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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, May 06, 2006
I Confess: I Have a Map Addiction--Please Help Me! Note: I've deleted some maps that have sold, and added more. I keep updating this list because I keep selling these maps! I'm updating right now at 3:15 PM Mountain time. But at least it just wastes closet space, instead of causing me to crash cars into security barriers in DC. If you are similarly cursed with the map addiction, you will know why I have perhaps a hundred National Geographic maps--in some cases, multiple copies of them. It is time to get rid of them--but I could not more throw them away than take a bunch of mewing kittens to the pound. I just wouldn't feel right about it! Some of these maps date from the 1930s--and are in shockingly good condition. You can see the quality and weight of the paper that National Geographic used for these maps until the 1960s, when they definitely become flimsier, and wear more quickly. The maps from the 1960s onward use brighter colors (or have they just not faded?), but there's a romance to the style of the early National Geographic maps that makes me think of Indiana Jones, trans-Pacific seaplanes, and railroad trains in exotic places. I have been going through this enormous collection, and I suspect that if you are as much of a map addict as I am, you will want some of these maps--fine pieces of the mapmaker's art that are both interesting and decorative. I will be providing a list of maps over the next few weeks, as I enter them into my database. I'm not trying to make a lot of money; any map is $3, including postage in the U.S. A few of the maps look like they fell out the latest issue of National Geographic, a few more have obviously been folded (and misfolded), but are otherwise in good shape. If there are fold holes (where two fold lines cross and there is a hole), fold tears (where the tear is along a fold line), or there are markings on the face of the map, I have identified them below. In a few cases, the paper is a little darker than original, but unless otherwise identified, they aren't dirty or stained. See updated list here. Friday, May 05, 2006
House Project: The Concrete Problems; The Aching Beauty I've mentioned the concrete problems that we have been having, and I am going to give you some pictures, but first, let me tell you some good news. The problem with the pressurization tank squirting water on the garage floor (typically a bit less than a gallon a day) seems to have gone away. It has remained continent for a week now. Richard the Water Boy indicated that the heat from the water heater (which I had set up to scalding) was causing water in the pressurization pump to overheat, and force its way out the relief valve. This is actually plausible to me; the water heater isn't that far away, and with limited use of the hot water, i can see how heat from it would conduct through the pipes to the pressurization pump. Now, for the concrete. Instead of having boring gray concrete sidewalks and driveway aprons, we decided to have the Brickform stamping system used with what the brochure calls "ColorTech Quality Concrete Color Technologies." (Brand names included to make sure that you are aware of what didn't work for me, and may not work for you.) I mentioned both the problem of the repour coming out gray, not "amber rose," and that the coating that they concrete guy applied came out inconsistent and very dark--closer to nut brown. Unlike the other pictures on this sight, I've cut these down to pretty small size, and I skipped the thumbnails. These pictures aren't that big because, to be honest, they don't need to be big to see the problems, and they aren't beautiful pictures. (There are some beautiful pictures later in this post; be patient.) You can see the inconsistency of the finish, and that in some spots it is dull, but the right color, and shiny but dark in others. In other pictures, you can see paint and gray concrete droppings that they didn't bother to remove before applying the finish.           Here you can see where they patched cracks in the concrete with a gray material--which looks horrible.   You can also see the problems with the stamping process. The theory is that the concrete guys stamp a pattern into the concrete when it is still wet. It adds visual interest to it, and makes it a bit less slippery when wet. Unfortunately, concrete has a limited lifetime after they mix it, and apparently the concrete guy failed to appreciate that in the time it took to drive to the building site, that much of it would no longer be stampable. In some places, it came out as it was supposed to, with both lines in the concrete, and real relief. In other places, the pattern is there, but barely, and there is no significant relief.   There are also just inexplicable patches of gray.  Here's a place where you can see a piece of the repour, and the concrete that they replaced. The gray stuff supposedly had the coloring agent added to it, but I sure don't see any sign of it. The concrete guy has decided that he is not going to do anything more to solve this problem.  Next time, I'll just have gray concrete poured instead. We spent $3000+ extra for this stamped color concrete, and it was just money poured down a rathole. Okay, enough whining. On to pictures that show the aching beauty of the place. The wild flowers are starting to bloom; here's one why wife picked on the back part of the property.  Click to enlarge Here's the view from the back porch, looking down into Horseshoe Bend. Spring has arrived!  Click to enlarge Here's a zoom into where the Payette River enters town.  Click to enlarge Here are a few of our neighbors. We call this house, "Abraham Lincoln wins the lottery." It is 14,000 square feet. The owner works for the post office. (There better be a big inheritance somewhere in that story, or I will be worried.)  Click to enlarge Right down the hill from us is a property where the owner abandoned plans to build a house because of a divorce. There is a motor home parked there on a permanent basis, and quite a bit of...let's be polite...stuff. Supposedly he sold it late last year, but it still has enough stuff present that we call it Hooterville, after the town in the series Green Acres. We're cutting him some slack on the state of things; a divorce must be a profoundly wrenching experience.  Click to enlarge I don't know much about this family down the hill, just that they have two little boys and more recreational vehicles than I can count. We briefly considered buying the white house when it was going into foreclosure last year. We could have bought it for $189,000, but it was just too small, and I think we ended up with a superior view and much superior home.  Click to enlarge This house was one of the first built in this subdivision, back when it was called Solar City, because it had no electric power. The south face of the house has enormous windows which used to have photovoltatic cells in them. When the original builder left the area, he took the panels with him.  Click to enlarge This is a very interesting house--something of a catalog of things not to do. It is clearly inspired by a New Mexico house called "Sun Cave," which was one of the early attempts to build an entirely solar house. Unfortunately, lots of details suggest to me that someone didn't adjust design features for our latitude. It does have a lot of big windows on the southern exposure, and it makes extensive use of ground piled around the north side of the house to reduce temperature loss--but it also means that the best view possible from the lot is a solid wall. It has a four car garage, with RV sized doors. But the interior is built of tires, dirt, and chickenwire. It is amazingly ugly. Even more silly in this climate is that there is no direct access to the house from the garage. The house is about 2000 square feet, but it is only a one-bedroom. It is a huge one-bedroom, but the net effect suggests an indulgent bachelor with gobs of money. When we looked at it last year, it was ten years old--and the roof was already leaking. It was offered at $210,000, but went into foreclosure. I'm very glad we didn't buy it. It had three wells go dry over a period of about seven years, and except for my stepping in and pointing out that drilling a fourth well within a hundred feet of the other three didn't make sense, they were about to drill a fourth well that was likely to go dry. (I had them drill at the boundary between the basalt and the sandstone--nice well at 180 feet.)  Click to enlarge We call this log cabin house. It is about 2400 square feet, but it had been unoccupied for at least a year until a family moved in last month. Leaving a house empty up here is a mistake; rats get in, and pretty soon, it was a pigsty. (A ratsty?) It wasn't a bad house, but it was built on a small lot with no particular view. On the other hand, it has a 400 gallon per minute well, which feeds a couple of other houses.  Click to enlarge Almost lost in the trees is this rather unusual house currently owned by Chuck, who is the chief of police of a nearby town. It was apparently built by amateurs, and he tells me that there were some interesting struggles getting it to a useful state.  Click to enlarge This is a Guerdon manufactured home. We briefly considered having a very similar model installed on our property. I think, in retrospect, we made the right choice to have something site-built, but it would have been substantially cheaper.  Click to enlarge Last house project entry. Labels: house project One Of The Plus Sides Of Rising Interest Rates Is it too early to commit money to a long-term bond? At least with interest rates rising, money market fund interest rates no longer tempt you to put the money in your mattress, or in a shiny new sports car. One of my Federal Home Loan Bank Board bonds matured today, and I put the big wad of cash into the Schwab Value Advantage Fund (symbol SWVXX) whilst figuring out where to put it next. The current yield is 4.46%. Not great, but not anywhere near as disappointing as money market funds were a couple of years ago. Thursday, May 04, 2006
Differences in British & American Health I mentioned a couple of days ago a study that claimed that Americans were much less healthy than Britons, in spite of Americans spending about twice as much per capita on health care. That article claimed that cancer rates among white, non-Hispanic Americans 55-64 were almost twice that of Britons the same age--9.5% vs. 5.5%. One of my careful readers found that very hard to believe--and points to a study of cancer mortality rates by nation published in one of the American Cancer Society's journals showing that Americans had actually slightly lower cancer mortality rates than Britons as of 2002: The US rates were 152.6 per 100,000 for men, and 111.9 for women. The British rates were 162.3 per 100,000 men and 122.7 per 100,000 women. (The data is on pages 128-9.) Now, we aren't comparing apples to apples here. These rates are for all ages, and reflect death rates, not cancer rates--but it is hard to believe that Americans could have even close to twice the cancer rate of Britons, and yet a lower death rate. That means American health care is roughly twice as good as curing cancer, or that there is something bizarrel skewed about cancer mortality in Americans ages 55-64. Another area where the data isn't strictly comparable is that these are figures for all Americans, including blacks and Hispanics, and it is conceivable that white Americans are dramatically different from all Americans in their cance rates. But Table 10 of that study shows cancer death rates by race for Americans, and whites are very slghtly less likely to die of cancer than Americans of all races. (Whites are very slightly more likely to get cancer than Americans of all races--but slightly less likely to die of cancer.) As my astute reader observed: "I'm certain there are serious problems with this study, and we will hear about them in the next few weeks." Yeah, I'm certain, too. Transgendered Bathrooms Again I mentioned yesterday the "transgendered" crowd at Colorado University demanding more public restrooms for the horribly confused. I am impressed with the response from readers on this. Whole Wheat Blogger pointed me to an article by him in 2003 about this insanity at the University of Chicago: Members of Feminist Majority, Queers & Associates, and the Center for Gender Studies organized the panel as part of the Coalition for a Queer Safe Campus. "Going to the bathroom is a moment where definition is very important in choosing a door," said Mary Anne Case, one of the panelists.Whole Wheat Blogger went on to quote one of the participants in this conference about the lengths to which the "transgendered" will go--to go: Red Vaughan Tremmel, another panelist, said that she knew someone who was making a cross-country road-trip and bought an RV to avoid using public bathrooms. "At first, my reaction was, 'Oh wow, what a great idea,' but then I thought, 'Wow that's sad that someone would have to go to such lengths to feel comfortable,'" she said.There was a time when that sort of overreaction would be properly recognized as a serious emotional problem. Now, it is part of the homosexual movement--a group whose concerns and sensibilities are far more important to judges than those of the majority of Americans. What used to be mental illness is now a political movement--and a powerful one, at that. Oh yes, and then there's this piece of craziness from Britain: he Lord Chancellor is facing accusations of political correctness after banning the word “homosexual” from official documents in his department. Labels: homosexuality, transgender Reading Treasury Bond Yield Curves Is Like Reading Tea Leaves To Tell The Future But there's more money to made from reading yield curves, and I think there's a more valid scientific basis for it, too. What Is a Treasury Bond Yield Curve? A Treasury bond yield curve is a plot of bond maturity vs. yield--usually with bond maturity on the X-axis, and yield on the Y-axis. You can see the current Treasury bond yield curve here. Normal Yield Curves Rise To The Right Most of the time, the yield curve rises as you go from left to right. This is not surprising. When you buy a long-term bond, you are giving up a few things: 1. The ability to easily use that money for something else, either consumption (gee, the new Corvette sure is pretty) or investment (whee, I can buy stock in this new e-Commerce company--by 2004, the company will have $28 quadrillion a year in sales, and my 1000 shares of stock will allow me to buy the entire state of Rhode Island!) 2. If interest rates rise, the value of your bonds falls, and the farther out the maturity date on your bonds, the more the value of those bonds falls. The capital value of a bond due in two years won't be much affected by rising interest rates, because you only have two years left of the disappointing interest rate; a bond due in thirty years will lose a lot of its capital value, because thirty years of low returns relative to the new higher interest rates will make your bond unattractive to buyers. 3. Inflation is the enemy of all bond owners (with the exception of those who own bonds whose interest rate or capital value adjusts upward for inflation). If you buy two year bonds today for $1000, and suddenly we have two years of 8% inflation, your $1000 will be worth the equivalent of $857 when your bonds mature. But thirty years of 8% inflation will make your $1000 bonds worth practically nothing in thirty years. Buying long-term bonds is a statement of faith that the government won't let inflation get completely out of control. 4. This is mostly an issue with corporate bonds, but as maturity lengthens, the bond buyer must be increasingly concerned about whether the bond issuer will be able to not only make the interest payments twice a year, but be able to pay back the face value of the bond. With GM, Ford, and a few other companies, there is a small but not trivial risk that these companies are going to be either gone or a shadow of their former selves thirty years from now. With the U.S. government, I would consider that there is no danger of default. Of course, the election of Michael Moore as President, with Cindy Sheehan as Secretary of Defense, might change my certainty about this. These are the reasons that yield curves normally rise from left to right--that is, longer term bonds usually have higher yields. The reason is simple: a thirty year Treasury bond has higher risk of being devalued by runaway inflation than a two year bond, and rising interest rates have the potential to reduce the bond's capital value between now and when the bond matures. Yield Curve Inversion What is called yield curve inversion happens when the curve falls from left to right--meaning that long-term bonds have lower yields than short-term bonds. This happens when the majority of those who actually buy Treasury bonds conclude that: 1. The economy is about to go into a recession, and therefore, interest rates will fall. Existing bonds, which pay a fixed interest rate, will therefore become more valuable. If you are receiving 5% interest payments on an existing bond, and declining interest rates mean that new bonds only pay 4% interest per year, then the value of the income stream from your existing 5% bond goes up--and anyone that wants to buy bonds will need to pay you more to get it. Additionally, because a long-term bond guarantees to pay that suddenly nice high interest rate for many years into the future, the long-term bonds increase in value much more dramatically than the short-term bonds. The two year bonds that pay 5% per year when new bonds are paying 4% per year will have a 2% advantage (1% per year for two years) over new bonds. The thirty year bonds that pay 5% per year will have a 30% advantage (1% per year for thirty years) over new bonds. 2. Or, alternatively, if the big bond buyers think that interest rates are going to come down from some other reason, such as declining long-term government deficits, you will see the same result. Thus, when the people that buy bonds (either for themselves, or for a retirement fund) think that the economy is about to take a nosedive, with consequent falls in interest rates, they buy the longest maturity bonds that they can. All those bond buyers throwing money at what is, after all, a fixed existing supply of long-term bonds, drives up the prices of those bonds. What happens when the prices go up? By a little bit of magic, price and yield of bonds are inversely related. If a bond with a face value (the value it will pay when it matures) of $1000 pays a 5% coupon, that's $50 a year, or a 5% yield. If frenzied bond buyers drive up the price of the bond to $1100, it is still paying $50 a year in interest--but now that $50 a year is 4.54% yield. So, when you see the long-term bond yields drop, it is really saying that binging bond buyers bought bonds until the price went up, and brought down the yields. The low yields on long-term bonds are a result of expectations, not the cause of them. Lapping Waves Yield Curve Perhaps the experts have a term for the yield curve shape that we have been seeing for the last few days (and intermittently, the last few months). The long-term yields (30 year: 5.237%) are higher than the short-term yields (1 month: 4.593%)--but not by much, and the yield curve is not consistently rising from left to right.
As you can see, the yield rises until six month bonds, then falls for two year bonds, then rises very slowly to five year bonds, then resumes a slightly steeper rise out to thirty year bonds. If you look at a graph of this, there is a trough between six months and five years where yields are a bit lower than at either six months or five years. Lower yields mean the prices are high. High prices usually indicate either that buyers are bidding up prices--or there is some unusual shortage of bond sellers. Of course, the shortage of bond sellers may reflect that people who own these bonds expect them to become even more valuable in the future, and they are holding them off the market in anticipation of higher prices. Why would a bond buyer have a stronger lust for two year bonds than for bonds that are either shorter or longer maturity? Probably because the bond buyer expects when the two year bonds come due, interest rates will be even higher than they are now--call this P(2)--but that interest rates in five years P(5) will be the same or lower than P(2). In short, this curve suggests that the aggregate of bond buyers think that interest rates are still rising for another couple of years--but five years from now, they will be comparable to now. This is consistent with the Fed's frequently expressed concern that it isn't quite done raising interest rates, because the economy is still growing. Strategy What does this mean for you? My take on this is that if you are looking at taking out an adjustable rate mortgage, a 5/1 ARM (fixed for five years, then adjusting annually thereafter) probably makes more sense than a 3/1 ARM, because you are likely to get your adjustment when interest rates are still pretty high three years from now. (This yield curve doesn't give enough information to make a finer granulated guess.) It also suggests that if you have a lot of cash sitting around, looking for a fixed income investment, either buy a long-term bond, and don't look at its capital value for the next several years, or keep your money in bonds that mature in the next couple of years, so that you can reinvest in bonds when interest rates are even higher than now. Of course, it would only take one uranium bomb with Persian markings going off in Baltimore to change everything. I've Just Learned A New Word: Othercott Someone forwarded me this post from Church of the Masses, and I found this new word (at least, new to me) in it. The blogger is discussing The Da Vinci Code movie. It is a novel--and yet for a lot of people, it has become an historical textbook about the dark conspiracy by which the Catholic Church decided to hide the truth about Jesus. You don't have to be a Christian to be upset with Dan Brown's novel. Both History Channel and A&E (both quite secular) have run documentaries of late about the many historical accuracy problems with it--and that the claims upon which it is based are actually a con man's work. Still, Christians are upset because a lot of people who are easily misled have decided that Dan Brown has uncovered some shocking and amazing history. But what to do? Many churches are using the popular interest in the book and film to present a Christian perspective--and it helps that secular historians regard Dan Brown's book as garbage. Where was I? Oh yes, the blogger mentioned above introduced me to a new word: Don't go see this stupid movie. Don't pay money to have the insidious lies of the enemy introduced into your heart and mind.A "boycott" is a refusal to do business. An "othercott" is the conscious decision to go see some other movie that weekend. This will increase the box office for some other movie--thus depriving The Da Vinci Code of publicity--and it rewards the makers of the other movie you see for producing something more in line with what you want to see. A boycott is an entirely negative act; an othercott has a significant positive component--a way of saying, "I don't like this, but I do like that." Having To Start Up The Production Line Again I was filling a ScopeRoller order last night, and I was startled to find that I was out of the parts that I make for the Quick Release Toe Savers. Why this was startling was that just a couple of months ago, I made at least fifteen of these parts on the lathe and drill press, and I remember thinking, "Boy, that should last for a while!" Anyway, I started making more parts--and discovered that I only had enough 1.25" black Delrin rod to make three of them. Somehow, I am managing to find enough customers to make some money at this. The next challenge is stop making the Toe Savers from a cylinder of Delrin, a threaded stud, and some Krazy Glue, and start turning a single piece of aluminum with a threaded stud as an integral part. The biggest struggle is getting the die to turn onto the stud at an exact 90 degree angle. Footage of the May 1st Rallies You Didn't See On Television Nor are you going to see any of this footage, because it points out the disturbing leadership position of groups more radical than the Communist Party, USA. Is Yahoo A Criminal Enterprise? A few years back, I set up a Yahoo store called softtouchputters.com for my late father-in-law. It turns out to be a complete failure as a business, and within about 90 days, I closed the store and cancelled the domain. A year later, Yahoo automatically renewed the domain name softtouchputters.com, and charged my credit card. I called up and complained and at least I was able to get them to promise that they wouldn't renew it again. I was unable to get them to reverse the charges. Okay, at least I wouldn't get stuck for another year of domain renewal. Last year, I received an email saying that they were going to renew softtouchputters.com for another year. I called up and said, "Wait a minute. I thought we already went through this. I don't want that domain renewed. Ever. Don't charge my card." Now, today, I again receive an email from Yahoo: This is an automated notice. Replies sent to this address will not be answered.It turns out that there is no easy way to remove your credit card information from Yahoo's account database. You can replace it with another credit card, but you can't remove it. You also can't (as near as I could find) remove your Yahoo account. I just got off the phone with someone at Yahoo Customer Service would also could not remove my credit card information, or my account--and claims that there would be no automatic credit card charge made for renewing the domain name--contrary to what the email says. Now, I've read that there are "adult entertainment services" out there that, once they get your credit card, charge you monthly for access to their porn websites--and I also understand that more than a few fools who have provided these services with a credit card have found it very hard to get these credit card charges stopped. (Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas and never ending credit card charges.) These are criminal organizations--rather like Yahoo, it seems. "I Shot An Arrow Into the Air; It Came to Earth I Know Not Where" Let's be careful out there, okay? FORT WORTH, Texas -- A Texas bridesmaid was struck by a stray bullet while preparing for the bouquet toss at her best friend's wedding reception.A bullet fired into the air has energy in both the X and Y directions. By the time it comes back down to the ground, all the initial energy in the Z direction is expended; its Z direction energy is gravity alone (and often substantially reduced by wind drag on the bullet). But the energy in the X direction has not been reduced except by drag from the air, and that can be quite substantial a mile away. How Democrats Will Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory This Year I have been really upset about the Republican Party's seeming efforts to destroy themselves with their unwillingness to take action about our open borders, and the pork problems that too many Republicans think are going to save them--but as a liberal Democrat friend points out, the Democrats are in much worse shape: Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party's gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock's domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.Here's a clue for you, Mr. Yaundura: same-sex marriage is an effective wedge issue because there is a majority that opposes it. Even among some liberal Democrats, same-sex marriage generates considerable trepidation. Among the moderate Democrats who make up a majority of Democratic voters, same-sex marriage generates responses that range from "Huh?" to "No way!" If the LGBT community holds the Democratic Party hostage on same-sex marriage, it guarantees Republican victories across the country. It is like the scene in Blazing Saddles where the black sheriff takes himself hostage by putting a gun to his head, and telling the hostile crowd to back off, or he'll shoot the black man. (The language was actually a bit rougher than that, of course.) The difference is that the angry mob in Blazing Saddles was so stupid that this worked. If the LGBT activists take the Democratic Party hostage, Republicans will call the bluff--and the LGBT community will be even worse off than before. There are organizations more tactically incompetent than the Republicans, and I pleased to see that the Democrats are one such example. Labels: homosexuality Is This Why Universities Spend So Much Time Whining About Money? Interesting story about a driver who was fired for wanting to take a bathroom break while driving American University's president to Philadelphia--and then he blew the whistle on his former boss: WASHINGTON - A Senate committee’s investigation into American University’s decision to give its embattled former president a $3.75 million departure package after he was accused of misappropriating university funds could lead to significant policy changes at colleges and universities across the country, sources say.And this one: ATLANTA — The former president of Morris Brown College pleaded guilty Monday to embezzling millions of dollars in federal funds that were intended to cover student tuition.One of my wife's professors told her that he had been a dean for a while, but went back to being just a professor because his conscience bothered him about the amount of extravagant spending that it involved. He would go to events at public expense, and he saw the amount of money being spent on fancy restaurants and hotels, and it bothered him, because it was so unnecessary to what these conferences were all about. Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Great T-Shirt I Saw In The Gym Today What made it great wasn't just the slogan, but a co-worker who is an immigrant (from Sweden, and about as liberal as you might expect a Swede to be) was wearing it: WHAT PART OF "ILLEGAL" DIDN'T YOU UNDERSTAND? House Project: This Is Where The Recriminations And Lawsuits May Start To Appear We went up to the house last night, and we were very disappointed. The problem of the repoured concrete being gray I've already mentioned. Now there is an additional problem. The concrete guy power washed it, and then applied a finish to it that was supposed to make it a particular color: amber rose. I don't have any pictures (yet) but that has to be done next for the inevitable lawsuit. 1. The power wash didn't remove paint spots and at least one gray concrete dab. 2. The finish in some places came out shiny (as it should) but very dark--almost a nut brown, instead of amber rose. In other places, it is like the finish isn't even there. The surface remains the roughly rose color of the concrete, but it is dull, not shiny. My builder has been avoiding me for several days, so I called the concrete guy, who is clearly quite upset about the whole matter (and has already talked to the builder). The concrete guy says that the original cracking was because of insufficient drainage on that side of the house--a matter that I raised with the builder at the start of winter, but he never quite got around to it. The concrete guy says that he mixed color into the concrete that he poured as a replacement--but it still came out gray. Variability in natural materials, and all that. He also says that the finish varied substantially depending on whether it was in sunlight or not, and there's nothing that he can do about it except remove it. He suggested that the builder should be responsible for using an epoxy paint for concrete to get the color right. I know that this isn't going to be cheap, and as far as I am concerned, this isn't my problem. The builder suggested the stamped color concrete, and I stupidly assumed that the builder knew something about housebuilding. I guess he knew a lot less than I assumed! Had I realized how badly this was going to turn out, I would have gone with gray concrete. It would have been about $3000 cheaper, and with far less grief. Last house project entry. Labels: house project United 93 Number One At The Box Office Read about it here. And that's without me going to see it! I am going to try and get to it this week. Why "French-Fried" Should Replace "Byzantine" As An Adjective The enormously subtle and complex palace plottings of the Byzantine Empire are the reason that the adjective "Byzantine" refers to intricate and almost impossible to understand political machinations. But after reading this discussion of a current French political scandal, I think "French-fried" should replace it. The scandal at first involved a government official taking bribes. Now the scandal is that the government official did not take bribes: The affair began in the summer of 2004, when French magistrates were sent anonymously a letter and CD purporting to show that a number of senior French politicians and top executives in Airbus and the EADS defense group held secret and illegal accounts with the Luxembourg-based bank Clearstream International.(Thanks to Fausta's blog for the pointer.) It makes me appreciate the homespun simplicity of a bribe taker like Rep. Duke Cunnigham. So It's Not a Scientific Survey But I was still pleased and amused to see what happened when KPHO TV in Phoenix included a poll about Sheriff Arpaio's decision to send out volunteer posse members with sheriff's deputies to arrest illegals entering the country illegally. The question was: "Sheriff's deputies and posse will start patrols to curb the flow of illegal immigrants." The choices were "Good idea" and "Bad idea." There's a slight difference at the moment--97% are saying "Good idea." Go here, and you can both read the news story, and vote as well! Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Is The Strength of The Sopranos Because It Is Perilously Close to Reality Television? I saw the first coverage of arrests for criminal acts of actors in this series about New Jersey mobsters a while back, and now this: Continuing a string of off-screen run-ins with the law, two more fringe characters from "The Sopranos"- the television mob boss's favorite chef and his muscle-bound bodyguard - have been charged in separate criminal cases. Americans Are Far Less Healthy Than The English? There's a new study out that claims that affluent Americans are far less healthy than their English counterparts--and that specifically denies that the difference in our health care systems is the explanation: CHICAGO (AP) - White, middle-aged Americans - even those who are rich - are far less healthy than their peers in England, according to stunning new research that erases misconceptions and has experts scratching their heads.I was pleased to see that they only included non-Hispanic American whites in this study. It is very common to see studies that compare American murder rates to other industrialized nations--even though most other industrialized nations have very few blacks, and no Hispanics--who commit (and are victims of) about 3/4 of U.S. murders. (Keep in mind that much of the "Hispanic" population of the United States is more Indian than Spanish--even Spaniards aren't what Americans think of as "Hispanic.") It strikes me that perhaps one of the factors in the high rates of these health problems isn't in spite of being the richest country in the world, but because of being the richest country in the world. Not just obesity, but quite a number of health problems are related to eating too much, and exercising too little. You spend much time around Europeans, and you start to realize how differently they live--and not by choice. High fuel prices (largely because of high taxes) encourage a lot more walking and bicycling. High food prices discourage eating for recreation--which is outside of California, the primary indoor sport. (In California, the primary indoor sport is adultery.) Predictably, the reporter tries to turn this into an anti-capitalist spin: Differences in exercise might partly explain the gap, he suggested. One of the study's authors, Jim Smith, said the English exercise somewhat more than Americans. But physical activity differences won't fully explain the study's results, he added.This might explain people heading down the ladder, but for the most part, few Americans in the age range in question are worrying much about that. Most Americans in that age range are worrying more about how to lose weight. UPDATE: Read here for reasons to suspect that this study is way incorrect. The article referenced here says that cancer rates among white, non-Hispanic Americans are almost twice that of Britons--yet the cancer death rate for all Americans is actually less than for Britons. It doesn't prove the study wrong, but it raises serious questions as to whether it could be right. It Is Almost Self-Parody Apparently, the deranged left (you know, the crowd that asserts that airliners crashing into the World Trade Center could not really have brought the buildings down) is upset that there are still dangerous threats to them in the academic community...liberals! Todd Gitlin, who is professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia takes them on over at the Chronicle of Higher Education--but when I read his article, I find myself rolling my eyes, and briefly wondering if this is parody: The airwaves and best-seller lists are noisy with anti-intellectual jeers. The ruling party embraces the nostrums of "No Child Left Behind" while tossing the teaching of all subjects besides reading and math to the winds.What? Sorry, but that's simply not true. There is an effort to make sure that kids have mastered some of the core subjects--because without them, you can't realistically do much with more advanced subjects. Many of its leaders declare that the Republic was founded not in the name of enlightenment but as a "Christian nation."Sorry to disappoint Professor Gitlin, but most states either explicitly limited office holding to Christians (sometimes only to Protestants), or had established churches. This seems to fit the "Christian nation" model a lot better than "enlightenment." When the topics of evolution, climate change, stem cells, and contraception arise, the president of the United States blithely jettisons scientific judgments.My brain just shakes at Gitlin's ignorance. The "climate change" issue has significant scientific judgment on both sides. Stem cell questions were about morality, not science--and as it has turned out, adult fat stem cells are so far doing a better job of producing cures than embryonic stem cells. On the evidence of his dialogue with reporters, and his behavior toward underlings like former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and the former Environmental Protection Agency chief, Christine Todd Whitman, his interest in and capacity for reason are impaired.This is just so bizarre that I wonder what press conferences the President gives in Gitlin's parallel universe. Nor is the reign of fantasy limited to the titular leaders. One year ago, 79 percent of Republicans (and 37 percent of Democrats) still believed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction when the war began, according to public-opinion experts Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Robert Y. Shapiro.Oddly enough, even Hussein's former air force general Georges Sada thinks that! Gitlin's arrogant certainty about matters on which there remains considerable factual dispute is breathtaking. It goes down from there. Gitlin tells us that the hard left of the academy is now blaming liberals for the conservative turn of American politics--and it seems not to have occurred to either left or liberal that it is precisely the overheated rhetoric of "Bush = Hitler" and the ignorant arrogance described above that plays a major part in discrediting their positions. Transgendered Bathrooms Again Everytime I hear a homosexual activist insist that they are just like straight people, except for who they love, I see a news story like this one: BOULDER, Colo. -- A transgender task force wants to bring more "all-gendered" bathrooms to the University of Colorado-Boulder campus, the Boulder Daily Camera reported in its Monday editions.Can you imagine the uproar if straight people started to complain that they didn't "feel comfortable" using the same bathrooms or locker rooms as homosexuals? Is there anyone that thinks this "transgendered" garbage is anything but an indication of a pretty serious psychological problem? Labels: homosexuality, transgender This Isn't News: Americans Don't Know Geography Sadly, this isn't really news. Should it be called olds? Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn't locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.Now, that last would be a logical assumption, if our government was actually making an attempt at enforcing our immigration laws, so I guess that is a forgiveable error. Monday, May 01, 2006
House Project: Woodpecker Discouragement Methods I mentioned yesterday that the pictures of the wind chimes and wind spinners we put out to stop the woodpeckers didn't come, so I shot some more pictures yesterday. My wife thinks the wind spinners look a little white trash, but a reader tells me of a technique that apparently also works, and makes this look downright San Francisco New Agey by comparison: shoot one woodpecker, and nail it to the wall. The rest won't come back. I call this the George Bush Approach To Third World Dictators With WMD Ambitions. At least, it worked with Libya.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge You will notice quite a bit of dirt on the front porch in that last picture. It is our own little Dust Bowl of soil blowing onto the south face of the house in the intense thunderstorms Friday night. We really do need to get that hydroseeded. The warmer weather and rains have started to turn the hillsides green again.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge I don't have a picture of it, but I just noticed that when they repoured the concrete at the back side of the garage--they poured gray concrete, not the rose color that the rest of the driveway apron and porches were poured. I am pretty upset about this, because it looks stupid--and even if the builder didn't remind of the color, they should have looked before they poured gray concrete to replace rose colored concrete. I hope that they can put a thin coat of the right color on top. Last house project entry. Labels: house project The Dangers of Identity Politics A majority of Americans want the government to do something about illegal aliens. There are certainly racists out there who object to Hispanics (or perhaps just to Mexicans) immigrating to America, but my impression is that they are a pretty small fraction of those who want illegal immigration stopped. Certainly, there are plenty of Hispanics who object to illegal immigration, such as Canyon County Commissioner Vasquez, who is trying to get the Republican nomination for Congress here in Southwest Idaho. This quote from one of the demonstrators shows the "identity politics" that is driving today's demonstrations--and it should be worrisome to Hispanics who are U.S. citizens (some of whose families have been here for generations) or legal immigrants: "We are the backbone of what America is, legal or illegal, it doesn't matter," said Melanie Lugo, who was among thousands attending a rally in Denver with her husband and their third-grade daughter.Choosing to lump all immigrants together--both illegal and legal--would be recognized as transparently racist by leftists. Creating a group identity--where organizers insist that everyone works together because of some shared identity--can be very effective for political action. There are a lot of illegal immigrants, but they aren't supposed to vote, and this reduces their influence. Persuading legal immigrants to join with them in a common cause makes 12 million illegals sound like perhaps 40 million members of the "identity group." What politician is going to be gutsy enough to say "No," if he is facing a close election? Many of America's 40 million Hispanics do not identify with the illegal immigrants. The problem is that the news media, by promoting the idea that there is a monolithic Hispanic identity that supports illegal aliens, is likely to provoke not just hostility to illegal aliens, but to Hispanics who are legal immigrants, naturalized U.S. citizens, and those born to U.S. citizenship. Identity politics can be powerful--but it can also be very polarizing. This is not a good thing--especially for Hispanics. United 93 I was planning to see it this weekend, but lots of other stuff got in the way. Roger Ebert gives it four stars--and let me emphasize that considering where Ebert stands on Bush and the Iraq War, he clearly did not write a politically motivated review: It is not too soon for "United 93," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims. Sunday, April 30, 2006
House Project: Persuading Woodpeckers & Power Lessons Learned Friday night my wife and I hung up wind chimes and "wind spinners" (which are shiny plastic twirly things that, as the name suggests, spin in the wind) on the south side of the house. I took some pictures, but it was too dark for them to look good. Our hope is that the combination of noise and moving objects will encourage the woodpeckers to go elsewhere. Afterwards, we went for a walk as the sun set--and it is a beautiful place. When we returned, the sky had darkened enough to see Saturn, although I must confess that Big Bertha did not seem to have cooled sufficiently to give a sharp image. Perhaps the problem is that the mask that I am using to get stop down the turned edge has shifted on the mirror. I'll try this again another night. Attempts to find M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy) were stymed by the sky not being complete dark yet by the time we had come back down the hill. (My wife has band practice Saturday mornings, so we couldn't stay late.) Power mistakes made: I probably specified too large of a backup generator. The electrician said that we needed at least a 5 kiowatt generator to provide backup power--at least enough to get the well pump running from a dead start. I'm not sure that this is actually correct, but even aside from that, our typical power consumption at our current house is about 38-40 KWh per day. We ended up getting a 7 kilowatt LP gas backup generator. This is both not enough power to operate every circuit in the house at maximum demand--so the electrician only hooked up a bit more than half the circuits, including well pump, pressurization pump, kitchen, laundry room, and garage doors. It occurs to me now that it would have made more sense to get about a 2 kilowatt backup generator, and use that to charge batteries, in the style of photovoltatic systems. A 2 kilowatt generator, operating 24 hours a day, would charge batteries at 48 KWh per day--well in excess of requirements (remembering that there is some loss from storage and from conversion from AC to DC and then back again)--and the output from the batteries would have been distributable across all circuits in the house. The batteries would also have been useful for later expansion with photovoltaics or wind generators. Last house project entry. Labels: house project |
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