I keep having this feeling that few people are even paying attention to what’s going on in New Orleans. A city the size of Austin is completely devastated, but daily life is going on pretty much as usual everywhere else. Yesterday, I kept trying to find news about it on broadcast television, but it was all just the usual programming. The same thing continued throughout the day. There was nothing on about it until the evening news. It seems like people don’t want to or don’t know how to think about it or acknowledge it. Have we become that isolated from one another? Why are we not mobilized into crisis mode? It keeps sounding like no one had a plan for what to do if this happened. From the governor of Louisiana to the mayor of New Orleans to the President of the United States there is a complete absence of leadership.
Monthly Archives: August 2005
30
Aug 05
New Orleans in Serious Trouble
Nagin said the levees had given way in places to Katrina’s storm surge, including a 200-foot (60 meter) breach near the city center through which waters from Lake Pontchartrain were pouring in.
“There’s a serious leak and it’s causing the water to continue to rise,” he said. Adding to the problem were malfunctions in the system the city uses to pump out floodwaters.
29
Aug 05
Saving tip: squirrel it away
People didn’t always use banks and credit cards. A few generations back people kept money nearby where it might be closer, but not too easy to spend. My step-grandfather was born in 1907 and he used to take wads of bills and bury them in coffee cans to stockpile money. Every once in a while he’d forget where one was buried. He would find it later and drive down to the bank to redeem a wad of moldy dollar bills. My grandmother used to keep what she referred to as “mad money” stashed in various places around the house, her pocket-book, a cigar box, in a drawer. These were little amounts of cash for unexpected things like soda pops or a round of shanghai rummy. Have you ever noticed how older people always seem to have money when they need it?
When you think about it, it makes good sense. If you hide small amounts of money in different places it has the benefit of not being as readily available as your checking account, for example, which can be accessed with the ubiquitous debit card. If you’re at a bar haemorrhaging ones and fives you would be hard-pressed to spend the emergency twenty dollar bill you have hidden in your bible. It doesn’t have to be hidden in the literal sense, just make some of your cash harder to spend.
- Open a separate checking or savings account …or two or three. Put the corresponding debit cards in a filing cabinet. Deposit a percentage of your income in here and watch it grow simply because it’s more difficult to spend.
- Get a Paypal account. Free. 1.5% cash back if you use the check card, and 3% if you let the funds collect. Paypal accounts are easy to access, but if you’re like me, you’ll never use it.
- Hide your singles. Whenever I get a couple ones I hide them somewhere where I’ll find them later unexpectedly. Nothing is better than putting on a jacket you haven’t worn since last winter and finding a couple bucks stuffed in one of the pockets. Eventually you’ll amass a network of hidey holes you can raid if you start to run dry.
Squirrels have the right idea. They work hard through the fall gathering and hiding acorns for when they’re hungry during leaner times. Sometimes forgotten acorns grow into mighty oaks. It’s the same with money if you can keep yourself from spending all of it.
29
Aug 05
Google payola
I finally got my first payment from Google once I realized I needed to put my tax information in the system before they would pay me. As soon as I did that, I got an automatic deposit from Google the next day or so. Everyone should be using AdSense ads in their blog. Yes, it’s advertising, but the ads are pretty flexible in how they can be used. You can change the type of ad, the appearance, and where the ads will show up on your site. It’s a good way to defray the costs of running a website and you might even make a little additional unexpected income. Create an AdSense account and mess around with it. You might be surprised at the result. The ads are pretty simple to incorporate. Just read the instructions.
29
Aug 05
Next time… movers
The weekend was relentless. Over the weekend, I spent nearly 14 hours just driving, most of that in a truck pulling a ten foot trailer. Friday was spent packing and getting all the necessary equipment arranged for the move, the truck and trailer from my dad in San Antonio, the handtruck and additional boxes from Lowe’s. We packed and cleaned all day until midnight. Then saturday we got up at 6 am and drove over to pick up my friend and then my brother to help load the truck. The loading went okay except for a couple episodes involving various amounts of property damage and the ensuing aftermath. It was hot, but we managed to get everything loaded before the sun was on us. For the unloading we were not so fortunate. When we arrived in Dallas at two in the afternoon, the humidity pushed the heat index to 110 degrees Fahrenheit and since we had the freight elevator reserved for a couple hours we had to keep moving until we had everything unloaded. I was completely exhausted and soaked with sweat. Luckily, my brother works outside every day for a furniture company, so his tolerance and relative ease kept me going. I kept thinking, hell is one endless move. I would recommend it for anyone trying to get in shape because if it doesn’t kill you it will definitely get you in shape.
25
Aug 05
Solutions for the fattening of America?
There have been several articles lately about the studies showing that Americans continue to get fatter. Pushing exercise and nutrition is not going to be enough because people will usually take the path of least resistance, and right now that means getting fat because cheap food and ease is what American life is all about. What we need to do is devise creative solutions to the problem at the societal level because most of us do not have the discipline to eat healthy and stay fit on our own. We have to be tricked, encouraged, manipulated, and distracted into losing weight and staying healthy. Here are some ideas:
- Adult playgrounds: Imagine a park filled with adult size swings, seesaws, slides, tether-ball, spring-horses, merry-go rounds, and jungle gyms. This has been a long held dream of mine. This would give people a fun physical outlet. You could even put kid-size equipment alongside to encourage family activity.
- Rent-a-dog: I always want a dog to walk, but I don’t want to own a dog. It’s good exercise. Put animal shelters in parks and set up adoption-optional centers where people can take the homeless dogs for walks. If they’re so inclined they can even adopt the dog when they’re done, but this is strictly optional. No guilt if you don’t. Dog-renters can pay a very small fee and this will go to support the shelter. It’s a closed loop.
- More swimming pools: I have a love / hate relationship with public pools, but we do need more of them. It’s great, fun exercise. There need to be more slides and diving boards. We also need more parks.
- More expensive gas None of us wants to pay more for gas, but I guarantee this will result in more walking even if it’s just the less well-off who will be hoofing it. Whenever I drive down Riverside Blvd I’m amazed at the amount of foot and bike traffic, but if you consider that it’s a poor part of town it makes sense. If we could just pair this with healthier cheap food a lot of the problem will be remedied.
- Limit liquor licenses It has become way too easy to purchase alcohol. I imagine this is due to the decline of the religio-social sphere. I think making alcohol more difficult to purchase will result in thinner waistlines. Limit the hours of availability and the number of outlets. Why have we made alcohol so easy to obtain? It is different from food and can be treated as such.
- Voluntary fat camps You cannot get fat without eating and lack of exercise. If I fed you nothing but carrots, beans, and celery you would lose extraneous weight. What if we had places where you could stay for a while where every aspect of your physical life was rigorously controlled? In return, you would work or pay a small fee to stay. A different version of this would be a ‘trainer’ who would follow you around and tell you what you should eat. The trainer could also help you to do something physical. Maybe it could be robotic.
- Full-service healthy meal services What if you could hire a company to prepare all of your meals catered to your unique physical needs? This is how it would work. At work and home you would have a modified refrigerator and / or pantry. The service provider would load fresh snacks and meals into your into your units once a week, and each meal / snack would be dispensed on a certain schedule. For example, when it was time for lunch the dispenser at work could send you a message and the meal would be available for heating and eating.A simpler version of this would be to have meals pre-prepared and labeled for your consumption schedule. Snacks would be controlled as well.
- Water fountains In public areas with lots of traffic, place locations where people can easily get a drink of water. We do not do this anymore, but we should. A lot of times I just want something to drink because I’m thirsty. Make it easier and healthier for everyone to quench their thirst. These stations could be supported with advertising.
Are any of these good ideas?
24
Aug 05
GoogleTalk Quickie Review
GoogleTalk is very efficient, very clean, and very well-done. Google is clearly an engineering company. Everything is intuitive and easy to do. You add contacts by sending them an email invite. Your email address is your contact name. The VoIP functionality works very well. If you have a mic and headset it does the rest. Great result.
GoogleTalk is based on Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) developed by the Jabber open-source messaging project:
As specified in RFC 3920, the core “transport” layer for XMPP is an XML streaming protocol that makes it possible to exchange fragments of XML between any two network endpoints. Authentication and channel encryption happen at the XML streaming layer using the IETF-standard protocols for Simple Authentication and Security Layer (RFC 2222) and Transport Layer Security (RFC 2246). The normal architecture of XMPP is a pure client-server model, wherein clients connect to servers and (optionally) servers connect to each other for interdomain communications. XMPP addresses are fully internationalized, and are of the form
for clients (similar to email). A wide variety of applications can be built on top of the core XML streaming layer. The first such application is instant messaging (IM) and presence. The basic IM and presence extensions specified in RFC 3921 address the requirements of RFC 2779, as well as the contact list functionality expected IM and presence systems. RFC 3921 also makes it possible to separate the messaging and presence functionality if desired (although most deployments offer both).
XMPP extensions allow for additional functionality.
24
Aug 05
Instant Messaging Interoperability
Both Skype and Google are talking about open IM (Instant Messaging). That means that eventually we’ll have some standard way to communicate with contacts on any of the various messaging platforms like ICQ, AIM, GT (Google Talk, which came out today), Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, etc. GoogleTalk itself runs on Jabber. I’m curious what will happen to the Hello messaging system they purchased with Picasa. Anyway, here’s what both Skype and Google have planned:
Hearsay courtesy of DownloadSquad on Google’s plans for GoogleTalk
According to our friends at Google, there’s a lot in store for Google Talk. Google is keenly interested in keeping the protocol open, and in fact you can access Google Talk’s servers with any Jabber-compatible client like Trillian, Gaim, Adium X, and iChat. (If you have one of these, I’m told you can connect using server talk.google.com and port 5222.) Google tells us that SIP support is coming soon and are in talks with Skype, AOL, and Yahoo! concerning interoperability.
I wonder how AOL and Yahoo feel about interoperability.
Skype is opening up its messaging with “SkypeNet API“. They have less to lose here than chat-focused products like AIM since Skype text chat is not the main benefit to Skype users who can use SkypeOut to place telephone calls worldwide.
Wouldn’t it be cool if your friends using other IM applications could contact you on Skype? We want Skype to be the worlds largest open IM system on the planet! What if you could use Skype to communicate with a product reviewer on a Web site, to chat with other players in an online game using Skype? All of these things and a few more that we haven’t dreamed up yet will become possiblities with SkypeNet API, a new set of tools and services that programmers can use to take Skype into new places that you may have never dreamed of before.
SkypeNet API will enable developers to access our IM and Presence system and bring it into new applications without needing to have the full version of Skype running on the machine. Think of it as mini Skype that can bring Skype to new places and let you do things you couldn’t do before. Details on the SkypeNet API will be coming soon, but we want to start the fun now. Interested in getting on board with SkypeNet now and just can’t wait until we publish more?
23
Aug 05
Politics meets practical issues of consciousness
…and idealism meets materialism. Fetal pain unlikely before third trimester-study:
Legislation under consideration by the U.S. Congress and some U.S. states would require doctors to inform women seeking abortions after the 22nd week of gestation that their fetus feels pain and offer to anesthetize the fetus.
Supporters of the legislation say that when a fetus displays a withdrawal reflex or hormonal stress response, that is evidence of fetal pain. But the researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, questioned that view, saying the responses may be automatic and not signs of discomfort.
Drawing on findings from thousands of medical-journal articles on the subject of fetal pain and related topics, the report’s author, Susan Lee, wrote that “pain is a subjective sensory and emotional experience that requires the presence of consciousness.”
Consciousness is created by brain connections between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex, and those do not begin to develop before the 23rd week and possibly not before the 30th week of gestation. The human gestation period is 38 weeks from conception.
23
Aug 05
China single-handedly changes the entire video game industry
I just read this article about how China is developing a mandatory system that prevents video game players from playing for more than 3 consecutive hours. This is going to change the entire industry if true since they are one of the fastest growing markets for video and online games. I suppose developers could simply make geographically different versions of the game, yet it will have quite an impact in many areas. Link.
In addition, seven of China’s largest online gaming firms pledged Tuesday to “sacrifice short-term revenues” to create a “healthy” environment for young internet users. Companies signing onto the “Beijing Accord” were Shanda, NetEase, The9, Optisp, Kingsoft, SINA, and Sohu. These seven companies also pledged to deploy the system when development is completed.
Development of the system is scheduled for completion at the end of September 2005. Internal testing is scheduled to last for one year, beginning in October of 2005. After internal testing, trial operations of the system will be held using the games “The Legend of Mir II” and “The World of Legend” operated by Shanda, “Westward Journey Online” and “Fantasy Westward Journey Online” operated by NetEase, “World of Warcraft” and “MU” operated by The9, “JX Online” and “First Myth Online” operated by Kingsoft, “The Legend of Mir 3G” operated by Optisp, “Lineage II” operated by SINA, and “Blade Online” operated by Sohu.
Compulsorily deployment of the new system is expected to begin for all massive multiplayer online role-playing games and casual games in China in late 2005 or early 2006.