2008-08-31

Household Budgets

Food is 15% of the household budget; energy is 10%.

Offshore drilling and the environment

Great overview from The Week about offshore oil drilling. Why the current ban exists, and what the new effects might be. The intro:

"How much oil lies under U.S. coastal waters?
Quite a bit. Geologists generally agree that the waters off America’s east and west coasts, on what is known as the outer continental shelf, hold about 18 billion barrels of oil—enough to satisfy U.S. energy needs for two and a half years. That oil is currently off-limits, though, because of a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil drilling is allowed in the western half of the Gulf of Mexico, which holds an estimated 70 billion barrels and where about 4,000 drilling rigs are currently in operation. Oil from the outer continental shelf would provide a small boost in available supplies. But even if the drilling ban were lifted tomorrow, production wouldn’t begin until 2017."

http://www.theweekdaily.com/article/index/88073/3/3/Briefing_Offshore_drilling_and_the_environment

Iraq vs US Bonds

Theirs are considered safer than ours! Which is strange considering it's probably our debt that's helping back them...

From John Mauldin:

And it can get much worse for some banks. In the "for what it's worth" department, Iraq's bonds are now considered safer than those of many US banks. The country's $2.7 billion of 5.8% bonds due 2028 have gained 45% since August 2007, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes. Investors demand 4.84 percentage points more in yield to own the debt instead of Treasuries, down from 7.26 percentage points a year ago. The spread is narrower than for notes of Ohio banks National City Corp. and KeyCorp, suggesting Baghdad may be safer for bond investors than Cleveland. National City and KeyCorp, based in Cleveland, have debt ratings of A and spreads of 959 basis points (9.59%) and 7.55 basis points (7.55%), respectively. Iraq debt has no ratings. Clearly the market is ignoring the rating agencies which give the banks an "A" rating. Their debt is priced at the junk level. Go figure. (Source: Bloomberg)

2008-08-29

Why Taxes Don't Matter Much Anymore - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

If only the government actually cared about it's debt, and politicians weren't slimy bastards. Or at least pretended like they were accountable to something.

http://mises.org/story/3093

2008-08-28

Industry Rethinks Moneymaking Software Practice - NYTimes.com

Awesome!

"Before they ship PCs to retailers like Best Buy, computer makers load them up with lots of free software. For $30, Best Buy will get rid of it for you."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/technology/28software.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Reading List

Current:

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

On the table:

Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
Inspired Philanthropy by Tracy Gary
Groundswell by Charlene Li

Past:

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
Hey, it's fantasy, what do you expect? Entertaining, although so many threads maybe a bit harder to follow than the earlier ones.

Villages by John Updike
Fun read, although some parts maybe a little too close to home for some of us geeks. But the relevancy is what makes Updike good.

Idoru by William Gibson
Not my favorite Gibson book, but entertaining. Especially if you always wanted to sleep with your avatar.

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
Hilarious and deep. Of course.

The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Classic (?) Roth. Great.

Freezers and Costco

Apparently freezer sales are up 7% while all other appliance sales are down 8%. Theory is people are buying more food in bulk since prices have risen so much. Which explains Costco's success in this market: more bulk, especially food.

Extrapolated from today's Marketplace.

Thanks.

--David

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sent via blackberry

2008-08-27

Philanthropy: Spending Vs. Investing

Some good points from the Tactical Philanthropy blog:

Posted: 19 Aug 2008 11:26 AM CDT

One of the big shifts that is occurring in philanthropy is a change in the way donors perceive how charitable giving fits into their overall financial picture. The most fundamental aspect of this shift is a movement from seeing giving as a “spending category” to seeing it as an “investment category”. There are a number of implications:

When donors view giving as an investment category, they view it as a positive aspect of their financial picture rather than a negative cost. For example, if the cost of your grocery shopping goes up, it negatively impacts your budget. But if the amount you are saving goes up, this is a positive change to your financial picture.
Donors can begin thinking about giving as a percentage of their assets rather than a percentage of their income. Wealthy donors in particular have far more assets than income and so thinking about giving as a percentage of assets would dramatically increase giving. This is the argument put forth by investment manager and philanthropists Claude Rosenberg in Wealthy & Wise. The book demonstrates mathematically that donors can give far more to charity without jeopardizing their financial well being if they think about giving as a percentage of assets.
Donors can begin thinking about nonprofits as organizations they want to support rather than “sellers” of “goods” whose costs they do not want to support. When you buy something from Target, you don’t care about their operating costs, you just want the lowest price. But when you invest in Target you recognize that quality organizations take money to run and you are supportive of well spent operational costs.
The value that donors expect shifts from a short term perspective (such as “buying” the right to feel like you helped someone) to a long term perspective (such as “investing” in the continued success of a high impact nonprofit).
Nonprofits stop seeing donors are “customers” who they must separate from their cash (or even fight a war over) and start seeing them as investors; literally stakeholders of the organization.
Corporate donors also see a shift where “corporate social responsibility” moves from being a cost that they attempt to reduce to an investment in the community from which they derive their profits.
More mission related investment opportunities open up as people become comfortable with blended investments that offer financial and social returns.
The field of philanthropy becomes more focused on building a philanthropic market place as the importance of functioning financial markets becomes more clear.
Wealth managers begin serving the philanthropic needs of their clients as they begin to recognize that giving is not a cost for their client (that should be minimized) but is instead an asset allocation question that is directly intertwined with their clients’ broader wealth management needs.

Importing Gmail Contacts into Thunderbird

Why can't any of the e-mail programs map to each other nicely? Is there an extension I've missed?

Anyway, to do the import, I exported from Gmail in CSV, then in the Thunderbird import cleared just about everything and arranged just the few fields I need in TB: Name and E-mail addresses. Like so:

Storing Fruits and Vegetables

I always get confused which humidity drawers and settings to use in the refridgerator, so here's some details:

for long-term storage, "Produce Facts" from the Postharvest Technology Research and Information Center at the University of California-Davis (http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/) recommends a relative humidity of:

Higher than 98 percent for carrots and celery.

Higher than 95 percent for bell peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cauli-flower, lettuce and snap beans.

Ninety to 95 percent for apples, bananas, cantaloupe, cherries, grapes, peaches, nectarines, oranges, pears, plums, strawberries, eggplant and tomatoes.

Eighty-five to 90 percent for honeydew and watermelon.

Sixty percent for winter squash

(from http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=43)

2008-08-25

A Cure For Real Estate Amnesia

Great dig at McCain from those liberals at NPR.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93944377

2008-08-24

Wireless Power

Cool! Sounds like they're up to 3 feet. How far will we really be able to get? Think a solar panel on your roof could ever power everything without having to be connected? Then you'll probably get neighbors stealing your electricity just like the internet...

http://www.localwireless.com/wap/news/text.jsp?carrier=google&sid=103&nid=293905871&cid=102&scid=-1&title=&ith=1
Thanks.

--David

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sent via blackberry

Time for universal health care?

No surprises here: doctors think insurance companies make bad decisions.

http://www.localwireless.com/wap/news/text.jsp?carrier=google&sid=70&nid=294329585&cid=124&scid=-1&title=Ohio+News&ith=0
Thanks.

--David

-----------------------------------------------
sent via blackberry

2008-08-21

San Francisco Says Bikes Cause Pollution

I assume this article has made the rounds at Move San Diego, but thought I'd pass it on in case it didn't...

San Francisco Ponders:
Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?

City Backpedals on a Cycling Plan
After Mr. Anderson Goes to Court

By PHRED DVORAK
August 20, 2008; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking.

San Francisco can't even install new bike racks.

[Rob Anderson] Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.

Cyclists say the irony is killing them -- literally. At least four bikers have died and hundreds more have been injured in San Francisco since mid-2006, when Mr. Anderson helped convince a judge to halt implementation of a massive pro-bike plan.(It's unclear whether the plan's execution could have prevented the accidents.) In the past year, bike advocates have demonstrated outside City Hall, pushed the city to challenge the plan's freeze in court and proposed putting the whole mess to local voters. Nothing worked.

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest.

WSJ's Phred Dvorak reports from a Critical Mass event in San Francisco, a monthly bike ride that draws hundreds of cyclists. She talks with bikers as well as disgruntled drivers.

Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month.

Mr. Anderson's fight underscores the tensions that can circulate as urban cycling, bolstered by environmental awareness and high gasoline prices, takes off across the U.S. New York City, where the number of commuter cyclists is estimated to have jumped 77% between 2000 and 2007, is adding new bike lanes despite some motorist backlash. Chicago recently elected to kick cars off stretches of big roads on two Sundays this year.

Famously progressive, San Francisco is known for being one of the most pro-bike cities in the U.S., offering more than 200 miles of lanes and requiring that big garages offer bike parking. It is also known for characters like Mr. Anderson.

A tall, serious man with a grizzled gray beard, Mr. Anderson spent 13 months in a California federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. He later penned pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a muckraking Northern California weekly owned by his brother that's known for its savage prose and pranks.

Running for Office

In 1995, Mr. Anderson moved to San Francisco. Working odd jobs, he twice ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, pledging to tackle homelessness and the city's "tacit PC ideology." He got 332 of 34,955 votes in 2004, his second and best try.

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date.

Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10% of the city's total trips by 2010.

The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.' "

Going to Court

In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague.

[bike]

Rhonda Winter/San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco cyclists protest bike-plan delays in front of City Hall.

Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

Slow Pedaling

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review.

Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. "Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post.

"In case anyone doubted that you were a wingnut, this statement pretty much sums things up!" one commenter retorted.

Mr. Anderson is running for supervisor again this November -- around the time the city will unveil the first draft of its bike-plan environmental review. He's already pondering a challenge of the review.

Write to Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com

2008-08-18

Bridle Trail is a hidden treasure at Balboa Park

Nice article about our local Bridal Trail, which I walk regularly and our Balboa Park Trust has helped improve.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080814-9999-1cz14hike.html

2008-08-10

Digital Domain - Goodbye, Passwords. You Aren’t a Good Defense. - NYTimes.com

Anti-OpenID? Not to mention this approach seems to assume you are always on your own machine...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/technology/10digi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=login

2008-08-06

CoolGlobes coming to San Diego

http://www.coolglobes.com/

If they can find enough sponsors...

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad

If you haven't already seen this... the side note is that people are saying Paris' energy policy is better than McCain's...

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d

2008-08-05

More on XML

Was googling for XML gui interfaces and started reading about the XForms stuff... there seem to be some good java-based tools that make it pretty easy to make an interface:

http://www.orbeon.com/
http://chibaxforms.org/

Time to start playing... if it can't be done natively in Flex.

Starving when Sick?

I posted this question about getting big sugar cravings when sick to the Vegan Fitness site (one of my favorites!)... any thoughts appreciated.

http://www.veganfitness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15350

2008-08-04

Cringe-worthy Financial Story

This'll make you cringe...I didn't even know they had decided to prevent short-selling on a select basket of "favored" financial stocks!

http://www.hegcap.com/Pdfs/8-1-08%20HCM%20NEWSLETTER.pdf

Long Live the Quest for Exercise without Exercising!

If only there was somewhere more useful for scientists to spend their time...

Couch Mouse to Mr. Mighty by Pills Alone - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/science/01muscle.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

2008-08-01

Solar Energy and Storage

"Enough sunlight hits this planet every hour to meet its energy needs for an entire year." Whoa. True?

Some guy at MIT has apparently made good progress toward efficiently electricity storage. That's huge.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/31/solar_storage/