A sed keeper...

For those of you who are shell scripters, you may find this one useful:

/bin/sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n\n\n*/\n\n/g'

This removes multiple blank spaces in a file and replaces them with only one blank space. There are other ways to do this, but this is one of them...

Source: http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/rmnl-remove-new-line-characters-tr-awk-perl-sed-c-cpp-bash-python-xargs-ghc-ghci-haskell-sam-ssam-p65/

Mac Mini Upgrade and Adventures in Boot Camp

Now that Snow Leopard is out and I have some time off between classes, I am able to get Bailey's computer fully upgraded. I thought it was going to be a simple software upgrade, but as it turns out, his Mac Mini was only running on 512MB of RAM and a 80 GB hard drive. Since he is starting to use this machine for more than just games, I guess it is time to max out the RAM and get him a decently sized hard drive.

A quick trip to Best Buy and $200 later, we have 2 GB of PC2-5300 RAM and a nice Seagate 7200 RPM 320 GB hard drive. I considered going larger on the hard drive, but my time was too short to wait for something to be delivered and the 320 GB was the largest drive they had that was 7200 RPM. Also, now that we are going to have three people on the Time Capsule, I figured 320 GB was a good limiter to make sure he would not prematurely force me to upgrade the Time Capsule to 2TB.

I used the iFixIt instructions for opening up the Mac Mini. It was surprisingly easy. One thing they did not mention was to label each screw you remove. I used a sticky note and labeled where I removed each screw from. Most of the screws were identical, but I noticed one or two were specialized sizes, so I was glad I kept that organized. Another part I had to learn the hard way was the RAM insertion. I did not insert one of the sticks hard enough and when I booted up the machine only one stick registered. After re-seating the RAM, I was able to get both 1GB sticks to properly register. I might also add that the Mac Mini is a really impressive sample of engineering. Everything fits together amazingly well. Total hardware time would have been about an hour if I had seated the RAM correctly the first time. Given my mistake, it was around 2.5 hours (I tested each stick individually).

Now that the hardware was working properly, it was time to install Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard). The install was effectively effortless. There were only two hitches. The first was the basic install. No drives showed up to select as a target to install. I was able to go to one of the installer pull-down menus (I think it was Utilities) and select disk tools to partition and format the disk. Once that was done the installer showed the target disk and the install went through flawlessly.

The second hitch came after the installation was complete. I noticed that the "Macintosh HD" icon was missing from the desktop. After some help from TheGoogle, I figured out it was simply a default configuration option that is delivered with Snow Leopard. To add it back, just click on the desktop anywhere so you display the Finder menu. Select "Preferences" from the Finder menu and make sure "Hard Disks" is checked in the "General" menu. I also found it helpful to go to the "Sidebar" tab and and check the box next to "Hard Disks" and turn off the one for "iDisk" (I choose not to use Mobile Me, so iDisk is not useful to me).

Once all of that was complete I went to Software Update and installed all of the updates (at this point there were only three). Voila, fully working Snow Leopard system with 4x the RAM and 4X the Hard Drive space. Total "from scratch" OS X Snow Leopard install time with updates, 2-ish hours.

Last but not least, it was time to get the WindowsXP partition up and running. Boot Camp has gotten incredibly easy to use since I originally played with the beta. I found the Boot Camp icon in Application/Utilities. It started up and allowed me to partition and format the disk, then it had me insert my WindowsXP Pro SP2 disk and rebooted into the XP installer. One of the biggest problems I encountered was that my keyboard would not work. After some searching, I found out that it was the Mighty Mouse that was confusing the XP installer. I removed the mouse and moved the keyboard to the USB port just below the audio port (the last one), and after rebooting, the XP installer worked just fine (I am not sure that moving the USB keyboard port helped, but I figured I would mention it). When it came time to select the partition to install to, it was easy to find the BOOTCAMP partition. I opted to change the format from FAT to NTFS (I have since verified that NTFS is still read-only from OS X, hopefully Apple fixes this some day). Once the graphical installer interface came up, I was able to plug the Mighty Mouse back in and it worked for the remainder of the install.

After the base XPSP2 install was complete, I inserted the Snow Leopard disk to install all of the Apple specific drivers. Once that was done, it was time to start applying XP updates. I made the mistake of attempting to install the SP3 update first. I kept on getting error messages about not being able to find files like "osloader.ntd". I figured this was because I did not apply the mountain of pre-SP3 updates first, which I then proceeded to do. It took so long I went to bed and resumed the next day. Even after that, SP3 still did not apply cleanly. After some searching, I was able to find this link that perfectly explained what was wrong and provided a solution that worked. After that, SP3 applied cleanly and then I was able to apply the final group of updates. Total time spent getting Windows XP installed and fully updated was probably 12 hours, nearly 3x what was required for a RAM, Hard Drive and OS X Snow Leopard install (4x if I had gotten the RAM installed correctly the first time).

I also spent some time getting FireFox 3.5 installed in each OS as it is one of the required browsers for Bailey's online Math class. The last thing I did was to get The Snow Leopard partition connected to the Time Capsule. This was the easiest part. I clicked the Time Capsule icon in the dock, slid the switch from "Off" to "On" and typed in the Time Capsule password. After that, I just left the machine alone while it did the initial backup of the OS (8.11GB). I should also mention that the first Time Capsule backup has to complete uninterrupted, so I turned off the power-saving settings in case the Mini went to sleep before it was done (I left myself a note to remember to turn it back on when it was done).

Palm Pre and a few warts...

I indulged in a Palm Pre a few days ago. I had been waiting to get an Android phone, but I figure it will be at least two years until we see anything Android from Sprint, so locking myself into a two year agreement with the Pre seems like a reasonable compromise.

So far, I really like it, it is beautiful and has a lot of potential. I am still getting used to how things work and I cannot wait to get an SSH client on it and figure out how to tether it.

One thing I did not notice in any of the reviews is that there are a few fairly glaring bugs and annoyances that I will try to detail here:

• The biggest annoyance is migrating calendar and contacts with the migration tool (I used the Mac OSX version). I started from my old Treo 680 and sync'd it one last time to iCal and AddressBook. After running the sync tool to move things over to the Pre, none of the street addresses get migrated and fax numbers occasionally get mixed up and duplicated. I had to go through my entire address book and manually enter the street addresses. Although very time consuming, I feel that it was a good exercise because it gave me a chance to clean up my address book. Something that I have not done in years apparently... A lesser annoyance is that all day calendar events with no specific time (like an anniversary) show up on the Pre as timed events lasting the entire day. I had to go in and manually change the setting to "All Day".

• When updating the calendar, it takes an unusual amount of time for the change to actually appear on the calendar. It feels like there is a refresh bug of some sort that keeps the old calendar information on the screen *JUST* until the point at which you are unsure if the change took, and then *poof* the screen updates. Rather strange...

• The text messaging app does not show character count. This is rather a pain when twitting because there is a 140 character limit... less than the text messaging limit...
  

• It would appear as if certain apps cannot be deleted unless I root my pre. I will be doing that eventually, but with the limit of three launcher pages, it would be nice to be able to tidy things up a bit.

• Call me pathological, but I would like an easy way to migrate over my phone calling history. The Treo was great about keeping a permanent record that would follow you from phone to phone. This does not appear to be the case with the Pre.

I think there are a few other things, but this is all I have for now. For comparison, if I were to list everything I *LIKE* about the Pre, I would be typing all night long. Other than not knowing how many characters in a text message, the rest of the issues can be worked around or are simply not that important...

NASA 747 pilot tells of carrying the Space Shuttle

Reposted with permission. Fascinating story!

Triple Nickel - NASA Pilot

Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal as I type this email.

The experience was surreal.

Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream...someone else's dream.

We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early.

If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway. So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls.

I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we cleared the trees

duh, but it was way too close for my laundry. As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is that a skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled and said "Tires"!

I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They smiled and shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had never experienced.

Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?

The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage! The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board.

I felt like if I had plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll completely over on our back," not a good thing I kept telling myself. SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster.

Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon.

So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning stretch. Oh say can you see...

After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing.

However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit.

But the engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun.

There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the "normal" point in a landing; and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!!

So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video supports this! Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long.

Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.

I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again I want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.

I've been called worse by better!

A good friend of mine was fortunate enough to be chosen to attend a dinner with Richard M Stallman a.k.a. "RMS". My friend cast about for questions to ask RMS during dinner. Here was mine (which I am told was printed out and handed to RMS, rather than verbally paraphrased):

Ask him what he thinks of William Wallace (Character portrayed in Braveheart). Does he see himself as someone who wanted to be just an average farmer, but got pulled into something bigger and more important because his conscience would not let him ignore what was going on? Or was he always scrapping for a fight and the free software issue seemed to suit him well.

My guess is that it's the latter, but he is only capable of seeing himself as the
former.

And the response from RMS:

"This is hostile. Who wrote this? Fuck him."

ID Not Required!

This comes from my friend Phil Mocek. I've reprinted it here with permission unedited.

Hi, everyone. Sorry for the rather impersonal mass mailing.

Some of you, namely KU basketball fans and Kansas Citians, have undoubtedly already seen this, but I'm pretty excited about it and want to bring it to others' attention: On Wednesday, April 9, 2008, the  Kansas City Star ran a front-page article [1] about my efforts to stand up for our right to travel freely in this country without being monitored by our government.

[1]: <http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/567590.html>

Inspired by people like John Gilmore [2], Chris Soghoian [3], and my friend Ben [4], I've been flying without identifying myself to TSA agents for a couple years, and after my last flight to Kansas City, I filed a complaint with the TSA about signs posted at the airport [5] that falsely state that travelers must present photo identification before crossing the security checkpoint.

[2]: <http://papersplease.org/gilmore/>
[3]: <http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769089-46.html>
[4]: <http://oblivion.net/~ben/journal/?entry=725>
[5]: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmocek/2349302702/>

After receiving a response from TSA [6] confirming that there is no requirement that people show ID for domestic flights (and not mentioning anything about fixing the signs), I got in touch with the right people, and the next thing I knew a reporter from the Kansas City Star was interviewing me.  At the time I had no idea it would end up on the front page, much less on a somewhat-commemorative "National champion University of Kansas basketball team returns home to big parade" issue that was surely in the eyes of many people who wouldn't otherwise pick up the paper.  (That a picture of me, someone who would rather watch paint dry than sit through a basketball game, is likely to end up on the walls of hundreds of KU fans is particularly delicious.)

[6]: <http://papersplease.org/wp/2008/03/31/id-still-not-required-to-fly/>

I feel pretty strongly about this issue and hope that you'll give it at least a little consideration.

If you're so inclined, please read on for my best newspaper-friendly summary of why I've been doing what I do.  I submitted this to the Star today and very much hope that it is published by them as an op-ed. Judging by the interest the story seems to have generated in KC, I think  there's a good chance that they will do so.  If they do, I'm going to do what I can to get one of the Seattle papers to pick it up, and I also have a connection at the AP who might be interested.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

While flying out of Kansas City last year, I saw TSA signs at the airport stating that travelers must present government-issued photo identification.  I knew that wasn't true, and I didn't show ID. I neither caused trouble nor slowed things down for other travelers when I asserted my right to travel without checking in with the government by identifying myself; I was taken out of line to be screened along with other "selectees".

After returning home, I filed a complaint with TSA.  I received a response from Jeanne Oliver, Associate Director of TSA Office of the Executive Secretariat.  She did not indicate that TSA would fix the problem, but did confirm that if a traveler is "unwilling or unable to produce a valid form of ID, the traveler is required to undergo additional screening at the checkpoint to gain access to the secured area of the airport."  People who show ID receive a less-thorough screening.  Any time saved when people volunteer to show ID comes at the cost of less effectively checking them for dangerous items.

We're being lied to about federal air travel policies by airport security at KCI and other locations, and it's not making us any safer.

Government agents requiring people to show ID before boarding a flight wouldn't make air travel any safer.  It's relatively easy to get a fake ID, and regardless of how much technology we put into ID cards, a criminal will be able to purchase a fake one or steal someone else's identity and get a real ID with his picture and the other person's name.

We can and do call upon TSA to ensure safe air travel by preventing people from carrying dangerous items onto flights.  TSA's current practice of allowing people who show ID through security with less  screening than other people receive contributes to a false sense of security, breeding complacency among passengers, crew, and TSA agents.

I acknowledge that the inconvenience of showing ID is trivial.  My concern is that a requirement to show ID would allow the government to monitor and restrict our travel.  Our courts have established that   people in this country have the right to travel and associate without being monitored or stopped by the government unless they have been convicted of committing a crime or are suspected -- with good reason -- of having committed a crime.  They have ruled that we cannot set up roadblocks and checkpoints to stop everyone who passes just to catch the few who have done something wrong, or to find the few who are suspected of intending to do something wrong.

Recent Congressional testimony suggests that over 900,000 names are now on the United States' so-called "terrorist watch list".  Many people who have found themselves on the list are U.S. citizens who have no ties to any terrorist organization.  There is no appeals process for those who have been blacklisted.  We are not allowed to know who is on the list, who put them there, or why they were put on it.

If these people pose a danger to others, why don't we go arrest them instead of waiting for them to present themselves at the airport, then hassling them or preventing them from flying before sending them on their way?

Even if we could prune the list so that it included only people who actually pose a "known" threat, potential terrorists could probe the system by sending people on innocent trips, observing which ones were subjected to additional screening, then later sending the other people on a real terrorist mission.  Restricting travel based on an ID check simply cannot improve security.

People can show their ID to whomever they want, whenever they want to do so, if it makes them feel safer.  My doing so doesn't make me feel any safer.  When a government agent asks me to show my papers or searches me, I feel *un*safe.  It reminds me of descriptions of life in the former USSR, where identification was required upon demand, movement was restricted, and people either kept quiet and did as they were told, or risked disappearing into the night, never to be heard from again.

When I see security guards in airports wearing what look like police uniforms and demanding identification, and police on our streets wearing what look like military uniforms, driving DHS-grant-funded armored vehicles, marching in riot gear with machine guns, pepper-spraying and
Tasing peaceful demonstrators, it makes me feel like I live in what is approaching a totalitarian state.

Communicating with Highly Physically Disabled People

I just finished reading the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It is a memoir dictated one letter at a time by Jean-Dominique Bauby, a stroke victim who suffered from locked-in syndrome.

Jean-Dominique was only able to communicate by blinking his left eye. An alphabet was developed that was re-ordered from the usual alphanumeric ordering, so that the most frequently used letters were at the beginning. To communicate, the speaker would cite each letter and Jean-Dominique would blink when the appropriate letter was said. Slowly, words would be built up and sentences would eventually form, conveying meaning. It was a tedious process and it had its drawbacks:

" "Want to play hangman?" asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball - and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition." (Pages 70 and 71, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Since Jean-Dominique was a native French speaker, the letter frequencies in his special alphabet were based on the French language. The alphabet looked like this:

E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B V H G J Q Z Y X K W

For the English language, the letter frequencies (which can be found here) would be:

E T A O I N S H R D L C U M W F G Y P B V K J X Q Z

It occurred to me that there had to be a more efficient manner to do this. I see two problems:

• It takes a great deal of time to get to a letter deep into the alphabet. 
• The deeper in the alphabet you go, the more likely it is that an error.

In order to improve communications speed, I came up with this alternate "tabular" method:

E	A	N	D	W
T	I	R	M	B
O	H	U	P	X
S	C	Y	J	PH
L	G	K	Z	LY
F	V	Q	QU	RY

Note: Since the standard Latin alphabet has 26 letters, a six by five table left four empty spots. I chose letter pairs to fill those spots. The letter pairs were guessed at, as my brief searching was unable to turn up any letter pair frequency tables. I have no doubt that an exhaustive lexical analysis of the English language would turn up the true top four letter pairs. Some pairs like IE and EA are very common, but they are pretty cheap to create one letter at a time, so it's not worth using them in the far bottom corner where it takes more steps to get to them.

This alternative method works as a simple Cartesian coordinate system. That's fancy mathematics speak for "select the row and then select the column". To find the letter M, the letter selector starts at the top row and works down row by row, until the patient blinks when the second row is chosen. This means the patient could be interested in the letters T, I, R, M or B. The selector would then work across the columns until the patient blinks when the M character is chosen. In total, six stops were made to get to the M character. The old system would have required fourteen; more than twice as many. In addition, by locking the selector into a given row, the possibility for error is greatly reduced. If the selector picks the wrong row or misses the target letter, they will know they've done so because the patient never blinks by the end of the row. With the old system, the selector would have to go to the end of the entire alphabet to find that they've missed the letter.

To give you a better idea of the benefit of this system, here's the same table with the relative costs of getting to each letter added. The letter represents the target letter, the number represents the number of steps, or "cost", required to get to that letter and the number in parenthesis is the cost the old system required to get to that letter:

E - 2 (1)	A - 3 (3)	N - 4 (6)	D - 5 (10)	W - 6 (15)
T - 3 (2)	I - 4 (5)	R - 5 (9)	M - 6 (14)	B - 7 (20)
O - 4 (4)	H - 5 (8)	U - 6 (13)	P - 7 (19)	X - 8 (24)
S - 5 (7)	C - 6 (12)	Y - 7 (18)	J - 8 (23)	PH - 9 (27)
L - 6 (11)	G - 7 (17)	K - 8 (22)	Z - 9 (26)	LY - 10 (29)
F - 7 (16)	V - 8 (21)	Q - 9 (25)	QU - 10 (38)	RY - 11 (27)

Some immediate observations are that the letters E and T actually require one more step in this system than the old. In addition O and A cost the same in both systems. However, it should be noted that the overall cost savings is dramatic when you start creating whole words. For example. Let's take the following sentence (chosen from a random poster I saw at my Son's elementary school):

SEE JANE RUN

The cost breakdown is as follows:

Word	Old Cost	New Cost
See	9	9
Jane	33	17
Run	28	15

Thus with the old system, it costs 70 letter stops to spell the test sentence. With the system I am proposing, it only takes 41. It is also important to note that the word SEE costs the same in both systems, which is an example of how the extra step to find the letters E and T are quickly absorbed by economies elsewhere.

Potential improvements on this would be to re-arrange the alphabet on a per patient basis. Since everyone uses a slightly different subset of their native language's words, their letter frequencies would likely be slightly different. If available, recordings and writings from the patient created prior to becoming disabled could be analyzed to alter the table layout. However, after the patient starts using the table, I would suggest that it not be altered unless absolutely necessary, as a familiarity will have been built up that will be difficult to overcome to take advantage of newer efficiencies. It would be interesting to study whether or not patients adapt their vocabulary to the table, thus removing any need to alter the table to introduce efficiencies after being introduced to it.

A potential objection to altering the table on a per patient basis prior to being introduced to it, would be that each patient should use the same letter table to keep communications uniform. I would overcome this objection with the idea that patients will not be using this system to talk directly to each other. This system would only be meant to facilitate communication between a disabled patient and an able bodied person who can work the board. The able bodied person working the board, should be able to adapt to different boards for different patients, especially considering that the incremental improvements in communications speed will far outweigh any inconvenience to the board operator. In addition, there is no reason why the intermediary could not be a computer, thus allowing similarly disabled patients to communicate with each other in real time. I wonder if it would be a positive thing for a patient to share their feelings with someone in the same situation?

It is important to note that this system is only useful for persons who already have the ability to read and can process information relatively normally. It is also only useful to those that have the ability to consistently gesture in a singular fashion, such as an eye blink, or some other "single bit" manner. If multiple gestures can be clearly and consistently mastered, there are much faster ways of communicating than the system that I am proposing. It would be very interesting to be able to study systems that apply to various numbers of feedback bits from the patient. As a general rule, the greater number of feedback bits available from the patient, the more robust and efficient the communication. I should coin the term CFB - Consistent Feedback Bits. A basic eye blink would be one CFB. An eye blink and a finger twitch, would be two CFBs and so on. The various systems of communicating could be indexed by CFBs. A specialist could assess the patients CFBs and perhaps use therapies to expand the number of CFBs, and then a system of communication could be chosen that best fits their unique situation. Again, many of these systems of communications would fall apart if the patient is simply cognitively unable to process information.

I believe that this system requires the ability to see out of at least one eye, but could possibly be used with a blind patient as long as they could hear well enough to memorize the table and give "single bit" feedback as they were learning. If the patient were blind and deaf, it may still be possible to communicate as long as they had relatively normal information processing abilities and could feedback to indicate to their teacher where they were in the learning process.

PZ Myers: The Courtiers Reply

I found this to be absolutely brilliant in its construction and execution. It echoes a sentiment I have often felt when reading logical deconstructions of Atheist works by inconvenienced believers. Except in this case, it puts into words what I have only been able to internally articulate in vague emotional terms.

Reposted from http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/the_courtiers_reply.php:

There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all, along with a little backstory that will help you to understand the name.

I call it the Courtier's Reply. It refers to the aftermath of a fable.

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.
Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

I'm afraid that when I read H. Allen Orr's criticism of The God Delusion in the NY Review of Books, all that popped into my head was a two-word rebuttal: Courtier's Reply. You would be amazed at how many of the anti-Dawkins arguments can be filed away under that category. That's all you'll get from me on Orr's complaint—it's another Courtier's Reply. If you want a more detailed dissection, Jason Rosenhouse provides it.

Poor Choice of Words...

This unemployment benefits appeal was forwarded to me by the writer's sister. I've redacted all of the identifying information with X's to protect the innocent (and the guilty). While I do not condone violence, including threats of violence, perceived or otherwise, I can empathize with her frustration...

Okay, so my sister...whose name has been partially changed, wrote the letter below which earned her a call from the XXXXXXXX County Bomb Squad Sheriff today.  The funny part (besides the fact that they called her) is that it's been two weeks since she faxed this to the unemployment office.  The sheriff said that he sympathized with her letter, as did all the other's who had read it.

Enjoy...                        
XXXXXXX

Ima D. Bomber
XXXX XXXXXXX XXXX
XXXXX, WA XXXXX
(XXX) XXX-XXXX
SS# XXX-XX-XXXX
Decision to appeal:  denied benefits
Reason for appeal:  I believe I had a "good cause for quitting".

        My decision for quitting my job is quite clear.  My husband was laid off from work, we were unable to pay the rent on my single income and we were subsequently evicted from our home.  As I had no way to house or feed my children, I was forced to separate from my husband and travel across the state to move in with my sister's family (including my mother who also resides at that address).
      
        I put in my two week notice to my employer, with every intention of fulfilling my obligation. As I found that telling this woman I hardly knew that I was being evicted from my home was far too embarrassing, I told her that I was moving to my sister's to help care for my ailing mother. This was not entirely honest but, as my mother suffers from anxiety and a heart condition, I found this a more acceptable reason for my departure During my lunch break on 11/19/07, however, I received a distressing call from my children regarding a lack of food in my house and knowing that I had no way to pay for groceries, I knew I would have to move more quickly than planned.  At this time I had finally reached my breaking point and had a complete emotional melt down. Knowing that I could not return to work with my face blotchy and my eyes full of tears, I told the supervisor that I was suffering from a migraine headache and could no longer work that day and, furthermore, I had to pack my belongings quickly so I would not be able to return to work for my remaining days.  Although your office found this reason for quitting my job both "plausible and/or compelling", it did not fit into one of your nine clearly defined reasons for "good cause" and my benefits were denied.                                         

        Since that time I have gone through a number of emotions.  Starting with utter despair, continuing on to a feeling that I can only relate as a suicide bomber and finally to an almost uncontrollable anger.  I am unable to make my car payment or my car insurance payment and will be unable to get to a job, even when I get one. So, yesterday, I found myself applying for state assistance.  Now I have gone from being a productive member of society that pays my taxes, to a user of state resources set aside for those who can not provide for themselves.  Now YOUR taxes are being used to support me even though I am quite capable to supporting myself, but needed a bit of help to get by.  I believed I was paying into an unemployment system that would provide for me should this unfortunate event arise and I find that they are not.                             

        I have been paying taxes since I began my first job at age sixteen and have only once before received unemployment benefits.  During that time I had been laid off because the government did not find it necessary to supply enough funds to provide my patients, the mentally ill, with a nurse.  My union fought bitterly and used my story as a compelling reason for the government to stand up and take action to help those suffering from mental illness.  Again, I find that the government has no problem taking my money, but has no intentions of using it to help me or my fellow Americans in any way, other than to support immigrants (noting that all government forms come with a variety languages to choose from) and a war against those who wish to immigrate here.  I am proud to be an American.  I know a lot of them and they are generally a good people.  The people in charge of the bigger picture, however, are obviously taking advantage of our general good nature and at some point this MUST come to a stop.

        I have considered bombing target areas, but find that I do not have the stomach to kill innocent people like yourself who are just trying to do their own job and take care of their own families.  Nor do I have the availability or knowledge to use a weapon large enough to make any impact that would draw the governments' attention.  I have seriously contemplated suicide and hope that you will think of me whenever you hear of someone who has literally come to the end of their rope.  The irony in all of this is that if I proceeded down either of these paths I would probably end up in prison or a mental hospital and either way the American tax dollar would be paying to support me even though the government could not provide for a few months unemployment that I paid for in advance.

        So, if this letter falls into your hands and you find yourself saying, "I would love to make a change, but I don't have that kind of power." do not despair.  I have been in your position, wishing I could do more for my patients with mental illness and finding that the government has more money wasted in meetings, paper work and red tape than in truly trying to find what will work best to aid the American people and implementing it.   All I ask is that you pass this letter on to your boss and if he/she finds himself/herself saying, "This is totally out of my hands." then they should continue to pass this letter up the chain of command.  I know eventually this will fall into the hands of someone who says, "It is my job to make sure that my boss is not bothered with this kind of thing."  To that person I would like to say, "Please file this between your butt cheeks.  Because you are part of the problem and not part of the solution!"


Sincerely,

Ima D. Bomber (aka #XXX-XX-XXXX)

CentOS 5 + Tomcat5 + Java 6

I just installed a CentOS 5 server and I wanted to run Tomcat5 with the Sun Java 6 JRE, not the JRE that's packaged with CentOS 5. Naturally everything broke. It took about an hour of poking and debugging, but in the end the fix was surprisingly simple. Here's how I did it:

• Removed all of the original java packages (java-*, gcc-java glib-java)
  
• Installed the JDK 6 RPM downloaded from the Sun website.
• Create two symbolic links:
  
• ln -s /usr/java/latest /usr/lib/jvm/java
• ln -s /usr/java/latest /usr/java/default-exports

That's it.

If you want to run Tomcat5 on port 80, it needs to have root privileges to bind to a low order port. In its default configuration Tomcat5 cannot do this because it is a pure Java application and must run cross-platform. Dropping privileges is not platform agnostic so Tomcat5 does not support it.

It is dangerous to run Tomcat5 as root, so only do it if you know what you are doing! I took this approach on this server because it is an intranet application server that is not exposed to the outside world. Do not do this if you are exposing a Tomcat server to the outside world...

Here's what to do:

• Update the /etc/tomcat5/server.xml file and look for <Connector port="8080" Change the 8080 to 80.
• In the file /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5 change "#TOMCAT_USER=tomcat" to "TOMCAT_USER=root"

If you are exposing your server to the outside world, your best bet is to do it in a way that it is only root while it is binding to the low order port. Here is a tutorial that appears to explain how to do this. Your other option is to run Apache on the same server and use it as a proxy. The upside to this approach is that you can use Apache to serve static content, like images, more efficiently than with Tomcat.

Daylight Savings Discovery

I was resetting the clock on our stove yesterday and noticed that it had a "Sabbath Mode" setting. I've never heard of this before so I googled it (source: http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-cooking-ovenyomtov.htm):


Sabbath Mode Ovens
(The Following Applies to Yom Tov Only)

Sabbath mode ovens are designed to bypass many of the practical and halachic problems posed by the modern oven.

For the Sabbath mode ovens with the random delay feature, one may raise or lower the temperaturet of the oven without concern for the heating element or glow plug. This is because the computer does not directly react to the change in settings. The oven will randomly look to the setting and adjust the temperature. This means that turning on the heating element or glow plug is only an indirect result of your action (grama). Therefore, since a grama is permitted on Yom Tov one may actually adjust the temperature. For the Sabbath mode ovens without the random delay, the temperature may be raised when power is flowing to the oven and lowered when power is not flowing to the oven as indicated by the readout on the display.6

Another issue is that some ovens can be programmed to turn off at a preset time. This feature is known as timed bake. In many models, when the time has elapsed and the oven shuts off, it will sound a bell or buzzer or display a readout (such as the word “end”) to indicate that the oven is off. On some models this buzzer or display will continue until it is manually turned off or until the door is opened, which is not permitted on Yom Tov. On those Sabbath mode models that include the timed bake feature, the buzzer or readout is eliminated. (Please note that once the timed bake goes off, the oven cannot be used again for that Yom Tov.)

As a safety feature new ovens are designed to shut off after being on for twelve hours. Although this safety feature is very important, it creates a problem when preparing food for the daytime meal which is more than twelve hours after the onset of Yom Tov. For all types of Sabbath mode ovens, the twelve hour cutoff is bypassed.

In Sabbath mode ovens, the door plunger switch is disabled so that it will not directly cause any electronic reaction.

The oven cavity light for some Sabbath mode ovens will remain on or off, depending on how Sabbath mode was entered. For other Sabbath mode ovens, the light must be turned on at the control panel before entering the Sabbath mode, or the bulb must be unscrewed.

It is important to note that not all Sabbath mode models offer the same features. If you have a Star-K certified Sabbath mode oven, please check the appliance section of our website at www.star-k.org to see which features are available on your model, or contact our office at 410-484-4110.7

The following are some commonly asked questions about oven and stovetop use on Yom Tov:

1. Why is one allowed to push a button on the keypad of a Sabbath mode oven on Yom Tov?
   
   Pushing a button on an oven, when in Sabbath mode, on Yom Tov that starts a process internal to the computer without any heat, light, sound, movement or anything tangible that can be perceived, is not considered a melacha and is permitted on Yom Tov. When a melacha is finally accomplished, namely turning on the heating element in the oven, it is accomplished through a grama, (an indirect act because there is a random delay of between 15 and 25 seconds before the heating elements can be activated). This grama is permitted on Yom Tov, but not on Shabbos.
   
   
2. Can one turn on a Sabbath mode oven on Yom Tov or Shabbos?
   
   Not on Yom Tov, and certainly not on Shabbos. This is because it directly causes the display to change which is prohibited.
   
   
3. Can I set the timed bake feature on Yom Tov?
   
   For those ovens that have the timed bake feature included in the Sabbath mode, it can only be set from before Yom Tov. This will allow for a one time usage. Once the oven shuts off, it cannot be used again for that Yom Tov. One may not set the timed bake on Yom Tov (and certainly not on Shabbos).
   
   
4. May one turn off their stove or oven to conserve energy on Yom Tov?
   
   No. One is only permitted to lower the setting when it is necessary for the preparation of the Yom Tov’s food.
   
   
5. May one lower the setting on a Sabbath Mode oven even when it is not for the benefit of the food?
   
   Those Sabbath Mode ovens that are equipped with a random delay may be lowered on Yom Tov. This is because the random delay makes the reaction of the oven to lower the temperature a grama (indirect action). Although we only permit extinguishing or lowering a flame where it is needed for food, this only applies where one does the action. Here, where the computer will lower the temperature later on as a reaction to your instructions, it is called gram kibui and it is permitted.
   
   
6. Can I open and close a standard oven door at any time on Yom Tov?
   
   One may open and close the door of an oven on Yom Tov to process the food as needed if this does not cause a light or icon to go on directly because the door was opened. On Shabbos there is a problem with opening the door because you will cause additional burning in the oven. This is prohibited on Shabbos8 and permitted on Yom Tov.
   
   
7. Must I wait until I see the glow plug glowing to open the door to my gas oven on Yom Tov?
   
   As a rule the oven will not immediately go on because of the reduction of heat created by your opening of the door. Therefore, even though the oven will eventually go on because its door was opened, this is not a direct result of your action. The additional burning is permitted on Yom Tov.
   
   

Regarding raising the temperature of a gas oven on Yom Tov, one may not do so unless they know that the glow plug is glowing and the display will not change. This is because raising the temperature setting will direcly cause the glow plug to go on if it is otherwise off, creating a problem of molid. However, if the oven is cerified with sabbath mode that has a random delay feature built in, and this was initiated before Yom Tov, one may adjust the temperature on Yom Tov.

Optimal Shop Temperature

According to Jim Whipple, most QA manuals indicate that the optimal machine shop temperature is 68 degrees F.

Prospect Theory

I've been doing some reading about prospect theory lately. Prospect theory basically says that people tend to risk more to keep something than they risked in acquiring it in the first place. It also says that people are more willing to accept incremental gains that are a sure thing than they are willing to accept a chance at a huge gain. I'm sure a true connoisseur prospect theory will cringe at this over simplified explanation, but I think it makes the point.

To me, prospect theory is just another good example of the concept of least cost, plain and simple. Over billions of years of evolution, humans have gained the ability to determine which path will require the least amount of energy. When viewed objectively in the context of the modern world, where resources such as food are plentiful, some decisions that people make, which would seem perfectly rational 50,000 years ago, seem downright comical today.

Just doing my part...

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Learned something new today...

I was trying to do a shallow copy rather than a deep copy of a Java HashMap. As far as I can tell, you can't use clone() in Java 5 without getting unchecked cast warnings, period. The solution is to either ignore the warnings, or forgo the shallow copy and instantiate a new version of the object with the old version of the object as an argument (copy instantiation). Generics are cool and suck at the same time...

Reference: http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=559703&messageID=2982374

What the Terrorists Want

Reprinted with permission verbatim from the September 15, 2006 issue of Bruce Schneier's most excellent monthly newsletter CRYPTO-GRAM:


On August 16, two men were escorted off a plane headed for Manchester, England, because some passengers thought they looked either Asian or Middle Eastern, might have been talking Arabic, wore leather jackets, and looked at their watches -- and the passengers refused to fly with them on board. The men were questioned for several hours and then released.

On August 15, an entire airport terminal was evacuated because someone's cosmetics triggered a false positive for explosives. The same day, a Muslim man was removed from an airplane in Denver for reciting prayers. The Transportation Security Administration decided that the flight crew overreacted, but he still had to spend the night in Denver before flying home the next day. The next day, a Port of Seattle terminal was evacuated because a couple of dogs gave a false alarm for explosives.

On August 19, a plane made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, after the crew became suspicious because two of the lavatory doors were locked. The plane was searched, but nothing was found. Meanwhile, a man who tampered with a bathroom smoke detector on a flight to San Antonio was cleared of terrorism, but only after having his house searched.

On August 16, a woman suffered a panic attack and became violent on a flight from London to Washington, so the plane was escorted to the Boston airport by fighter jets. "The woman was carrying hand cream and matches but was not a terrorist threat," said the TSA spokesman after the incident.

And on August 18, a plane flying from London to Egypt made an emergency landing in Italy when someone found a bomb threat scrawled on an air sickness bag. Nothing was found on the plane, and no one knows how long the note was on board.

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets, or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports.

Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded. Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up ten planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

(I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks. I'm not that stupid. But the subject of terrorism is more complex than it appears, and understanding its various causes and effects are vital for understanding how to best deal with it.)

The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways. Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and increasing actual security. I'll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with anti-terror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

Incidents:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401419&in_page_id=1770 or http://tinyurl.com/k5njg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5267884.stm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/17/national/main1906433.shtml
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/08/18/doctor-winnipeg.html or http://tinyurl.com/emnox
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/08/16/100wir_port1.cfm
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/15321870.htm or
http://tinyurl.com/s5oxe
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-20-fbi-passenger_x.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/08/17/1155407916156.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6024132,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5283476.stm
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166

There have been many more incidents since I wrote this -- all false alarms. I've stopped keeping a list.

The chemical unreality of the plot:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/print.html or http://tinyurl.com/eeen2
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html or http://tinyurl.com/etrl8
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/08/14/tatp_about_that_pyro.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2306994,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/10/us.security/index.html
http://www.wondermark.com/d/220.html
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/08/wait-arent-you-scared.html

This essay also makes the same point that we're overreacting, as well as describing a 1995 terrorist plot that
was remarkably similar in both materials and modus operandi -- and didn't result in a complete ban on liquids.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/17/airport_futility/

My previous related writings:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-096.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-038.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/terrorism_secur.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-045.html

This essay originally appeared in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71642-0.html

Exponential Growth

Just read a great article by Dr. Albert Bartlett on Arithemetic, Population and Energy. The main take-away is one that I'd learned a long time ago, but definitely needed a refresher.

Dr. Bartlett shows that if you want to figure out how long something takes to double, divide 70 by the annual growth rate and you'll get the number of years until you're doubled. An example of this is to consider inflation. At an average of 3% annual inflation, it will only take 23.3 years for all prices to double. Another example that Dr. Bartlett uses is population growth. At a nominal growth rate of 1.3%, the earth's population will double to 12 billion people in 53.86 years. The natural conclusion is that we'll need double the infrastructure that we have now in order to support the population in 53.86 years.

I did a few calculations of my own. In 53.86 years, given an average inflation rate of 3%, everything will cost 4 times more than it does now. Will wages follow this trend?

Fortunately, according to the US Census bureau the population growth of the US is 1.1% and is expected to drop to .54% between 2040 and 2050 with a final population projection of 392 million by 2050. Taking into account economic globalization and the fact that the global growth rate is higher than the US growth rate, it's readily apparent to me that the US isn't going to remain at the top of the heap forever in terms of resource utilization. This is causing a shift that's been apparent for many years where we see the manufacturing jobs leaving to other countries where they are cheaper. The consequence is that there is a greater and greater emphasis on education in the United States.

Interestingly, this all leads me to predict that eventually all manufacturing will come back to the US and that we'll be a global manufacturing superpower. Why? Consider that as the US population growth declines and levels off, our emphasis leans more and more towards being educated and using our minds to create things. Over time, the US will take the lead in lean process automation to the degree that we can manufacture things far cheaper than even the cheapest labor because we'll be able to do it without labor. Other countries will follow suit of course, but as long as we have an intelligent and informed workforce, the lead we gain while other countries lap up our manufacturing jobs, will enable us to permanently stay one step ahead of the rest of the world.

MIG Welding

* Welding with shielding gas is not practical for windy conditions.

* Flux cleans the metal and keeps it from oxidizing while you're welding.

* Welding with shielding gas keeps your weld from spattering molten metal all over and gives you a cleaner weld.

* Welding with solid core and shielding gas is best for inside work on clean metal.

* Welding with flux core and no shielding gas is good for outside work on unclean metal.

* Welding with flux core and shielding gas is good for inside work on unclean metal.


I'm still not clear on the polarity stuff and the proper gas mixtures for each type of MIG welding.

Ask Ms. Dewey

A high school buddy of mine, named John Reid, just lead an effort to launch Ms. Dewey. Our entire lab group had a great time playing with her today. I think the best way to describe Ms. Dewey is to let John do it:

"She's a sassy know-it-all micro site that we've created that serves up some
hilarious video clips to your search queries. She's really smart (she has 3
brains, seriously). You can ask her anything, and she?ll not only know what
your asking, but serve up a snarky (yeh, I said snarky) response."

I personally found that she was oddly accurate with her video clips. She's also got a bunch of easter eggs that were pretty entertaining to stumble upon. I hope a lot of people stumble upon this because it really is a lot of fun to play with!

Solar Cell Efficiency Boost

Interesting approach to boosting solar cell efficiency. In a nutshell, solar cells cannot convert light from the lower end of the spectrum into energy. Some very smart people have figured out how to chemically combine two low energy photons into one high energy photon which can then be used by solar cells to generate electricity. Linked here.