Jobs, economists and stupidity

What to Expect When You’re Free Trading - New York Times: "All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices."

This is what the economist thinks of all the jobs that are being outsourced, he is also the guy who thinks more sex is safer too.

He is also a major poster child to the saying, "you manage what your measure." When you measure the wrong thing, what you manage will get you results you don't necessarily want.

He is probably looking at the GDP and employment numbers and inflation rate and the consumer price index. Those are really big and pretty abstract numbers. He plugs them into his models, all these things are mathematical models not reality, and sees what comes out.

He never stops to check to see if his numbers are matching up with what is really happening out there.

One consequence is an upending of the traditional pattern, in which middle-aged children take in an elderly parent. As $15-an-hour factory jobs are replaced by $7- or $8-an-hour retail jobs, more men in their 30s and 40s are moving in with their parents or grandparents

NYT

If your pay is cut by half to one-third of what it used to be, you have a serious problem. You might not be unemployed but you had to throw away your self-respect to take that fast food job. Your wife has taken a job or another job on. You not a well off DINK but a family with mom and dad working dual jobs and maybe even an older child adding to the family pot.

I don't know what he buys, but I know that gas and milk and bread and vegetables and cheese and even flour have gone up in price. The only thing that I see that consistently goes down in price are computers and electronics, but quite frankly I don't buy that kind of thing more then once in five years or so.

And it isn't limited to blue-collar work either.

The big problem is that the American workplace doesn't make technical jobs attractive enough. The pay is okay, but less than that of other professionals, like lawyers. And the working conditions for engineers and scientists are generally quite poor -- too much Dilbert, not enough Skunk Works. They act as if there's a positive conspiracy to take all the fun out of it, according several of my friends who work in the area.

Instapundit

I never saw anything beyond a keeping-up-with-inflation raise when I was in the engineering field. I used to design computers and now the only jobs out there for me seem to be computer support positions of the type I thought I had left behind in college. And when your backup skillset is being outsourced too, what then?

But it is even worse then that.

The tendency to denigrate the positions of those who actually make things work is endemic in the American business culture, which even after decades of supposed “streamlining” is top-heavy with a relatively useless management culture.

dailypundit

But you never here about the economic toll that is incurred because of this attitude, people who not just hate their jobs but are physically repulsed by them. So they turn to therapy, anti-depressants, alcohol, drugs, extreme sports or worse things.

“I’ve actually experienced the same kind of talk from my supervisor. And I don’t really blame her in the end, because she was just doing her job.”

Rico, you are absolutely right. She was a nice lady, and just trying to get me to fall in line, which, of course, is never too much to ask of an employee. It was my own fault that I wasn’t very good a job I couldn’t stand.

freelanceswitch

The economist says they are good things, money changing hands being paid to the psychologists and pharmacists, doctors and the like. But that is just the broken window fallacy. They are looking at the wrong numbers and so we may appear to be looking good on paper but in real life there are real problems. The only time we see past the numbers is when something tragic happens, like people going postal in the local school.

If you are measuring the wrong thing what you are managing will be mismanaged. I went to a self-employment workshop last week and it was pretty good, we discussed one of the major reasons that businesses go under, one is not getting the numbers to work. The example story was a couple of guys buy a truck to haul vegetables to the market, they would buy watermelons for a dollar and sell them for a dollar and came to the conclusion they needed a bigger truck. He had been on a bank advisory board to help new companies get thing in line when they ran into trouble and he has seen that same scenario happen many times. Often because the numbers they were looking at were the wrong ones.

I still believe that most people want to and can be much for then what they are. We just don't know how.

I had to love this post if only because one of my last day jobs was training green horses for riding and jumping so they could become steady, dependable school horses. Some made it, doing the job perfectly. Some had quirks or small issues that would stick forever unless the owners invested a lot of time and money into resolving the horse’s psychological problems.

One would never make it. Scared shitless because of a bad past, terrified to trust people, and absolutely craving that love and attention he needed to shine, he needed a lot of help to get to the point where he could achieve his fullest potential.

He wanted to, but he couldn’t - not without a lot of retraining and help.

I always think about this horse like the person that really wanted to succeed but just didn’t know how. And he didn’t have someone who cared enough to bother helping. Sounds like that cage of a job you’re referring to.

fls

Can we overcome the pain? Not when most people seem to be of the opinion you are lazy or stupid and you deserve what you got. There seems to be this weird twist to the Protestant Work Ethic that it is not only more virtuous to suffer for your work but it is actually sinful to enjoy what you do. After enough of this propaganda you begin to believe that you never enjoyed doing anything and now you are in real trouble.

But Hope is still alive (she's on life support), there are things you enjoy doing and you keep reading motivational books and you want to get started but you keep trying.

Dr. Helen: Appliance Woes

Dr. Helen: Appliance Woes: "Do you ever have one of those periods where every appliance in your house starts to break down?"

You might not think about this but your average appliance has built-in obsolescence and we tend to buy them all at once like when we move into a new house. They are designed to last about 5 years, then they start falling apart. Oddly enough they tend to do that all at the same time because they were all bought at the same time. Odd that.

Adventures in Mormonism Blog Archive � Mitt Romney’s new ward? [UPDATED]

Adventures in Mormonism Blog Archive Mitt Romney’s new ward? [UPDATED]: "So….if Mitt Romney became President of the US (from this point forward referred to as POTUS), won’t we have something we’ve never had before - a president who goes to a specific church? All other presidents belonged to religions that didn’t have tight congregational boundaries. Now, think about that: What Ward would POTUS be in? [See above.] If you are his new Bishop, here are your top 10 questions:"

Now, this is funny. I would be pretty sure that the Secret Service has someone at least thinking about the possibility. The security issues would be a mind numbing. The home teaching issue alone is just hilarious.

Conceptual Trends and Current Topics

Conceptual Trends and Current Topics: "That part of film magic is evident in any 'making-of' movie. What's new is that the new camera/apps are steadily coming becoming like a word processor -- both pros and amateurs use the same one. The great script is not due to a better word processor; it's how the great write uses it. Likewise, a great film is not due to better gear. The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs -- which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness."

With Print on Demand services like lulu getting a book in print is not a problem. What used to cost tens of thousands now costs a hundred bucks.

It has been a few years now that a band could get a buy a computer some microphones and some software to create a recording studio in their basement or garage. Apple gives away an audio editing program, Garageband, away with each computer and plenty of bands use it very well.

The same thing is happening with video editing. There are plenty of ways to make a movie with a cast of thousands but you can do something similar with a cast of just a few.

And it is not only in the creative fields but others as well. In the field of biology it is getting easier and easier to modify and even create your own lifeforms. Some people are even thinking we are in a race, that we need to get people on other planets before we are capable of having a single person create a virus that can kill us all.

If it is hooked up to a computer it just gets less and less expensive over time. One of the few things that does.

Telstar Logistics: "Flight thru Instruments" and the Fine Art of Instructional Illustration

Telstar Logistics: "Flight thru Instruments" and the Fine Art of Instructional Illustration: "Published as a pilot-training manual by the US Navy in 1945, 'Flight thru Instruments' teaches proper aeronautical navigation techniques through the use of elaborate illustrations -- the kind of stuff that today might be called 'info-graphics.'

But oh, what info-graphics these are! Produced entirely by hand, the illustrations in 'Flight thru Instruments' possess a richness and accuracy of detail that -- if we may say so -- puts the majority of today's graphic artists to shame."

These are totally awesome graphics. We need more like this today.

MAKE: Blog: Make your own vaccum tubes?

MAKE: Blog: Make your own vaccum tubes?: "Check out this absolutely mesmerizing (17 minute!) video of a French amateur radio operator who rolls his own vacuum tube triodes! I love the ease with which he performs these rather high-end skills (like glass forming), the gestural flourishes (like it's hand magic), and the Zelig-esque soundtrack"

And O thought the guy in our Ham group was hardcore making his own radio from a kit. This is real hardcore. But it reminds me of a hot dog pushcart vendor from NYC who used to make it look like he was conducting symphony while putting a hotdog together.

from slashdot.

Is it time to move on? | Slow Leadership

Is it time to move on? | Slow Leadership: "Do I have a voice at work—does anyone who matters listen to what I say? There’s nothing more depressing and demotivating than feeling that you don’t matter as a person."

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. You don't matter as a person.

You are a number.
You are a problem.
You are a cog.
You are a statistic.
You are a consumer.

I am not a number to be filed or a problem to be solved. I am a person and I want something different. I want some compassion.

"it's not personal. It's business." - The Godfather
That is the worst excuse for betrayal out there. It's _ALL_ personal. They forget you before you've left the room, but you still have to explain to your wife and your little girl why things are no longer the same.

"Loser: When your very best still isn't good enough." - Despair.com

When the work you do doesn't even matter to the company your do it for, doing your very best is really hard. Do your best and you will be rewarded. Yeah, right.
"You're a great worker, in the top 1%, in the top 12 really. We're not firing you, but you better get back to work." That was pretty much what they told me when I worked at a call center for a 4 months. That $0.25 raise they talked about never came nor any other perk. No surprise really, but when I turned yellow they said you look fine. After I got out of the hospital I never went back. That cost more then I earned there.
I saw my last boss a few days ago. I saw him and he saw me but he didn't even acknowledge I was there.

I was looking though some of the bonus material on a Pixar DVD and I see them have this wonderful team environment. My soul aches for something like that but actually I've never seen that in real life. I've read stories about great teams and team work was talked a lot about in school, but I've never met someone in real life who was on a great team.

When you pour your soul into doing something to the very best of your ability it hurts a lot when they ignore it or throw it away. You can't not care about it because you did it, not some machine. Of course when you act like a machine to protect yourself, nobody cares about you because they don't want to be around someone like that.

Better to aim for the stars and it the moon, then aim for the mud and find it.
Things need to change.

Why Movie Theater Prices Are So High (and keep rising)

Why Movie Theater Prices Are So High (and keep rising): "The only area that consistently brings any profit at all is concessions. And here's the kicker... this is what will really blow your mind: Less than 10% of movie customers even bother buying concessions."

This is one of those thing where it certainly seems like the whole system is broken. It looks like capitalism isn't working in this case and that may be true though it may be from a lack of compromise.

We only saw a couple of movie last year Harry Potter and Ratatouille. We are only looking forward to two movies this year as well, Harry Potter and Wall-E.

We usually get popcorn and soda because it does help the theaters, we've known that for a while.

We also have pretty much given up on television too, We moved and didn't bother setting up the TV we are just watching DVD's on a computer with a good sized monitor. It just doesn't make much sense to watch very much anymore. There is just too much garbage and we just don't have the time to deal with it any more.

The big problem is that getting to the movie at the time for a good audience is a problem. It is weird to laugh at a joke and no one else does. Eventually having a good home theater with seating for our friends so we can all enjoy at the same time would be great. The audience can really improve the experience. Just like laugh tracks in sit-coms it is more fun if everyone is laughing at the same time.

Jan. 7, 1904: A Distress Call for Ships in Danger Upon the Sea

Jan. 7, 1904: A Distress Call for Ships in Danger Upon the Sea: "The most famous maritime distress call of all time was sent by the RMS Titanic following its fatal collision with an iceberg in April 1912. In that instance, Marconi radio operator Jack Phillips began by sending the CQD signal, then still commonly used aboard British ships. On the suggestion of his junior, Harold Bride, Phillips began alternating between CQD and SOS."

Radio is a powerful tool.

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen - New York Times

The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen - New York Times: "Among the major culprits here are inefficient appliances. According to the United States Department of Energy, a gas burner delivers only 35 to 40 percent of its heat energy to the pan; a standard electrical element conveys about 70 percent. Anyone thinking about kitchen renovation should know that induction cooktops, which generate heat directly within the pan itself, are around 90 percent efficient. They can out-cook big-B.T.U. gas burners, work faster, don’t heat up the whole kitchen, and are becoming more common in restaurant kitchens."

Having used both gas and electric there are good and bad sides to each.

Electric may be more efficient but if you can't turn it down to a simmer it is useless. We use the crockpot a lot more now because there is no real low on our electric stove. Once something is boiling it stays boiling which makes doing stove top pot roast really hard.

Gas has one really great thing going for it. It usually still works even if the power is out. That means a whole lot when you are stuck at home in a blizzard and the lights and furnace are out. It means hot food and drink and a warm kitchen.

Multistep cooking sounds fun. Actually steaming is one thing that the microwave does best and that takes way less energy then an electric stove would. Combined with a torching afterwards to caramelize the outside it could be a lot of fun and quite tasty.

One thing that drives me crazy in our too small kitchen is keeping food warm. Something I'll have to try is spraying dishes with water and microwaving them for a minute or two to warm them up. Might work.

Motorhead Messiah - Fuel Efficient Cars - Biodiesel - Hybrids

Motorhead Messiah - Fuel Efficient Cars - Biodiesel - Hybrids: "For his part, Goodwin argues he's merely 'a problem solver. Most people try to make things more complicated than they are.' He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can't they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. 'Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now,' he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. 'I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day."

Cool. Thinking inside, outside and around the box.

FanFiction.Net - Things Not To Do At The SGC, a Stargate: SG-1 fanfic

FanFiction.Net - Things Not To Do At The SGC, a Stargate: SG-1 fanfic: "4) Plan A never works, plan B rarely works, plan C is almost always the best."

Nothing like some humor to relax with.

What are goals worth?

We are a goal oriented society. We see it all over the place: New Year's Resolutions, company goals, even ToDo lists are really just a daily goal list.

We can easily overwhelm ourselves with dozens of goals or you can focus on just one or create a theme for the year.

We also don't have just our own goals but we are also often given goals from the organizations we belong to. I've seen departmental goals, and regional goals and company-wide goals and initiatives come and go.

One thing I know for sure any goal or project needs attention if it is to get done and it also needs a minimum amount of attention right at first just to get off of the ground. It is different for each goal but it is something we need to know and care about.

A goal is really an attempt to set a new habit and it take 14-30 days to set one. It also helps if you use the new one to substitute for an old bad or obsolete habit. Then its easy to realize that you have fallen into an old habit and have someplace new to go.

Writing a goal down is worth a lot, USA Today followed some New Year's resolution setters for a year and found those that wrote down their goals had a 1150% better chance of reaching those resolutions then those who didn't. Reviewing and sharing them help too, but often not as much.

But there are other tools as well. One that I just found is the Concrete Goals Tracker which looks very helpful.

Learning from Other Peoples' Resolutions

One of the fun things about Web is that you get to see other people experimenting. Wisdom is learning from others' mistakes or successes.

So, Steve is going to eat raw food for the next 30 days and so far it seems to be going well. I say good for him.

Some of the things seem obvious to me. Feeling like you are on an emotional high all the time makes sense because you are eating huge quantities of sugar from the fruit.

The thing I was surprised about was the time commitment, lots of time for prep and lots for eating as well.

We like to cook and make fun meals so watching someone go all raw in interesting. We have learned quite a bit about nutrition and who the body handles food and what cooking does to food.

But humans are not herbivores. Cows with 4 stomachs and some exotic gut bacteria and the ability to chew the cud can do it. We don't have the gut systems to break down the nutrients locked behind the walls of cellulose. But we have a tool (fire) to break down cellulose for us so we can get to the good stuff.

Some cooking techniques are better then others. That is no great surprise. Boiling vegetables until they are dead again is obviously not going to deliver maximum nutrition to you. We really like broccoli steamed in the microwave with a couple of teaspoons of water or chicken broth and some crushed garlic topped with sea salt.

In any case, I like to combine ingredients and heat to make food.

I've also come to realize just how amazing globalization has become. Virtually all the food that Steve is eating had to come from outside the country, because none of it is in season on this side of the globe. It is wintertime and there just aren't a lot of fresh foods available naturally.

This makes for an interesting dilemma: On the one hand many vegetarians I know are very big on the environment, but the only way to support their lifestyle is to fly in large quantities of food from around the world to allow them to eat. And all that transportation is a heavy burden on the environment, as we saw with that global warming summit in Bali.

Out diets are far more diverse now then ever before. If you went back 100 years there were plenty of canned and boxed foods and most of us would even recognize many of the brand names, though the selection would be much smaller.

Go back 200 years from today and there was no canned food. It wasn't until 1809 that the process of canning food was invented. Before that you had drying, smoking, pickling, curing and salting. Go enough to get you through the winter but tiresome all the same.

I am pretty sure that just 50 years ago doing a raw vegan diet would have been impossible for most regions of the planet. But then the Eskimos have survived on whale blubber for a long time. Humans can survive and thrive on an amazing variety of foods. From hunter/gatherers to herder/farmers it didn't change all that much, each region of the planet got good at different local foods. Now we can ship them pretty much anywhere. Amzing.

Eject! Eject! Eject!: FORTY SECOND BOYD AND THE BIG PICTURE (Part 1)

Eject! Eject! Eject!: FORTY SECOND BOYD AND THE BIG PICTURE (Part 1): "This is a story about success and failure. It is a story about Iraq, and of something much bigger than Iraq. It is, perhaps, a small look into what makes victory, and defeat. It is a tale of infantrymen, of brave soldiers in dusty alleys a world away. It is a story of generals and strategies, too.

But to understand our newfound success there, to know a little of how we achieved it and most importantly, how to keep it, we need to move away from that Mesopotamian desert and those boots on the ground, and back to a different desert on the other side of the world a half century ago. For there, a vision was vouchsafed to a most unlikely warrior priest… the kind of insight that comes once or twice in all of human history.

There are some diverse threads to connect here. But if you have the patience to take a walk with me, you may perhaps see things in a way you have not seen them before."


Wow!

Grinding kids

But one day as we sat in her classroom, Andersen told me, “Every year I have two or three young ones in that August-to-October range, and they just struggle a little.” She used to encourage parents to send their children to kindergarten as soon as they were eligible, but she is now a strong proponent of older kindergartners, after teaching one child with a birthday just a few days before the cutoff. “She was always a step behind. It wasn’t effort and it wasn’t ability. She worked hard, her mom worked with her and she still was behind.” Andersen followed the girl’s progress through second grade (after that, she moved to a different school) and noticed that she didn’t catch up. Other teachers at Glen Arden Elementary and elsewhere have noticed a similar phenomenon: not always, but too often, the little ones stay behind.

Since youth sports are organized by age bracket, teams inevitably have a cutoff birth date. In the European youth soccer leagues, the cutoff date is Dec. 31. So when a coach is assessing two players in the same age bracket, one who happened to have been born in January and the other in December, the player born in January is likely to be bigger, stronger, more mature. Guess which player the coach is more likely to pick? He may be mistaking maturity for ability, but he is making his selection nonetheless. And once chosen, those January-born players are the ones who, year after year, receive the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites.

It is amazing how the power of something so innocuous seeming as your child's birthdate can have such strong implications over their whole lives.

I was born in July and that was pretty close to the cut off. I did generally well in school, but there were some strong turn off points. I was bumped up a grade a few weeks in at 5th grade and I was so totally lost it wasn't funny. It took a while to get caught up but it almost turned me off learning. Your self-confidence takes quite a beating when you a moved to a new class and you don't understand what the teacher is saying. The teacher was talking about squaring numbers so I drew little squares around the numbers until I finally got a textbook, yeah having to wait a week just to get the textbook really makes it hard to catchup in a class. Eventually I caught up and I was okay.

We are home schooling our daughter this year as much to redshirt her as to give her the basics she needs. Boiling it all away there are only two major skills she needs to learn right now and that is literacy and numeracy. So we have something to focus on.

Right now it has been so cold that she is having a hard time. She really likes going outside and playing and it has been too cold for that lately. We need to hit the indoor play space at the mall or even McDonalds to play off some of her energy. She did get a pink box of Legos for Christmas that she just loves though but it isn't the same as running around and climbing.

Would she get anything better in school. I don't think so. She would likely get the gift of time, or more accurately, the curse of being ignored. The teacher has to focus on the borderline kids to make sure they pass. She'll have to ignore those who can't be helped. Why? Because there is only so much time and love in the day. It is simple triage logic, save those you can and comfort those you can't. If you are gifted you are passing and will get little attention, If you are close to passing you get lots of attention to help you pass, if you are not close then you languish. Since so much of school is about that now if you are at the bottom you stay at the bottom.

This indicates to me that the Matthew Principle (those who have get) is not really an intrinsic thing but more and extrinsic thing. A gifted 5 year old doesn't look gifted when surrounded by average 7 year olds. She is not in an environment that shows off her capabilities. But amazingly it seems like that happens all the time, it all comes down to when your birthday was. I am pretty sure parents saw this but couldn't quite put their finger on it. Now we have a framework to talk about it with. And that is good.

The war on boys

Instapundit.com -

We have a daughter but I don't think schools are any better with girl games then boy games.

How clean is the electricity I use? - Power Profiler | Clean Energy | US EPA

How clean is the electricity I use? - Power Profiler | Clean Energy | US EPA: "In the United States, electricity is generated in many different ways, with a wide variation in environmental impact. Electricity generation from the combustion of fossil fuels contributes toward unhealthy air quality, acid rain, and global climate change."

In Colorado 81% of our energy comes from coal.

from LesJones

Miserable Donuts: The training I felt uncomfortable about - and shouldn't have

Miserable Donuts: The training I felt uncomfortable about - and shouldn't have: "But one thing that good first aid/trauma training can get across to you is a sense of, for lack of a better term, 'priority'. Certain things must be done if naught else is accomplished.

Like, seeing what is wrong in the first place.

I am currently home on leave, and I was driving on a back road when I came upon a two car accident. 911 had been called by an eyewitness - and the other two people standing near the wreck had done...naught."

Training is the big thing. Knowledge really is power.

Miserable Donuts: The training I felt uncomfortable about - and shouldn't have

Miserable Donuts: The training I felt uncomfortable about - and shouldn't have: "But one thing that good first aid/trauma training can get across to you is a sense of, for lack of a better term, 'priority'. Certain things must be done if naught else is accomplished.

Like, seeing what is wrong in the first place.

I am currently home on leave, and I was driving on a back road when I came upon a two car accident. 911 had been called by an eyewitness - and the other two people standing near the wreck had done...naught."

Training is the big thing. Knowledge really is power.

Emergency Preparation: Safe Room

You can make many kinds of safe rooms for many different purposes. I am not going to talk about a panic room where you can hide in case of a home invasion that is a totally different idea from what I want to talk about.

One of the big ones talked about is the Expedient Safe Room for Chemical Incidents. It isn't just about terrorists, there are many HAZMAT incidents across the country and a terrorist attack can just be considered a badly placarded HAZMAT incident.

Some scientists went out after the 1991 Gulf War to see if the Israeli idea of sealing off a room is one that would actually work.

The link is to a pdf that explains how effective duct tape and plastic sheeting really is.

It is most effective if it is 10 mils thick or more. You can get 10 mil plastic sheeting at Home Depot, Lowes and other home improvement places.

If you live in Tornado Alley a tornado safe room is a good thing to build into your home. A place without windows near the center of the home that is well protected. If you have one of these then upgrading it for chemical incidents is not hard at all.

If you live anywhere it is good to set up a safe room, often this can be the master bedroom, The idea is to set things up so you can be comfortable in case the power goes out or some other or all other utilities go out for a few days. Basically, you are looking to have a well insulated room, an alternative source of heat or cool (if you live in someplace like Tucson), a small fridge for essentials like medicine and milk that is powered by some alternative source, e.g. batteries, solar power, or generator which is outside.

Look at what can happen and think how you would react.

Knowing what you can and should do is half the work.

from Instapundit

Rotkohl, red cabbage sauerkraut

One of the best compliments a cook can get is, "This is good, what's in it?...but I hate that."

One of the dishes we brought to Christmas dinner was Rotkohl. My nephew's wife's parents were there and her mother was really enjoying the Rotkohl and asked what was in it. It is a pretty simple recipe and when I got to the caraway she was amazing. She hates caraway. We ground it because while my Dad likes caraway, a traditional German flavor, he doesn't like the seeds getting in his teeth. So we ground it in our spice grinder. It also added a wonderful flavor in a shorter time then whole seeds.

Rotkohl (red cabbage sauerkraut)
1 12 oz jar red cabbage, drained
1 medium onion thinly sliced
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon caraway seeds, freshly ground
salt and pepper
oil for sauteing

Heat a heavy pot of medium-high heat and saute the onions until they just begin to brown. Add the red cabbage, raisins and caraway. Bring to a boil and then reduce to low and let simmer for 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning before serving. Serves 8-10 as a side dish. Goes well with ham and scalloped potatoes.

Cool Tool Car kit air compressor

Many years ago we got a car emergency kit as a gift. On the whole the piece that we've used most has been the air compressor.

It isn't that there aren't a lot of good tools in the kit. It has a rather nice emergency triangle, but it has been the air compressor that has saved the day most often.

It's snowed a lot the past few weeks and I haven't checked the tire pressure since it got cold. But today at the store when I was adding windshield washer fluid I noticed one of the tires was pretty low. It was down to half pressure. I guess I shouldn't be surprised there are a lot of pot holes and they are very good at knocking air out of a tire. So I pulled it out, pulled it into the cigarette lighter and let it do its thing. It took only a few minutes and we were back at full pressure.

Highly recommened.

Signaling the Mothership

Sometimes you get a neighbor that goes a little nuts with the Christmas lights: 10,000+ blinken lights.

Usually, they are not synchronized they are just plugged in and they go for a few hours until they get turned off. Occasionally they'll sync up and light up the neighborhood like a min-Sun.

Of course, some geek figures a way out to make the lights do what they want all the time.



That gets all kinds of attention, but can only be seem a few thousand feet up.

But this will be putting out enough Watts to actually be heard by a few nearby planets.



from Slashdot

An Experiment

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Technophilia: Discover the .EDU Underground

Technophilia: Discover the .EDU Underground: "Little appreciated outside the world of academia, there are literally thousands of .edu sites bursting with incredibly useful and interesting information and resources. Most of these sites won't pop up to the surface of the average search engine quest, and so they wait, neglected and underused...until now. Keep reading for a quick tour through the mysterious underground world of .edu"

Ooh, good stuff.

from Lifehacker.

College educated slaves

Current View: "We are now playing the same games with college tuitions, thus assuring that there will never again be an American middle class in the usual sense. One may inherit an education from wealthy parents; or one may be so damned deep in dept that the notion of independence never comes up. Debtors are not middle class."

The American education system is no working and not only does it have design flaws, some people are making it worse. Not that I blame them exactly they are working in their self-interest they want more influence and money and they have found a way to get it.

With families having only 1 or 2 kids parent don't learn what good education is until long after the schools have been paid.

This is one of a host of other reasons to pay off our debt. If you are in debt you are a slave. Actually a debtor is worth less then a slave. A slave, as property, would be taken care of to maximize the benefit of the initial investment. Kinda like a car it would be taken care of. A debtor is more like an old beater of a car that would be driven until it dies and no thought is given to it. Slavery is and was awful beyond belief but debt is no better, and in some ways worse.

The worst part about it may be the realization that you did it to yourself.

People will stay in jobs they hate, hurting themselves and the companies they work for and their family and friends because they need that next paycheck to "make ends meet" which never seem to. It has been my experience that companies can smell the desperation and will try to suck you dry.

When you don't need that next paycheck the relationship chances and they fear and hate the lack of control they have over you. Entrepreneurship makes more sense more of the time.

The wise learn from other people's mistakes.

Bad career advice: Do what you love � Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Bad career advice: Do what you love Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk: "One of the worst pieces of career advice that I bet each of you has not only gotten but given is to “do what you love.”"

From the other side of the fence. Her main issue is finding the perfect job. Now, that I agree is stupidly impossible. Most people can do and are good at more then one thing.

I think what people are confusing here is that old false trope of "one true job" like there is just one soul mate out there. There isn't. Even if you are 1 in a million that means there are 6,000 others just like you out there.

There are jobs and careers you will be much better suited for then someone else would be, but your combination of strengths are different then others.

I am looking at my strengths, and things I spend my time on. I really spend a lot of time reading and writing. I spend time learning new things and synthesizing them with things I've already learned to see what new insights I can get. I also spend lots of time thinking about design. How things are put together and how they can be improved. I hope to turn those things into something great for me.

Love Your Work or Don’t Work at All

Love Your Work or Don’t Work at All: "When you do work you dislike, you poison your output. If that is the only work you’re capable of doing, you’re better off doing nothing. Meet your needs by asking for hand-outs if you must, since at least you won’t be poisoning others with your fear and resentment."

I concur with the general sentiment of this post, If not all the particulars. One of the jobs I had was a job at a call center and it was a lousy job. Pay was low, stress was pretty high and low meaning, the only reason the call center existed was because they couldn't trust the installers to be honest about their work. It was so bad I couldn't remember what I did all day. I remember the feeling of wanting to cry and other people actually doing it. It was mindless and pointless work.

It was so bad I ended up in the hospital after 3 months and having to quit. So I know by experience how poisonous a job can be. And because I didn't qualify for health coverage we lost more money then I made there.

I didn't think there could be jobs that were beneath me, but obviously there are. People talk about toxic coworkers but there are toxic jobs too. Life is too short to work in a poisonous environment. It also hurts to much. Better to leave then to end up in the hospital or morgue, because your body will tell you that it is wrong and will work to get you out of there if you don't.

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - New York Times

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - New York Times: "He said he spent 25 hours preparing each new lecture, choreographing every detail and stripping out every extra sentence."

This guy is impressive. This is truly a labor of love and I am very impressed. I hope this material is still around when I get to teach my daughter about this.

Pandemic Ventilator Project

Pandemic Ventilator Project

Now I certainly am into emergency preparation and this is one of those things that is important to think about before hand.

MacGyvering something in times of stress is very hard. Doing the work before hand is a great idea and is great for boosting creativity. Stockpiling a few hard to get items before hand would also save a lot of lives. You won't be able to get things overnighted in many cases during a disaster but having a few critical parts on hand should not be that big of a deal.

The big thing is to have the plans the critical parts and a list of other materials handy and people knowing about it. And not having things tossed because no one knows what it is or for.

For me I am focusing on communications now that we have our Amateur Radio Licenses. We still need a radio for my wife but that will come. But this has me thinking about other things we might be able to do.

I have instructions of building fox hole radios but I have to try it and make sure it works.
Kludging a transmitter is another story. I need to think about that one.

Dream Home 2.0 Kitchen Cutting Station

The knife has been the most basic tool of the kitchen since the Neolithic era. It lets you get things ready for the application of heat which is cooking.

I don't like walking around the kitchen with a big knife when the little one is around and there is a lot of time wasted going to the sink and back to wash it for the next item.

So what makes up a good kitchen cutting station:
• First, it has to be at a good height. If you are close to average the typical countertop is fine. You are looking for your arms to be bent at a comfortable angle, if it is too far away then stacking a few cutting boards can help if you are too short a few rubber mats can help.
• Easy access to the sink, The cutting station should be on the same counter as the sink, that way you can clean the knife without swinging it where people can be walking. Since food is always cleaned before use anyway, having the sink right there also saves quite a bit of time.
• Storage for knives and cutting boards is essential, there is no point to having to walk across the kitchen to bring it to the right place to use it. I like a knife block with horizontal slots since the blades won't be resting on anything and dulling. With separate cutting boards for vegetables and meat keeping them someplace is important too.
• Plenty of counter space for freedom of movement. The space for cutting should be 36-48 inches (91-122 cm) wide. That gives you plenty of elbow room when the knives are moving and you have a pile of ingredients. Ideally, I want enough space on both sides to have a half sheet pan to hold raw ingredients on one side and prepared ingredients on the other. At least having handy access to plates and bowls for finished goods is great.
• A place to put a cookbook to check on ingredient amounts would be great too.
• For cleanup, a place for paper towels, and sanitizer to kill those nasty germs should be handy too.
• Placement, the cutting station should be closer to the food storage are then the serving area because you are going to be preparing food and often cooking it rather then serving it directly.

Emergency Preparation: First Aid kits

Injuries Can Be Emergencies and Disasters
It is worthwhile considering (unpleasant though it may be) to consider what might happen, in terms of possible injuries, during a disaster. Some are obviously worse than others, but all should be thought through when preparing:
• Lacerations–breaks in the skin, minor or severe, which pose a risk of infection, and/or in some cases serious bleeding.
• Fractures (broken bones).
• Sprains–injured and painful tendons which can limit mobility.
• Burns–usually from fire, electrical, or chemical injury–although severe cold (frostbite) is similar in many ways.
• Temperature-related dangers–hypothermia, heat prostration &etc.
• Infection–usually a risk from other injuries, although contaminated food and water are a risk as well.
• Heart-attacks caused by stress.
• Births caused by stress.

First Aid kits contain things you know how to use to help someone who has been injured. Sadly, most of the kits found in stores today are little more then an assortment of bandages.

What do you know how to do?
The most important thing you need for building any kind of kit is knowledge and training. It doesn't matter what you have in the kit if you don't know how to use it. Take a class, read a book do something to learn more about how to help someone in trouble. Check out www.redcross.org for more on classes.

What injuries do you expect to encounter?
The second most important thing in building a kit is expectations. The things you put in your kit will depend on what it is you expect to be taking care of, it also depends on if this is an individual kit, a kit that stays in the car/office or one at home. A family with five active boys has different needs then one for an apartment of female college students, a kit for an office is different for one for hiking the backcountry.

Two levels of Kits:
• Handy Kit
A handy kit is a small kit that you can carry with you all the time or have in the glovebox of the car or in your desk at work. You can deal with a few small injuries and maybe a medium injury.
• Home Kit
No one ever thinks about a year's supply of bandages and such but this can be lifesaving in a major disaster to help treat many injured people or helping a few people heal over the long term.

The Handy Kit
• CPR mask
• Cell phone: this can be an old one with a working battery, 911 calls are always allowed.
• Band-aids various sizes
• Butterfly bandages
• 4x4 gauze pads
• 1" or 2" bandage tape to secure gauze or a sprain.
• Betadine/Bactine for cleaning wounds.
• Neosporin/bacitracin for scrapes.
• Alcohol wipes/Hand sanitizer for cleaning equipment.
• Nitrile / Vinyl / Latex gloves for protecting yourself or marking a place.
• LED flashlight/headlight + extra batteries.
• Bandage scissors/trauma shears.
• Red bandanas to make slings or hold dressings in place or signaling device.
• Glucagel or tube of writing frosting (not blue) to help someone in diabetic distress.
• Water purification tablets to purify water to clean wounds or a box/pouch of water.
• Aspirin or your favorite pain-reliever in 2 tablet packages.
• Antihistamine (like Benadryl) in 2 tablet packages to deal with mild allergic reactions.
• Splint Material: SAM splint, carpenters ruler, magazine, or cardboard.
• Instant Hot and Instant Cold compresses.
• Moleskin for blisters.
• Pen and paper to write down what is happening and whatever instructions you get from 911.
• Permanent marker to write on people or things what you've done to them.
• Feminine Hygiene pads to stop blood loss.
• Space/emergency blanket to stay warm, treat for shock

The Home Kit
Mainly you will need a lot more of what you have in the Handy Kit.
• Box(es) of latex gloves or equivalent.
• Large supplies of pain reliever and antihistamine.
• Lots of band-aids and gauze pads.
• Rolls of Ace bandages and bandage tape.
• A few Instant Hot and Instant Cold compresses
There are also many things you can keep in a home kit that are impractical to keep in the car for most people.
• Medical books, knowledge is the most powerful tool of all.
• Several reusable gel hot/cold compresses.
• A thermometer or two.
• An otoscope for looking in ears and noses and such.
• Heating pad.
• Humidifier.
• Splinting material.
• Blood pressure kit.
• LED flashlights/headlights + extra batteries
• Tweezers for splinter removal.
• Feminine Hygiene supplies (useful for stopping blood loss)
• Bulb syringe to clear a newborns nose or cleanse a wound with sterile water
• Cotton shoe string to fix shoes, tie off a babies umbilical cord or tie back your hair.
• Towels to cover people in shock, to warm a baby, to stop blood loss.
• Eye glass repair kit
• Soap
• Sterile Water/Saline to clean contact lenses and wounds.
• Sun screen

The Vial of Life
The Vial of Life is a nationwide program. All USA EMTs are trained to look for one. Where they expect to find it: In your refrigerator.

What it is: an info sheet for your friendly local EMTs to use if they come to your house and find you lying on the floor, unable to answer questions about what your medical conditions are, what medications you’re on, what your allergies are, your DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) status, your date of birth, doctor’s address and phone number, and other Helpful Information. A recent photo wouldn’t be a bad idea so we can be sure that the information we’re working from matches the unconscious body on the floor. (Even if you live alone, maybe there’s a guest over. It’s nice to be sure.) Insurance numbers and the usual stuff they’d ask at the hospital at the registration desk if you were capable of answering questions goes on the form too: It’s coming with you.

The big things that need to be there are your name and date of birth (since they can’t start the paperwork without them), your allergies (so they won’t accidentally kill you), and your medical history (since most people come down with HIBGIA: Had It Before, Got It Again). Please write down your medications, please spell them right, and please write neatly. If you don’t speak English they need to know what language to try instead. Typing is a big plus.
For more information go to: http://www.vialoflife.com/index.html and 8026080888008808080808
http://www.mypreciouskid.com/

For a free copy of Where There Is No Doctor and other free medical and health books go to http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php
For Wilderness Medicine http://www.wilderness-survival.net/chp1.php

Career Transitions

Career Transitions: "I know your problems seem big to you, but lots of people have already solved essentially the same ones. You can go to any library and find books explaining how they did it too. The physical step-by-step solutions are easy to come by, but the downside is that virtually all of them require a certain degree of inner strength, courage, and discipline."

Here is yet another post on most problems already being solved.

Scientist Employs 'Circuit Theory' to Protect Endangered Species

Scientist Employs 'Circuit Theory' to Protect Endangered Species : "Ecologists are now using 'circuit theory,' thanks in large part to a scientist named Brad McRae who works at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. McRae designed electronics for printers before completing a Ph.D. in forest science at Northern Arizona University. He realized how striking the parallel was between the circuits he had worked on as an engineer and the species he was now trying to understand. "

I have long thought that specialization and the latest trend toward super-specialization may not be the best thing. It tends to narrow the ways you think about how to go about solving problems. In college we are taught certain ways to solve certain kinds of problems and we use that for everything. We get a good hammer but forget that there are other tools out thee.

I love to study how big problems were solved. Hoover Dam, The Erie Canal, the Panama Canal, the Apollo space program, the SR-71 and U-2 aircraft, Filming the Lord of the Rings.

This is a strong reminder to get outside of your specialty and see what others are doing to solve problems.

UPDATE; There are several problem solving theories that understand this. from dumblittleman

Books: None of the Above: Books: The New Yorker

Books: None of the Above: Books: The New Yorker: "Flynn then talked about what we’ve learned from studies of adoption and mixed-race children—and that evidence didn’t fit a genetic model, either. If I.Q. is innate, it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s a mixed-race child’s mother or father who is black. But it does: children with a white mother and a black father have an eight-point I.Q. advantage over those with a black mother and a white father. "

This is very interesting and I think this is known at some levels by everyone. One of my nephews has had a hard time adopting a child because they don't photograph well. Most mothers like their children to go to "pretty" parents. This one black mother wanted her child to go to the smartest parents they could find. His finishing up a Ph.D. and she has a Masters. That was good enough for her.

“The mind is much more like a muscle than we’ve ever realized,” Flynn said. “It needs to get cognitive exercise. It’s not some piece of clay on which you put an indelible mark.”

They finally realized this?! Everyone I know would say that was totally flaming obvious.

I.Q. does measure something and is a good predictor of academic success but is mostly useless outside of academia. Bill Gates isn't 24,000 times smarter then average but he is 24,000 times richer.

The Flynn Effect has odd implications:
" If we work in the opposite direction, the typical teen-ager of today, with an I.Q. of 100, would have had grandparents with average I.Q.s of 82—seemingly below the threshold necessary to graduate from high school. And, if we go back even farther, the Flynn effect puts the average I.Q.s of the schoolchildren of 1900 at around 70, which is to suggest, bizarrely, that a century ago the United States was populated largely by people who today would be considered mentally retarded."
Obviously I.Q. is more complex then what the tests are able to measure and people have not thought through the implications of what renorming the test means.

That article goes into that. Well worth reading and the arguments are just beginning.

Everyone has their time, everyone has energy and health which effects their time and they have talents, certain innate capabilities that allow them to pick certain skills more easily then others can. It is what we choose to do with these things that make us what we are.

"It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -Dumbledore

My Way News - Families Flee Freezing, Powerless Homes

My Way News - Families Flee Freezing, Powerless Homes: "More than 70 people have been treated for carbon dioxide poisoning in Oklahoma City and Tulsa."

CO2 poisoning is a major problem when the power is out. A battery powered detector is a good thing to have at such times.

One of the reasons we got the apartment we are in right now is because it has a fireplace. It seems okay and ready to use.

An alternative source of heat is always important in the winter. I've got to make sure to remember that in our next home.

One thing though is that the basement may be nice and cool in the summer but might also be nice and warm in the winter. Or at least warmer then the upper levels of the house. It is linked to ground and will be near 55°F most of the year. That is not terribly warm but way above freezing.

Checklists and more

Current Chaos Manor mail: "This piece belongs on the Mandatory Reading List for High School Seniors, right next to Peter Drucker's _The Effective Executive_. "

I ran across the New Yorker piece earlier. Now I have another book to put on the list to read.

Dream Home 2.0: The Library

Hackito Ergo Sum: The Library Problem: "In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were."

That ain't nothing, we've got 6000+ books, at least that was where I stopped counting, but it is less then 7000 books. Right now they are mostly in storage except for the 600 or so essential ones. Except for about half a books books we are currently working on at least one of us has read each book. And that doesn't even count all the books we've borrowed from the library. One of the downsides of having above average reading speeds is that we go through books very quickly and they then to pile up.

You know you have a lot of books when you are triple stacking paperbacks with books underneath to allow you to see that there are more there. 2x4s or something might have been better but this was something to do with the not of good books.

That family has worked really hard to organize their books and that is great. We have a different way. We just needed something simple to make the books reasonably easy to find. So we just kept them in broad categories in particular places:

Office: The work related books.
• Engineering
• Science
• Personal Development
• Business Development
• General Reference

Kitchen: Except for the Alton Brown books we haven't read these cover to cover but they are fun to peruse for ideas.
• Cookbooks
• Entertaining
• Nutrition
• Medical
• Gardening

Library:
• Science Fiction and fantasy series by author. This is the bulk of our collection and easiest to hold together.
• Historical fiction.
• Other novels by author.
• Religion
• Classics
• Humor
• &etc.

The media room has all the video and audio products and our daughter had all of her books in a bookshelf in her room. We also had a shelf for oversized books, mostly Art in the living room.

Are all of these good or great books, no but since we have prescreened a large number of them they are generally better then average books. We've had friends comment, "I love coming to your home it's like going to my favorite bookstore." Lending books is just fine a simple checkout sheet taped to the side of one of the bookcases worked for us, if it was leaving the house with a friend.

We haven't had much trouble with duplicates either, but then we buy most of our books online now even if we find something nice at the store or library. It's just cheaper.

We are now in a much smaller place so we are beginning a purge of the not so good books. The hard part here is deciding what isn't worthy to stay. We'll want to remember what we got rid of so we'll be using Delicious Library to hold that stuff, so we don't buy it again later unless we mean it.

Education | The race is not always to the richest | Economist.com

Education | The race is not always to the richest | Economist.com : "The last recommendation—sparking children's interest in the subject with appealing science-based activities—comes with a caveat: a keen interest in science does not always mean being good at it."

Interesting.

Simple Thing Make Huge Differences

Peter Pronovost's contribution to medicine will be as significant as Ignaz Semmelweis', and probably as well known.

Which will be too bad for us if the medical community ignores him as they did Ignaz for so long.

The problem: each ICU patient has 178 daily tasks required to keep them alive for another day. Each ICU nurse has between 4-8 patients to watch over each day, not including assisting any time there is an emergency in the unit. So each ICU has at least 712 tasks to do each day to keep their patients alive.

Could you imagine a Daily To Do list of 712 actions? Sure you can, but thinking about it probably made your head hurt and your heart quail. The amazing thing is that they get it right most of the time. For example, putting in a line (an IV to us average people) takes only 5 steps and they do all the steps 60% of the time and line infections only occur about 11% of the time.

But what happens when you add a checklist and a kit containing all the things you need in one convenient package? Line infections drop to almost 0%.

A medical breakthrough that reduces line infection rates to nearly 0% should be hailed as a major breakthrough, Nobel Prize winner talk should be going on, everyone should be changing to the new system with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the response seems to be, "what? more paperwork?" I can appreciate that sentiment as the level of paperwork in hospitals and doctors offices now looks to be overwhelming even with computers to deal with the storage problem.

Don't forget the cost of learning this was 1 or more human lives.

The article goes into the story of the B-17 and it's first crash and how people called it "too much airplane for one many to fly." But adding a simple checklist make it much easier to fly. The writer also doesn't mention that all airliners come with a little clipboard attached to the yoke for the current checklist.

Heck, we went to the Moon of the power of checklists. The computers they used were less powerful then a $20 scientific calculator you can get at most grocery stores today.

This reminds me The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two We can only hold about 7 things in our short term memory, 712 is way beyond that. While we can certainly chuck this stuff into something we can more easily handle it is important to realize that an interruption can cause us to forget what it was we were doing or what step we were at and we just forget.

When you are programming you can get into flowand be holding huge and complex data structures in your mind, but a "quick" interruption can make all that come crashing down, and it takes a long time, about 20 minutes to recover.

I know a lot of my first aid training came in the form of instilling checklists into our minds: breathing, bleeding, shock. When we had our car crash that checklist came to mind and that is what I did for us, even though I was trapped in the car and had 11 fractures.

I am thinking of doing more checklists for myself, that should make a number of things I need and want to do in life a lot easier.

Emergency Preparation: Snowstorm

We had our first real snowstorm this weekend and we pretty much sat it out at home. Just as it was getting going I ran to the store for a few items to make our lives easier. Getting there and back wasn't too bad though it was a freezing fog/drizzle thing that was sticking to cars and trees but the roads were not remotely as bad as this. I found that the wipers were practically useless The tips of the blades did some work but the part right in front of my face just didn't do anything except smear so it was easier to just use a hand squeegee before moving. The supermarket is only a couple of blocks away and that wasn't bad at all.

I don't like going on the roads during the first major snow event since most people have forgotten how to driver over the summer. The roads were warm enough that it wasn't slippery but that changed rapidly. It was much smarter just to stay home and ride it out. It doesn't really matter if the road is all that icy do the right thing at the right speed (maybe that should be the wrong thing at the wrong speed) and your tires will break free of the traction to the road. Once we were driving back from the airport in SLC and we were following a pickup carrying a pile of light brown slabs. We had a fair amount of room 4-5 car-lengths when something about a square meter and several inches thick fell out the back. Slamming on the brakes and turning the wheel don't do nothing about changing direction. We were just skidding down the road still in a straight line right at the chuck of brown stuff. When it bounced off of the front of the car I realized it was foam rubber, but my relief was short-lived as the car finally started reacting to the fact I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel at 70 mph several seconds ago. After hitting the stops on the wheel a few times I was, with God's help, able to recover from the skid but we stopped on the side of the road for a few minutes to allow our heart-rates to drop to something more reasonable.

Since it is winter it is a good idea to have a survival kit on the car. With our recent move things are all over the place and we have to find or recreate one. A big bag of GORP and some space blankets at the least would help. The scrapper is already in the car as is a brush so that is a start. We are also carrying our HT around all the time too.

Another things we should make up is a flu kit. It also seems that flu season is in full swing. I got a shot and out daughter got a nasal spray but my wife is allergic to the standard flu shot and they didn't have any of the other kind so she is doing without for now.
One cool thing they found was an oral rehydrating solution,

You can make a simple homemade rehydration solution by mixing
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 Tablespoons sugar into
• 4 cups (1 quart/~1 liter) of water or apple juice
and drinking it slowly.

Like sports drinks, it tastes horrible if you are fine but wonderful if you are sick.

We are supposed to get more snow tomorrow so we'll go get a few things today.

The Pearl Harbor Day Page

The Pearl Harbor Day Page: "At dawn on Sunday, December 7, 1941, naval aviation forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet center at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and other military targets. "

Officials: Ham Radio Operators Are Storm's 'Unsung Heroes' - Weather Alert - Special Coverage News Story - KPTV Portland

Officials: Ham Radio Operators Are Storm's 'Unsung Heroes' - Weather Alert - Special Coverage News Story - KPTV Portland: "'One of the problems in this is always communication,' Gov. Ted Kulongoski said after a visit Tuesday to Vernonia and a fly-over there and other affected areas. 'I'm going to tell you who the heroes were from the very beginning of this...the ham radio operators. These people just came in and actually provided a tremendous communication link to us.'"

I just got my Amateur Extra License and my wife has her Technician, we got them almost on a whim. But there has been this feeling of a storm coming, the past couple of years 40 people in our area have gotten new ham licenses. We've organized as many as wanted into groups to try and coordinate a response in case of a disaster. We have a few people with powerful HF rigs for long distance work, though most of us are just trying to get good with the short range FM voice stuff.

Ham radio has always been a backup for official communications and will be used that way for a long time. Hams do incredible things because we know that we can save lives just by getting the right information tot he right people.

One of the powerful things people talk about is your network. Ham radio is another network and one that can reach around the world, even in times of emergency. Find out more about Ham radio at ARRL.

from Slashdot

San Jose Mercury News - Out of the box: Valley companies dump cubicles for open office spaces

San Jose Mercury News - Out of the box: Valley companies dump cubicles for open office spaces: "Whatever Intel's decision, for many, cubes are becoming dinosaurs."

This is one of those ideas that work great on paper but crash terribly in real life since they haven't written down the most important rule. Only the same type of people can be in the One Big Room.

It will work fine, if and only if, all the creative types or all the telephone types are together, people like the art department and the computer programmers, they have basically the same work style as they are both creative, lots of time faced down creating something wonderful. You can also put customer service and sales in the same room as they are all on the phone all day and that works too.

It is really easy to see if One Big Room is working or not. If most of the creative types are coming in at odd times or asking for telecommuting or you keep running into them in outlying conference rooms then you know your workspace isn't working and is costing you significant amounts in lost productivity.

from slashdot

Emergency Preparation Backup power.

What We Are Encouraged To Do
“We continue to encourage members to store sufficient food, clothing, and where possible fuel for at least one year. We have not laid down an exact formula for what should be stored. However, we suggest that members concentrate on essential foods that sustain life, such as grains, legumes, cooking oil, powdered milk, salt, sugar or honey, and water. Most families can achieve and maintain this basic level of preparedness. The decision to do more than this rests with the individual.
“We encourage you to follow this counsel with the assurance that a people prepared through obedience to the commandments of God need not fear.” (First Presidency Letter to priesthood leaders, 24 June 1988.)

Fuel Storage
One of the hardest things to store is fuel. By its very nature it is a very energetic substance and that can lead to certain problems: like it starting to burn before you mean it to and in places you don’t want it to. It is not usually something you want to store large quantities of in your home. So some kind of out-building or storage shed is a good thing to have.

Fuel for Electricity
At the very least you need some batteries for flashlights and radios and the like. There re two kinds of batteries: Primary and Secondary. Primary batteries are single use and disposable, like alkaline and lithium batteries that can only be used once, but will store fully charged for several years. They create voltage and current through and irreversible chemical reaction. Secondary batteries are rechargeable, like NiCad, NiMH, and Lithium-Ion batteries. Properly cared for they can be used hundreds of times. With the use of an inverter you can use your car to charge your cellphone, laptop or any other rechargeable battery.

A generator is a useful little device, but storing large amounts of gasoline is challenging. Don’t buy an over-powerful generator, you don’t have to power your whole house; the refrigerator, the furnace fan and the phone and any vital medical equipment you might have. A small photovoltaic solar energy production system to backup the basics is not all that expensive.

You also likely have a gas grill in your backyard. A few canisters of propane will allow you to cook food and boil water for quite some time. A propane camp stove will also be very useful for that.

Safety First
Remember not to use these indoors, even an attached garage is indoors even if the door is open. Carbon monoxide can get into your home and kill your family.

Fuel for Heat
Heating your home in the winter is an important thing to do, without heat you will die. Even so you don’t need to heat the whole house. Moving everyone into one bedroom and just heating it during extreme cold may be a useful idea.

There are a variety of fuels that can be stored for use, the main ones are: wood, coal and oil.

Wood is easily stored outside under a tarp or other protective cover and will last many years. Make sure the chimney is inspected, and if necessary cleaned, every year. It takes about 4 cords (4 ft x 4 ft x 32 ft) of wood to heat a 1500 square foot house for one year.

Coal also stores well and provides much more heat per pound then wood. Coal can spontaneously combust in piles greater then ½ ton. It takes about 6 tons (240 cubic feet) of coal to heat a home for one year. However, coal could be stored buried in the backyard, preferably under a flower bed or other space that can be easily disturbed during cold weather.

Oil is one of the best kinds of fuel for storage, it can be stored easily in a heavy-gauge steel container and has lots of energy. 500 gallons will heat a typical home for one year.

Other fuels
Propane and natural gas both require pressure vessels for storage.
Kerosene is a very popular supplementary heating fuel and can be used for lighting.
Lamp oil is a highly refined version of kerosene that burns very cleanly. Usually used for light but produces plenty of heat as a byproduct and can heat a small room.
Pellet stoves can use wood pellets or even grain to produce heat.
Peat and manure can be burned for heat. The pioneers often used manure to cook with.
Rubber tires are made from oil and will burn. It is best to have some tools on hand to cut them into smaller, more useful sizes. Not a great choice but useful for emergencies.
Passive solar can be made use of by building a box as wide as your window painted black inside with a plexiglas top pointed south at a 30º angle to the ground attached to your window to allow air heated in the box to come into the room.

Damn Interesting Space Radio: More Static, Less Talk

Damn Interesting Space Radio: More Static, Less Talk: "To demonstrate the degrading effect of distance on an everyday omnidirectional signal, one might imagine a spacecraft equipped with an Arecibo-style radio receiver directed towards the Earth. If this hypothetical spacecraft were to set out for the interstellar medium, its massive 305-meter wide dish would lose its tenuous grip on AM radio before reaching Mars. Somewhere en route to Jupiter, the UHF television receivers would spew nothing but static. Before passing Saturn, the last of the FM radio stations would fade away, leaving all of Earth's electromagnetic chatter behind well before leaving our own solar system. "

This is the whole propagation and inverse-square law thing. Once you start thinking about it unless someone is deliberately trying communicate with us it is terribly hard to find signals.

Just trying to do Ham radio stuff around our own planet is hard enough. Just trying to receive from Voyager at the edge of the solar system is challenging for scientists. Then don't forget all the radio noise all the suns in the region are spewing out.

This is a very hard problem.

Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69

Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69: "'They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,' Knievel said. 'People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner.'"

To remember.

Beacon Broadside: Read This! Instilling a Love of Reading in Kids

Beacon Broadside: Read This! Instilling a Love of Reading in Kids: "Among the study’s more dire findings: Only 30% of 13-year-olds read for pleasure on a regular basis. The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9% in 1984 to 19% in 2004. The average American between ages 15 and 24 spends only 7 minutes a day reading and half never read books for pleasure."

Part of it is what are they calling reading, from the context it seems to be pleasure or literary reading.

Reading for pleasure is a great thing but after reading page after page of school work and researching/surfing on the 'Net you want to do something else.

One of the things I find disturbing is the lack of backyards in most neighborhoods. You can't really tell your children to go out and play anymore, because you have to keep an eye on them. Now that means you can't do cooking or household chores while the kids play out back.

People of the Web - Rolling in cash

People of the Web - Rolling in cash: "Linda started her online business, the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, as a joke. It was 1994 and she wanted to teach herself how to design a website. Since she lived on the prairie in southwest Kansas, where rolling tumbleweeds are sometimes the only dynamic feature of an endless flat horizon, she invented a farm that sold tumbleweeds..."

The funny thing is that I've heard about this before but thought it was a joke.

But it also tells us what you have in nauseating abundance, some people are searching for, and are willing to pay.

It also shows us the power of the Internet. There is no real way you could have created a business plan for selling tumbleweed. You would conclude that while there may be a market out there there is no inexpensive way to actually find it and to market to it.

What do you have in abundance that might be driving you crazy?

from MaginalRevolution

Scientific American: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

Scientific American: Nothing Says "Early Earth Was Cool" Like World's Oldest Diamonds: "In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easy problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success."

This article isn't about gifted children at all it is about a learning mindset.

The way parents and teachers praise their children can have huge effects on how they react to challenges.

Rather then giving them a generic, "You're smart," Use a more growth oriented "You must have worked really hard."

It looks like all those years of focusing on self-esteem probably severely limited a good portion of the students it was focused on, for life.

So what does this mean to what I need to do for my children. I need to focus on giving work-based praise.

A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

This is a great resource. I have a lot more exploring to do.

On Homeownership

Homeownership is really turning into a hot topic. But it isn't just owning a home that is at issue here it is also the community you live in. Cities are just beginning to figure out that families are important contributers to growth. The sad thing is that most developers and city counsels don't seem to get it.

Owning your home, and I mean actually owning it by having a paid off mortgage and are keeping up with the property taxes, really means that your home, generally, can't be taken away from you on the whim of the economy, company or even a single person.

Mortgage payments tend to be a very large percentage of a family's expenses, typically near 30%. Paying off the mortgage means I get a the equivalent of a 30% raise, I'd like that. I'm sure you would too.

But something that drives me crazy is that communities aren't planned with families in mind. One of my nephews moved into a new development a few years ago and there still isn't a grocery store nearby. A thousand-odd families and no where within 5 miles to get food? How dumb is that. Sure there are spaces available to build but no one has yet. And the backyards are so small you can have a swing set or a porch or a garden but not really more then one.

You want a family friendly home, put a big window in the kitchen overlooking the backyard where you can watch the children play while making dinner. In college the married student housing was great a group of apartments were all facing into the courtyard that had a swing-set and a sand box shaded by trees and a bit of open space and all the apartments could watch the children play. That was great. Now some neighborhoods have a park in the middle but no one can see it from inside their homes, useless.

Owning a home can be good but you really need to have a good plan at what you are trying to do there or it can really hurt you.

'No Child' Law May Slight The Gifted, Experts Say

'No Child' Law May Slight The Gifted, Experts Say: "'We don't find any evidence that the gifted kids are harmed,' said Chicago economist Derek A. Neal. 'But they are certainly right, the gifted advocates, if they claim there is no evidence that No Child Left Behind is helping the gifted.'"

Are they even looking for harm?

The sad thing is, is that it will likely take 20 years for us to notice the harm. The self-motivated are not the ones we need to worry about.
The ones in the greatest danger are the ones that are directionless. They may be bright but they also have learned the first lesson of school, don't make waves. It you have been burned a few times and no one has stood up for you you'll just drift along, a good student but bored.

There is an old saying of you can manage what you can measure. If you are not measuring it, you are not managing it.

It also means if you are measuring the wrong things you will be managing the wrong way. During the dot.com era they were measuring eyeballs or page views, which was worthless, you need to measure what people are buying from you. It makes a difference, Those who stayed with eyeballs went away in the dot.bomb.

For this is will become even worse. The schools have traditionally focused on the middle, which is just fine. The middle is pretty big and the ends can deal with it well enough.

Now they are focusing on the bottom or at least the bubble group near the pass/fail on standardized tests. They will be ignoring the vast majority, even the middle group, because they are so focused on the numbers that bubble group generates. You manage what you measure.

Does Your Spouse Know Where the Money is?

If you Die, Is Your Money Mapped? - Dumb Little Man : "If I died tomorrow I can honestly say that my wife would have a hard time navigating through the spider web of bank accounts, insurance policies, and 401k plans that I'd leave behind. No, it's not because they are worth a lot, it's because I don't have a map telling her where everything is located."

Most people are not well prepared for death in many ways, but this can be very hard for a family.

I am not even sure I know where all our money is sometimes. My wife recently got a statement from an old account her Dad had set up for her.

My family almost died once already when a drunk driver crossed the median of the interstate. You often can't see death coming so it is best to be prepared before hand. When Arafat died there was quite the bedside vigil as they may have been hoping to get the offshore bank number where he had squirreled away so much money.

I am working on this and it is slow work sometimes trying to find it all. But it is worth doing and setting up a way for family to find it after something might happen.

The U.S. Economy: Trying to Guess What Happens Next - New York Times

The U.S. Economy: Trying to Guess What Happens Next - New York Times: "Economists have long intoned that somehow, some day, the United States will be forced to settle up and stop depending upon the largess of foreigners. The basic laws of economics say imbalances are eventually balanced. Some have warned of a worst-case scenario where the foreigners holding American debt get spooked that the value of the dollar is about to plummet and dump the currency in a self-fulfilling prophesy. This would jack up the price of imported goods in the United States, making it harder for Japan, China and Europe to sell their wares, and delivering a global recession. "

Much as I would like to believe that a gradual correction will take place, history doesn't bear it out. History shows us that things tend follow a boom-bust cycle. That is just the way it is. Things have been way up of some time and it is far more prudent to expect a sharp correction then a gentle one.

It is actually rather easy to get in shape for such a correction:

One gather all your income and assets and put it at the top of a spreadsheet or ledger.

Then list your debts and obligations under them.

Starting with your smallest debt pay it off and start on the next one up.

It usually only takes a few years to retire all debts if you aren't incurring new ones.

We budget our money what about budgeting our time

Scott H Young � Why You Need to Run a Timelog (And How to Do It): "A timelog is a simple device to track where your time is going. Regularly running a timelog allows you to know precisely where your time is going. And in a busy world when commitments are piling up, timelogs can help you understand what to eliminate in order to keep your sanity. "

This is pretty good advice. We spend lots of effort on budgeting and recording our money but what about our time.

As I have said before, we have four major resources in our lives: time, energy, money and knowledge.

Tracking money is easy enough. time is a bit more complex, but doable. Energy tracking I haven't tried yet but can't be much harder then time, we all know we are at peak functioning in the morning after a good nights sleep but not so good after lunch. Tracking knowledge is as easy as looking at your book shelf in many ways.

The other side of the IQ question.

Stop thinking you’ll get by on your high I.Q. Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk: "Parents: Stop pretending that your child’s I.Q. matters more than their social skills. Get treatment for your child as soon as a professional recommends it. Respect that the risk of not being able to transition to the work world is significant, and so is the risk of waiting to see if your child will fail despite being brilliant."

This is significant. Social skills are important. I know mine are less then stellar but I don't see schools as actually helping matters.

Do I worry about our daughter's social skills? Sure I do, but subjecting her to the cruel gauntlet that schools have degenerated into is not going to help her or us. She is shy when starting out in a new place or one she hasn't been to for a long time but after a few minutes she is playing with everyone.

So I try to make sure she has opportunities to lay with others. Is it enough? I am not sure yet. Not enough work has gone into it to see particular results yet.

This is Reality. It doesn't have to make sense!

William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview : Rolling Stone: "It has to do with the nature of the present. If one had gone to talk to a publisher in 1977 with a scenario for a science-fiction novel that was in effect the scenario for the year 2007, nobody would buy anything like it. It's too complex, with too many huge sci-fi tropes: global warming; the lethal, sexually transmitted immune-system disease; the United States, attacked by crazy terrorists, invading the wrong country. Any one of these would have been more than adequate for a science-fiction novel. But if you suggested doing them all and presenting that as an imaginary future, they'd not only show you the door, they'd probably call security. "

This is just too sweet as I have been reading SFF for about that long.

Some other SFF writer spoke on how hard it was to write good Scifi since it had to sound plausible. Reality is under no such restriction.

From kottke

TCS Daily - Race, IQ and Education

TCS Daily - Race, IQ and Education: "The concept of IQ works like this: there are tests that one can give a young child which allow that child to be assigned a percentile relative to other children of the same age. Many of these tests seem explicitly designed to measure intelligence. However, other tests, such as the Stanford Marshmallow experiment or tests of reaction time, are not what we would intuitively think of as intelligence tests, and yet results on these tests correlate well with IQ. The main finding is that a child's performance on one test will correlate with his or her performance on another test."

A fascinating article about g and how our educational system is totally screwed up because they are looking at the wrong problem with the wrong solution.

Easy with Eve, the virtual teacher

Eve, a virtual teacher who understands - New Zealand's source for technology news on Stuff.co.nz : "Researchers wanted to create a virtual teacher that could pick up body language and facial expressions like a real teacher, to ensure they are holding the attention of students"

This could be a very interesting development. The desire for something like this has been around for a long time.The Pegasus series by Anne McCarrery had a virtual teacher, but you had to have a special bracelet proving citizenship to use it. But you could learn pretty much anywhere.

This should strike fear into the hearts of teachers unions everywhere. They can be replaced, and they can be used anywhere.

This would be great for homeschoolers who need some help in specific subjects. If they focus on math and science they would corner that market pretty quick. But it would have to be a subscription that is not too expensive.

It is known that girls learn better from women and boys from men. I wonder how hard it would be to "skin" the model for different models of teachers for different subjects and students.

US report says young people reading a lot less - The Boston Globe

US report says young people reading a lot less - The Boston Globe: "Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day. The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure. The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading. "

Are people reading fewer books? Sure they are but I am not sure that means that they aren't reading. Lots of people have the Internet and there is a lot that must be read if you want to do much.

As for college students after reading tons of stuff during the day for school, reading in general is no longer pleasure. My roommate and I read for pleasure after studying but we didn't know anyone else that did.

If you spend hours at work reading on the Internet why would you want to go home and read some more. It is time for some other activity.

Then you have the Amazon Kindle ebook reader. That should be interesting but something they have got to realize is that they HAVE to make it dead easy to load up and read books. Reading a book is easy but people don't do it for various reasons. They have some pretty stiff competition for reading time. They have to make Kindle even easier to use then iTunes/iPod is for music. That will be a challenge all by itself.

I know one person who uses Palm Pilots to read regularly, and that is it. I only know a few families that have large selections of books at home, I don't know if that correlates to how often they read but so it goes. Those families with few books just don;t have much to read eve if they wanted to, unless they go to the library, and that is hardly ever full.

from googlenews.

Update: This article from NPR

One of the signs of the crisis

We dealt with a big debt problem last year. We sold our home and paid off our debts.

This wasn't an easy decision, but it came to the point that selling our home was a better choice for several reasons.

Now, a year ago it was not so obvious that the economy was going to have some troubles, but one thing nagged at me quite a bit. On the way to work there was a new facility opening it. Richie Brothers Auctions was converting a huge field into an auction facility.

The sign that was there before it offered 100+ acres for sale. They put a big fence around and built a couple of buildings that they could drive the equipment through that would be bid on.

The entire facility is designed around auctioning off heavy equipment, like the stuff that is used to build homes. We don't drive past it very often any more but this time it was interesting to see a fire truck and street sweeper on display, next to all the earth moving equipment.

They obviously saw the potential of the housing market crisis and are in a position to make use of it.

What are you seeing in your industries and how they relate to the economy?