", and become more willing to take her money without bringing results.)
The further attacks on the corporate world, alas, seem very forced. Instead of going in to the 'experiment' with an open mind, she seems to start with notions of how corporations are destroying America, and then proceeds to interpret her failings as support of that view. These arguments distract from would otherwise be a funny story of somebody bumbling through an artificial high-cost, low-result "job hunt."

grouprecipes.com

Last night, I had a hankering for coffee cake that used sour cream, nutmeg and pecans. So I googled the ingredients and started filtering through a bunch of junk to find a good recipe.
"Wouldn't it be nice to have a site where you could just enter some ingredients and get some good recipes?" Sometimes I just have some things I want to cook, and really want to try some new way of putting them together. Other times, its a particular flavor that I'm in the mood for.
Well, it turns out, in the search results, I found a list from Group Recipes. The URL listed a bunch of different spices, so my curiosity was piqued. Either this was a spam site, or it might be what I'm interested in. I went to the site and found it really was the real deal.
The search engine lets you type in a list of ingredients you want to use, or a list of flavors, and shoots back with recipes. Its great for cases of "What do I do with this?"

And some more books (Nickel and Dimed, The Great Bridge, Lord of the Flies, Crucial Conversations)

Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel and Dimed: (2001) A well-off, highly educated writer attempts to 'live with the lower classes' to see how things really are. However, her effort comes across as somewhat half-hearted. Her insights seem to show more of the middle-class snobbery than anything else. While attempting to live the life of a lower-class service worker she looks down at the "wealthy" people she is working for, while also looking down at the "poor" people she is working with. One interesting is the disparity in drug policy. In her 'upper middle class' life, her Marijuana usage is no big deal, and doesn't impact her ability to work. However, in her 'lower class' life, the fear of marijuana detection cause her to turn down 'good' jobs.

David McCullough - The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1972) : I listened to an abridged audiobook that, rather unfortunately, turned this book in to a biography of the Roeblings. The audiobook was 'nice enough' to provide brief summaries of the missing chapters, so I knew I was missing what sounded like good discussion of the actual building of the bridge.

Golding - Lord of the Flies (1954): When boys are alone, things start out alright, but then gradually drift in to savagery. Would somebody be tried for murder when they returned to civilization? Or would there be a big civil law suit? There would probably be plenty of rationale for just acting out in the harsh conditions. However, how would you rationalize other people not being "as bad"? What would have happened if they were not "rescued" at just the right time?

Patterson, et. al. - Crucial Conversations (2001): Turn brain on at the precise moments when brain wants to go off to "fight". Remember the big goals, not short term "win" in a conversation.

(More details of these below at updated post due to tag limit)

Russell Shorto - Descartes' Bones: The odd history of Descartes' bones show some of the prejudices of the "religion" of rational thought. This is filled with irony. Descartes was religious, yet is treated as the father of a (primarily atheist) rationalism. His bones become a "relic" for those against the church. He sought to find the means to overcome death, yet died in middle age. This book contains plenty of interesting tidbits on the philosopher and his followers and philosophy. However, the main point is the trail of his bones and how they relate to societal sentiments.

Stephen Mitchell - Gilgamesh, a new English version: This is really graphic. It does have similarities to the "Joseph" and "Noah" stories from the Bible. Are they both referring to the same previous event?

Barbara Kingsolver - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: local eating. Properly raised domestic animals do have a place in the food chain. (They can convert non-human-edible plants in to human food. They have also been adapted to live with humans, and wouldn't do very well in the wild.) This provides a very balanced approach to environmentally sustainable food habits, with an emphasis on local and organic to decrease energy consumption, and even eat with a lower cost. The narrative provides an example of "mostly" local eating for a year. It does require hard work in the yard. However, good food plus hard work is exactly what the doctor ordered...

Thomas Aquinas: Interesting rational religious philosophy

iPod touch Part II

Apple released a new version of iTunes that supposedly had fixes to a Smart Playlist problem. Unfortunately, this still seems to be an issue with my Smart Playlists on the iPod touch.

Luckily, I discovered a few additional "tricks"
1) The audiobook display keeps the tracks in the proper order, and indicates which track has been 'partially listened'. As long as you let a couple seconds of a track play, it is easy to find.

2) After hitting the home button on the ipod touch, you can hit it again twice to keep a pause, forward, backward and volume control to appear. (Unfortunately, no "back up 30 seconds.)

Now if they could just have an easy way to sync PDFs and run Flash...

No TV

A San Francisco Chronicle blog has a post about a family without a TV. They seem somewhat similar to us. Yes, we still watch some DVDs and occasionally stream videos. However, not having a large device pushing content does make a big difference. You don't pass a big screen in the living room and suddenly have the urge to push the remote through 100 channels of shows you don't want to watch. Tivo might let you record programs - but even there, you plan a bunch of things to watch and end up being drawn in to them when you are by a TV.
Yes, we do find ourselves drawn to the laptop, mindlessly checking email, news or sports scores. In some ways this can be worse, since it is individual rather than group. However, the individual nature also makes it short lived. Others beg attention, and then you are off.

Time Dimensional Maps

Maps are very good at showing a given place at a given time. Modern interactive maps allow easy exploration of two or three dimensions of the "snapshot". However, they don't do a very good job of showing time.

I would like to be able to visualize my ancestors and how they interacted and participated in historical events. A few issues come up with this:
1) How do you find the places?
Modern map companies do a great job of geocoding almost any address to its appropriate latitude and longitude. Past addresses are much more of a challenge. Using a database of modern names can probably get a lot of places (Boston is still Boston.) However, other place names have changed (where is Prussia?) Or even more confusing, some names may refer to something different today.
Some of this is somewhat mitigated by lack of detailed data as you travel back in history. (You may just have a county or even just a country.)
Some other data exists with Township/Section/Range descriptions. This could theoretically be converted to map locations, but takes a little work.
2) How do you represent time on a map?
You could color code different points to represent different time periods (years, decades, centuries or whatever is appropriate.) This allows for visualizing 'neighbors' in time, and associating them with events. (The person living in Boston in the 17th century probably didn't participate in the American Revolution...)
Another possibility is tracks. You could display the movement of individual people across time. With ancestry, there is also a clear linkage. This could provide a picture of migration.
With all of these approaches, the data representation could change as zoom level is changed, thus giving it an uncluttered approach.

With any approach, an important part is ease of use. Importing gedcom files would be a bare minimum approach. It could also be interesting to parse census data to show specific household migration (though this would be much more involved.) Getting township/section/range data on the map should also be automatic. A public location repository would also be useful. (Once you figure out where a location is in 1650, others should be able to use it.)

California Paid Family Leave and the IRS

A few years ago, the IRS ruled that California paid Family Leave was taxable. They reasoned that it was some form of unemployment compensation, and thus should be taxed.
For the 2009 tax year, the first $2400 of unemployment compensation is tax free. Does this mean that the first $2400 of paid family leave is also tax free?
Haha! That would be wishful thinking. Nice loopholes only apply in the land of the big bucks. I'm sure there will be a nifty IRS ruling saying something like "well, the law exempting the first $2400 was strictly written, and since this is not real unemployment compensation, it doesn't count."
This is somewhat similar to the logic differentiating State Disability Insurance (SDI) from Voluntary Disability Insurance (VDI). The state administers SDI and requires everyone to pay. However, some employers use VDI instead. The benefits of VDI must be equal to SDI and both must take in enough revenue to cover expenses. The main difference is that VDI is locally administrated, and thus can be better correlated with the employer's system.
Oh, and you can deduct SDI from your taxes.
Even though both are substantially identical, VDI cannot be deducted from your federal taxes, while SDI can.

iPod touch

I've had a 1st generation iPod touch for almost two years, so I guess its time to write about it. I'm not sure I would have chosen to buy it on my own. However, how was I to resist when I won it? (I actually had the choice between an iPhone and a touch. Since the iPhone would set me back at least $1440 in monthly costs, I opted for the touch.)

How is it? Well, as an mp3 player, it gets mediocre marks. Trying to quickly pause it can be a pain. First you have to push a button, then move your hand across a slider, and then locate the pause button. The last part can actually be a challenge. One 'feature' of the touch is the ability to 'rotate' the screen. On the music player, the rotated displays have different sets of options in different positions. Thus, the pause control will be in a different place depending on the rotation. Unfortunately, it is not all that great at identifying which way it is rotated. (Sometimes I have to shake it around to get it to really recognize the display.) Thus, pausing can be a challenge.

The other issue with the touch screen is that it requires human skin. Thus, in addition to the three step pause process, you also need to bear some skin. Even in Cupertino, people occasionally wear gloves. On the bright side, I have a glove with a hole in the finger that has suddenly found a new use with the iPod. I've also even been successful at using my nose.

The iPhone OS 3.0 brings in two new issues to the iPod touch as an MP3 player. The first general issue is that it has to spend time "rebuilding the library" after every time you add new songs. This can take in excess of 10 minutes, and seems to stop if you hit the 'screen off' button at the top of the iPod. Just when you get in the mood to listen to some tunes or audiobooks, it hits you with that. Ugghh.

The other new annoyance is the 'unsorting' of smart playlists. Regardless of what steps you go through, it will display the contents of automatically updating smart playlist in a random order. I like to listen to audiobooks that I set up as smart playlists. The major advantage of the smart playlists (before theupgrade) was that old tracks would go off the list after they were played, and I could easily go to the last track I was on, even if I listened to something else in between. With the upgrade, the smart playlists are in random order. You can go to a secondary 'album' display and see the playlist in the correct order. However, you have to make sure it is playing here, otherwise, you may get some random surprises. Also, the secondary display does not 'drop' tracks that have been played, so it can be a challenge to find where you left off. (There is one nice new feature in the 3.0 OS in that it remembers what you were listening to after syncing.)

These issues made me really wonder why I bothered to upgrade, especially since Apple likes to charge for the upgrades. However, on the bright side, the iPod does not seem to crash anymore. (I seemed to be getting ever-increasing 'reboots' with the previous 1.x OS.) Also, Apple gradually had been reducing the price of the upgrades, with the 3.x upgrade going for only $5. Since I had $9 left on an iTunes gift card, I thought I'd give it a shot, in hopes of reducing crashes (and getting apps.) The upgrade had its own issues, some of which I've described in my
adventures in extracting notes.db backups.

Music-wise, the one additional feature with the 3.X OS is the ability to quickly create 'on-the-fly' genius mixes from a given song. This can sometimes come in handy when you are in the mood for a certain musical fix, but haven't created a playlist for it.

What about as a PDA? Well, the iPod touch does have wireless access. The mail application is good (and even allows downloading yahoo mail.) The Safari web browser allows surfing regular web sites - as long as they don't use flash. Some youtube videos can also be watched through a tool. A big problem is the lack of a flash plugin. Apple seems to be against it, so it probably wont happen soon. Typing is not that bad, but not that great. It would be nice if you could use a stylus. However, you can get a pretty decent 'blackberry' like thumbing on the touch screen. Wifi does seem to be a bigger drain on batteries, so I often turn it off if I don't need it.

Apps? There are a huge number of apps in the app store. However, finding worthwhile ones can be a challenge. I've found some language study and ebook applications that are worthwhile. However, I tend to use the 'notes' application for jotting down notes more often than other applications. Many of the apps I've found would clearly go in the 'junk' category.

Video watching is ok. However, it really only works for shorts. (It gets annoying holding up a small screen with headphones for long shows.) Video also seems to drain the battery fairly fast.

Battery-life in general is quite good. Even after nearly two years it seems to work fairly well.

Overall, its a halfway-decent mp3 player combined with a halfway-decent PDA.

Foreigners running the city

Jim Griffith has created a nice page to gather feedback from Sunnyvale "study issues" at http://www.dweeb.org/2010studyissues.html. His quick capsules are much more readable than the official city site, which is nothing more than a bunch of links to pdf files. And these are not even searchable PDFs, but simply scanned images. (The 'copyright 2003-2005' at the bottom of the page is an indicator as to how much attention is placed on the city web site. So much for being at the center of technology.)

Sunnyvale has an entrenched 'professional' staff. Some live in the city, but many live far away. Some city employees even intentionally seek out housing outside the city to avoid a potential "conflict of interest". Unfortunately, this also reduces the "shared interests" of actual residents of a city. Thus we end up with cases like the staff recommendations on study issues. Some examples:

Out of 17 public works study issues, staff was in favor of 2, "plastic bag ban" and "guided bicycle routes through neighborhoods". The city bicycle/pedestrian commission ranked 6 study issues as worthwhile. The bike routes did not make the cut. While rejecting or ignoring the preferred plans of the BPAC, staff is more than happy to favor devoting 120 hours for guided neighborhood bicycle routes. This is just three weeks work, and does actually provide some benefit (if implemented), so it is not all that bad.
The plastic bag ban is bad. It was encouraged by the county government association. Staff estimate it will take 510 staff hours for this study issue. Why there may be plenty of arguments for and against a bag ban, spending time studying it now is mere waste. San Jose is in the midst of preparing an EIR on a bag-ban ordinance that is set to start in 2011 at the earliest. Palo Alto and other bay area cities already have bans. Why spend time rushing and studying? Sunnyvale is clearly not the innovator in this issue. Trying to spend so much time "studying" it will either replicate other work, or lead to another 'different' ordinance. If you are going to be a follower, do it right. Or better yet, just wait. With a number of bay area cities already enacting bans, chain retailers will likely just follow the same policies through the region. This gives Sunnyvale the benefits with almost no cost.

While staff is interested in spending hours pioneering for plastic bags, they have no interest in pioneering for livability. With many of the BPAC requests, the response is "oh, we follow some standards. We don't see any point in making them better." One study issue simply asks staff to share its criteria with the BPAC. Staff rejected it, saying they planned on sharing. (I think the point was that they had not. Otherwise, the BPAC would not have need of a study issue.)

Staff also believes that Sunnyvale of today is exactly the same as Sunnyvale of 12 years ago. (They reject an issue to improve the Homestead bike lane because it had been studied before in 1998, back when some of those Homestead High students now using it were still in diapers.)

A few recent books: Crude World, The Google Story, AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, Misquoting Jesus, The Kite Rider, My Life as a 10 year old Boy, Europe's Last Summer, Red Mutiny, The End of Poverty Economics, Harry Potter

Maass - Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil. (2009) Good analysis of the the negative impacts of oil production in the world. How did the US avoid the "oil curse"? Perhaps they just got a very different version of it in the form of suburbia.
Vise - The Google Story (2005). A history of Google, without much content. Some of the anecdotes from "Google users" seem funny. (What next, a history of Xerox, with interviews with xerox users?)
Bernstein - Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World.(2008) Great world history book from the viewpoint of trade. It is interesting to see Venice actually take its place as an important player in world history. The Arabs actually get a big chunk of the coverage earlier in the book, for they were the ones that were doing most of the international trading.
Tom McNichol - AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War. (2006) The author wants to display electricty as a brutal standards war, but seems to build things up more than his facts justify. The experiments down by Brown, however do seem to justify the "savage" title. Now I'm interested in reading more about Edison and Tesla. What would have happened if the car started was not invented? Would we have had battery cars and dense cities instead of suburbia?
Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus. (2005) An introduction to "Textual Criticism" for analyzing ancient texts. It seemed a lot like a lecture at Stanford. Hmm.. Same author, same title. I get it now. Anyway, it has some interesting bits on the ancient history of the New Testament and how it has been passed won through the ages. However, the primary focus is on explaining how researches look at texts rather than explaining details.
McCaughrean - The Kite Rider. (2001) This is a fairly entertaining novel with a bunch of modern people hanging out with Kublai Khan. Alright, they are all supposed to be leaving a thousand years ago, but they seem more like modern characters with a few tidbits of ancient China thrown in. Luckily, that does not district too much from an entertaining novel.
Nancy Cartwright - My Life as a 10 year old Boy. (2000) The voice of Bart Simpson. Light reading.
Fromkim - Europe's Last Summer. (2004) So it may have been a little more than the funny that Started World War I. The author shows a bureaucratic Austria-Hungary that was itching for any excuse to attack Serbia, along with a Germany that was looking for any excuse to attack France. And what do they end up with? A war with Russia.
Neal Bascomb - Red Mutiny. (2007) A compelling history of the Battleship Potemkin. Brings about a few "What Ifs?" that could have significantly changed Russian History.
Sachs - The End of Poverty Economics. (2005)  He is gung-ho on using foreign aid to bootstrap 3rd world countries in to the modern age. However, is it a wise move to saddle them with the 1st world's problems as well?

Rowling - Harry Potter.(1997-2007)  The first few books are fast paced adventures. The middle books bog down and could really use some editing. Then the last two books get back on track again.

Gift Cards Are Evil

Gift cards are great for retailers. However, they are lousy for gift recipients.

When you give a gift, you can spend time buying or creating a gift that you think somebody will enjoy. With gifts, the value cash value is typically hidden. An alternate is to give cash. This approach gives the giftee flexibility to purchase what they desire. However, it also gives them the burden of shopping to obtain the gift. It also puts the value out front. The receiver of the gift is free to buy what they choose, or simply use the money for everyday purchases.

Then there is the third way. Gift Cards. This combines the worst of both types of gifts. Like a cash gift, it says "I didn't want to pick something for you, so I'll just give you money to buy something yourself." However, as with a gift, it locks somebody in to something particular. (In this case, a specific store, or even a specific card.) A gift card is also something else for somebody to keep track of.

The perceived advantage of a gift card is that it "shows" some thought by picking somebody's favorite store, while letting them buy what they want. However, if this is the desire, why not actually buy something at the store and give a gift receipt? If the store has a good return policy, they an return it and get the item of their choice (or even cash). If they actually like what they received, then you have saved them the effort of buying something themselves. If they don't like it, they end up making the same trip they would have made anyway. [ok, online is different - but many places also allow easy online returns.]

There are also the negative aspects of gift cards themselves. Some gift cards have fees and expiration dates. Luckily, these are becoming more rare. Gift cards also have amounts that rarely exactly match actual costs of goods. Thus, a recipient maximizing value is often stuck forking over some of their own money or leaving money on the card (unless they get close enough to the value.) Gift cards require recipients to actually keep track of the card and keep it with them when they shop. Even 'credit card' gift cards have to be kept track of. What good does a wallet full of gift cards do?

College Admissions Selectivity Challenge

A Stanford professor determined that, despite perceptions, US colleges are actually much less selective now than they were 50 years ago. The evidence given includes a rise in 'college opportunities' that significantly exceeds the number of high school graduates. However, the top 10% of universities are acknowledged to be much more selective.

What does it mean?

Not much.

A few hundred years ago, a degree from Harvard was probably about as valuable as it is today. Back then, it indicated you were one of the few that actually had a college education (in a day when even a high school education was rare.) Today, the degree indicates you were able to attend one of the most selective colleges in the nation. Having the equivalent of an associates degree in 1810 would have been quite an accomplishment. Today, it might be the difference between upper lower class and lower middle class.

An explosion of post high school opportunities simply means that more education has become a 'requirement' for gainful employment. A few hundred years ago, an illiterate farmer could be 'middle class'. Fifty years ago, you would need at least a high school diploma. Now, some college level education is all but required.

So, yes, you could argue that it is much easier to access a college education now than it was 50 years ago. But, that is comparing apples to oranges. A more appropriate comparison would be between a high school education 50 years ago and a college education today. After all, both could get you to the 'median income'.

Another flaw comes in attempting to compare selectivity of colleges over a large time frame. A large University may have been a small junior college 50 years ago. Is there any relevance in comparing admissions across two totally different institutions?

Today, the most selective colleges tend to produce the highest paid and most influential graduates. The increasing selectivity is thus a significant concern. Arbitrary decisions by an admissions office could have significant impact on students' futures. Looking at overall access to education is of little use without looking at the value of this education.

Stanford Daily Article:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1037005

Grading the Mountain West and WAC bowls

In its bowl games, the Mountain West made a strong case for the conference depth, with the fourth and fifth place teams etching out impressive victories over quality teams. BYU and Utah proved they could handle the Pac-10 just fine. The winning streak, alas, came to an end when TCU lost to Boise State. However, the 4-1 record is one of the best of any conferences.
The WAC, on the other hand, would be best off sticking to the state of Idaho. Both Idaho and Boise State had nice victories, almost compensating for the ugly losses by Nevada and Fresno State.

Wyoming: A+ (35-28 vs. Fresno State )
Fresno State: D-
An overtime thriller by a 5th place Mountain West team - a team that barely squeaked in to a bowl game. Fresno State is a quality team that almost always has a winning season in spite of one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country. Wyoming? During the regular season, they were outscored 193-327. The only team with a winning record they beat was 7-5 Weber State (a I-AA team). This is the type of team you'd expect to be happy to get blown away at a bowl game. Instead, they manage to fight out a win. This is perhaps the best statement for depth that the Mountain West can make.

Air Force: A+ (47-20 vs. Houston) Houston has 10 wins, including victories over three BCS conference teams. Houston's victories were not over cupcakes: four of the teams they beat were playing in bowls. The three loses were all close. Air Force had only managed to beat one bowl team (Wyoming). Houston and Air Force had met two times last season (including the Armed Forces bowl last season.) Both teams were familiar with each other and familiar with the bowl. It seemed that Houston would have cake walk. Instead, Air Force blew them away. The Mountain West has four power teams.

BYU: A (44-20 vs. Oregon State) Perhaps BYU should sell Las Vegas bowl tickets as part of the season ticket package. It seems that no matter where they finish in the conference, they end up in Vegas. Oregon State was probably disappointed to miss out on the rose bowl and a little unfamiliar with Vegas in December. However, that is not an excuse for getting blown away. BYU showed that it is a power school.

Utah: A (37-27 vs Cal) Due to television-induced scheduling weirdness, Cal played Washington the week after the "Big Game" with Stanford. Thus they followed up a great rivalry victory with an ugly loss. Utah also ended the season with a rivalry loss. After last season's Sugar Bowl victory, Utah had high hopes, until the early season loss to Oregon smashed them. After starting out strong this season, Cal also had high hopes - until an early season loss to Oregon smashed them. In the end Utah was able to stay a little more focused and continue their nine game bowl victory streak (tying them with USC for most in a row)

Boise State: B+ (17-10)
TCU: C
Neither team looked great on the big stage. Boise State now matched Utah's two wins in BCS bowls. TCU goes home with yet another "might have been" season. It's unfortunate that they didn't get a chance to take on Florida and Cincinnati. I guess the powers that be figured Boise State would be the best way to stop the Mountain West bowl streak. These were two closely matched teams, with a close score,so it is hard to penalize either too much. However, TCU was the strong favorite. Perhaps this will be the impetus to add Boise to the Mountain West. The Fiesta bowl may also think twice about inviting two non-BCS schools.

Idaho (43-32 vs. Bowling Green): A. Coming from the dregs of the WAC to pull off their second bowl win ever. Perhaps the Pac-10 will invite Idaho back. Well, at least the on-off rivalry with Washington State will no longer look like a high school game. This looked like the feel-good season turn around bowl victory - until it was eclipsed by another game involving a WAC team.

Nevada (10-45 vs SMU): F. Nevada was supposed to be a good team. SMU managed a great turn-around, going from two victories in the last two seasons to a bowl game this season. However, they also managed to lose to Washington State. Nobody loses to Washington State. But, they managed to bask in the sun in Hawaii. Perhaps the Hawaii band-members that Nevada recruited were really June Jones turncoats. Or maybe we can just blame injuries. Regardless of the blame, Nevada simply embarrassed itself.

Grading the Pac-10 bowl performances.

The Pac-10 had a great regular season, but then managed to stink it up during the bowl season. This is not the type of grade to be repeated.

UCLA: A. (30-21 vs. Temple) The Pac-10 was arguable one of the top two BCS conferences during the regular season. Temple finished second in their division in the non-BCS Conference USA and hasn't been to a bowl in 30 years. How can this be the best win of the PAC-10? Well, UCLA hasn't been to a bowl in a few years. And they were playing in a cold east coast stadium, just down the road from Temple. But most important of all, UCLA won.

USC: B. (24-13 vs. Boston College) USC won a bowl game. Yep, they did. They played in California, and beat some team that traveled a few thousand miles to get there. The difference was that they played an ACC team in San Francisco instead of a Big-10 in Pasadena. They didn't look great, but a win is a win.

Stanford: C (27-31 vs. Oklahoma) Stanford kept it close. Unfortunately, Stanford hasn't exactly been good in close games. Other than Notre Dame, all games decided by less than a touchdown ended up loses for the Cardinal. Oklahoma and Stanford were both missing their star quarterbacks. However, Oklahoma had at least had a season to deal with it. Stanford has just had the past few weeks to adapt to the replacement. Would Luck have allowed them to score an extra touchdown? Probably.

California: C- (27-37 vs. Utah) Cal has been hit or miss all season. (And as pretty during the entire Tedford era.) Utah was ranked higher, but they have beaten pretty much nobody. Both teams lost to Oregon. Both are coming of nasty loses to end the season. (Though Cal did manage to win the rivalry Big Game in the penultimate game.) It looked like the 'good Cal' was there during the first quarter. Unfortunately, the Bad Cal showed up for the rest of the game.

Oregon State: D (20-44 vs. BYU) Both teams were in the top-20. BYU was one spot ahead of OSU. However, OSU was, for some reason, favored to win. Perhaps oddsmakers did not realize that BYU has played in the Las Vegas bowl for the last five seasons, and thus has a little experience dealing with the horrid late December weather in Las Vegas. Perhaps they didn't realize that OSU would be coming off a downer after missing out on the Rose bowl by less than a touchdown. Regardless, Oregon State looked bad in the loss.

Arizona: F (0-33 vs. Nebraska). Nebraska was ranked a couple of spots higher. That should imply a close game, not a blowout. Unfortunately, it seemed as if Arizona simply forgot to show up. The Nebraska offense only scored more points against the likes of Arkansas State, Louisiana -Lafayette and Florida Atlantic. Even three-win Colorado managed a much closer game. Maybe San Diego was a little too exciting for the Wildcats.

Oregon: F (17-26 vs. Ohio State). The Big 10 always loses the Rose Bowl. Ohio State always loses its bowl games. Oregon and Ohio State had two common opponents. Oregon beat Purdue by two and USC by 27. Ohio State lost to Purdue by eight and USC by three. Both teams had not been to the Rose Bowl in a while, but playing in BSC bowls is routine for Ohio State, while Oregon is much more hungry for a big bowl. All signs should point to an easy Oregon win. They deserve in F for the faceplant on the big stage.