BunkBlog

Check out the Galileoscope – it’s an attempt by the International Year of Astronomy to create a $10 telescope that can resolve the rings of Saturn.

The CBO analysis of the stimulus is available online. If you really want to know what the impact of the stimulus may be, read it for yourself. Don’t believe whatever talking heads say. Especially don’t believe what they said last week, before the analysis had been released. Lying bastards. It’s true that the CBO says much of the money won’t be spent in federal fiscal year 2009. If you think about it for a few seconds, you’d realize this is blatantly obvious. FY 2009 started in October, so it’ll be about one-third over before the bill becomes law. Then, it still takes time for things to get moving. The “quick” moves won’t be able to add money to the economy until April, half-way into the fiscal year. A multi-year stimulus which has a lower impact in a 6-month “year” than in the following 12-month year?  SHOCKING! A quote from the NY Times seems to be aghast that it may take a few months to a year to get some construction projects moving. Yeah, well…have you seen how long it takes to complete or even plan major construction projects? Boston could tell you.

One thing the CBO won’t tell you, quite explicitly denoted on the front page of their report, is what return on investment we can expect for each provision, or the bill as a whole.  No matter what Marie Cocco says, the CBO doesn’t make those predictions. But, most economists agree that tax cuts (while nice and I’ll take any money the government sees fit to give back to me) are not as effective as you might think.  Turns out, most of us actually save some of that money when we get it, rather than immediately spend every dime.  One typical comment:

“People are going to spend 30, 40 cents on the dollar, so the multiplier is going to be low,” said Adam S. Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute of International Economics.

Have I mentioned we have a kitten? She moved in early in December.

(The Youtube version seems to not work for no reason I can tell, and their support staff is ignoring me. Thankfully, Multiply works just fine.)

So, according to the vast majority of respected economists, including those with Nobel prizes, the stimulus might work, but it might be too late for anything to make things better in the short term.  Even Christina Romer (President Obama’s economic adviser) thinks the stimulus will only slow the growth rate of the unemployment rate in the near term, bringing it back down in two years. But, they all agree that to do nothing is definitely not going to do anything of value.

“We have very few good examples to guide us,” said William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the liberal-leaning research organization. “I don’t know of any convincing evidence that what has been proposed is going to be enough.”

Christina Romer, whom Mr. Obama has designated to be his chief economist, concluded in research she helped write in 1994 that interest-rate policy is the most powerful force in economic recoveries and that fiscal stimulus generally acts too slowly to be of much help in pulling the economy out of recessions, though associates said she now supports a big stimulus package if policy makers roll it out early enough in the recession.

Adam Posen, the deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said Mr. Obama’s plan could provide just the right boost — if it was carried out properly.

Alan J. Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the overall scale of the program looked “reasonable” at $800 billion over two years.

“It’s much bigger than anything that’s been tried in my lifetime, but this is scarier than anything we’ve seen in my lifetime,” Professor Auerbach said.

For those who point out that Romer once said that throwing money at a recession doesn’t work – no.  You’re wrong, that’s not what she said.  She said that monetary policy is better to use than fiscal policy. Unfortunately, the interest rates are at zero now, so there is no more room for monetary policy. Fiscal policy is what we have available, so that’s what we’re stuck with.

For those who think that tax cuts or tax rebates are better than paying for infrastructure buildouts – no.  You’re wrong, and almost no economist agrees with you.

Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a forecasting firm, told a forum of House Democrats this week that the “bang for the buck” — the additional economic activity generated by each dollar of fiscal stimulus — was highest for increases in food and unemployment benefits. Each dollar of additional money for food stamps yields $1.73 in additional economic activity, Mr. Zandi estimated, and each extra dollar in unemployment benefits yields about $1.63.

By contrast, Mr. Zandi estimated, most tax cuts produce less than a dollar for each dollar of stimulus, especially if the tax cuts are temporary, because people save at least some of their extra money.

Joel Slemrod, a professor of tax policy at the University of Michigan, said, “The research I’ve done on the 2001 and 2008 tax rebates suggests that the proportion of the rebates that went to spending was rather small, about one-third.”

I look forward to more random people throwing up logical fallacies. How about, “argument from personal incredulity?” That’s always a good one. After all, if something doesn’t make sense to you, I’m sure that highly trained economists have spent no time at all on it and it’s all just a guess to them too. Over 140 economists, including 5 Nobel Prize winners, support the stimulus package.  If you want to convince me of your point of view, bring more expert opinion than that.

Scenes from the Great Lazer Tag Massacre of 2009.

This is what passes for tactics in third grade:

I was behind a Hummer H2 today and noticed it had tie-down points.  WTF?  Is someone sling-loading these things below a Chinook?

‘Fantasy Island’ star Ricardo Montalban died this morning.  One of the most surreal memories I have of Montalban was in 1994.  Driving around the desert of southeastern Arizona in a friend’s sports car (incredibly unwise in an Arizona August), listening to Ricardo Montalban on the radio. Montalban was reciting the history of the border region, including the phrase indelibly etched in my brain, “The seven cities of Cibola,” in that rich baritone.

Goodbye, Mr. Roark.

I noticed in yesterday’s Best Buy ad a neat thing – the Acer Aspire One on sale.  Since I have no money right now, I am only window shopping for new toys.  In addition, I’ve always felt that certain personal technology must be seen and held before purchasing. This worked for me quite well, when I fell in love with the Sony Clie clamshell doodad (which The Boy has inherited with its new battery) way back when, and I stay firmly committed to this concept. I can’t imagine buying a laptop or MP3 player or cell phone (well, cell phone I can’t imagine at all) without first being able to handle the item. Some things are just too personal to be left to online research.

Anyway, back to Best Buy. I went to the store, and looked at the MP3 players for a bit, fending off three salespeople (my Sansa got dropped and now the headphone jack only works if you hold the plug at an unnatural angle). Then, I wandered over to the laptop zone, hoping to see a fabled netbook in the wild. I’ve already seen the Aspire One (a friend owns one), but the sheer novelty of one of the stores in this [expletive] town finally taking notice of the biggest trend in portable computing in years…well, I had to see where they had hidden the machine. It turns out, they hid it in some other store, because there was not one hint of the presence of the Aspire One nor any other netbook. So far, the only place in this [expletive] town I’ve seen a netbook actually for sale in the store is Target. We have an Office Depot, Office Max, and a Best Buy, and not one of those technology stores has seen fit to stock any netbooks at all. Nuts.

I wonder if the Sony Vaio P will end up in one of the local stores. I’m doubting it.

First of all- I am not whom you would assume… This is the “Woman.” I was going to holiday hijack this blog in order to post sweet somethings for and about the man who brings me such happiness, but I am woefully and willingly computer ignorant. So when I hung my head low and told him the error in my espionage, he created an account for me. Only now am I prepared to woo.
Worse than my technical geekery however was the mantra I’d like to address, which I foolishly lived by for 15 years: Relationships are hard. The succinct point I’d like to make on this virgin post is that they do not have to be difficult whatsoever. We are the blissfully happy and content proof. The cracked foundations of past entanglements left me weary and paranoid that I would become another victim of my own broken wisdom. Thankfully I have been proved wrong. No arguments. No disagreements. No eggshells whatsoever. I don’t believe in luck, karma or soulmates, but I know my life has changed. Here’s to another great year!

Apparently, it is now time for people on my reading list (RSS aggregator, LJ Friends, whatever you want to be called) to make predictions for 2009, and review their past prognosticative abilities. I’ll play along, but I’m taking all sucker bets, so as to get a hit rate much higher than Sylvia Browne ever will.

1. The WorldNutDaily and other extreme-rightwing nutjobs will continue to berate President Obama throughout the year, calling into question his patriotism, his citizenry, and perhaps even his sexual orientation, just in hopes that something will cause people to care about the right-wing again.
2. Windows 7 won’t be the savior of all things computing in 2009.
3. Netbooks will remain nearly impossible to find in retail channels anywhere with a population less than 5 million (like, say, where I live now).
4. The economy will continue to suck.
5. There still won’t be a single-sign-on system that anyone uses. Sorry, OpenSocial and Facebook API.
6. There still won’t be a crypto system that anyone uses.  Sorry, PGP.
7. The Digital TV changeover will be a complete goat-fuck.
8. Our elected representatives will continue to play reverse Robin Hood, taking as much money from the middle class as they can and giving it to the corporate overlords Eisenhower warned us about.
9. Weather will continue to be remarkable, which will cause climatologists to point out they predicted just such a thing. Denialists will claim that anything other than blistering heat in Alaska and seventy hurricanes reaching into Iowa is proof there is no such thing as global warming.
10. Kit will continue to amuse and enlighten us all with her LE posts.

Since there was great hue and cry recently over the completely unprecedented level* of cold that great parts of the United States have experienced this year, it’s reasonable to assume the same people are following this week’s weather news as well.

Unseasonable warm weather is causing flash flood warnings through much of the midwest. Gee, if “winter” is now considered to be a disproof of anthropogenic global warming, is “warm weather” proof? See also, “weather and climate are not the same word.”

* – by “unprecedented” we mean completely precedented in every reasonable way

When I was 8 years old, I had two chemistry sets.  I went through all sorts of experiments, producing acids that I used to clean/destroy small objects, color-changing things, etc. I’ve seen several times over the past few years stories about the new chemistry sets, which apparently don’t contain any chemicals more interesting than tannic acid (tea extract). We don’t want our young people to grow up curious about science, obviously.

And then there is the curious case of Lewis Casey, who was arrested on suspicion of making meth in his garage. When it was proven rather easily that his chemistry lab was merely a chemistry lab (he’s a college chemistry major), the Canadian government charged him with making bombs instead. Have you ever heard the term “chilling effect” before?

Casey is no longer allowed to engage in chemistry experiments except under supervision in school labs. 

That’s insane.

Birthday wishes go out today to the following distinguished people:

Sissy Spacek
Jimmy Buffett
Barbara Mandrell
Dido
Ingrid Betancourt
Alannah Myles
Annie Lennox
Rick Berman
Cab Calloway
Humphrey Bogart
and of course,
Sir Isaac Newton.

It’s just not fair they get overlooked today.  🙂

Lou Dobbs (not the most unbiased fella on the tube) had CNN meteorologist Chad Myers on the other day, and the weatherman claimed that global warming is not man-made because that would be arrogant, or something of the sort. This has been one of the various anecdotes that are being touted as proving that global warming is not happening, and even if it is, the problem is not humanity’s fault and we can’t fix it so we should just keep fiddling.  It’s sad that this comes up so frequently.

The meteorological year, December 2007 through November 2008, was the coolest year since 2000, according to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis of surface air temperature measurements. It was the ninth warmest year in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880. The nine warmest years all occur within the eleven-year period 1998-2008.

Arctic sea ice has not, in actual scientifically verified fact, improved extent over previous years. It was, indeed, 220,000 square miles more ice cover than last year in November. However, it’s still 260,000 square miles lower than the average 1979-2000 coverage. Furthermore, the extent of coverage has peaked and stopped its rapid growth. Look at the graph linked above – we’re now seeing that the sea ice extent will likely drop below last year’s already-sad numbers by the end of 2008. Air temperatures above the ice remain unusually high, and this will cause a slowing of the ice growth. You may be familiar with warmth and melting.

Yes, it’s a blizzard. No, that doesn’t mean the climate is cooling, it just means there’s a blizzard right now. The plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”

I’m saddened that, of the 1900+ posts I’ve made in more than ten years of online presence, the one which has become the most-viewed is one with a half-nude actress.  I thought I was a better writer than that.  *sigh*

It seems the vast majority of military active duty and veterans I have ever met are vehemently opposed to socialized medicine for the country.  If you’re using socialized medicine, why do you want to deny it to others?

Mike Connell, the man who set up and maintained the invisible email system that the current administration used to avoid the Presidential Records Act, has died in a plane crash. A couple journalists are claiming that Connell was about to roll over and tell all he knew about various shady dealings. Obviously, the same people who believe that President Clinton whacked Vince Foster must also believe that President Bush whacked Mike Connell, right? Don’t be ridiculous.

There is a group that is calling for a full federal investigation of Connell’s crash. They even have a website devoted to what they are calling RoveCyberGate. Personally, I assume that Connell lost control of his small plane and crashed, but it’s always entertaining to see people try to impose a more interesting narrative on reality than is truly warranted.

The woman who is known as the voice of the Enterprise has died, at the age of 76. She’ll always be Nurse Chapel to some, but I’ll remember her as Lwaxana Troi, that saucy lady. Majel Barrett Roddenberry is the only person to have been in every movie, even if only as a disembodied voice.  That voice lives on, in the next Trek film, which is a great tribute to honor a great actress.

I would like to point out that not all fruitcake is bad.  Alton Brown’s Free Range Fruitcake, for example, is yummy as heck.  And, unlike many fruitcake recipes, it only takes a week or two to age, not months and months.  Some recipes start with, “gather your ingredients in July…”  Not for me, buddy.

Of course, now my coworkers think that I only make desserts with a solid alcoholic base. In the past month, I’ve brought in Black Forest cake (kirschwasser in several places, as well as port wine), panettone bread pudding (rum), and now the fruitcake (rum and brandy). I am not a lush, honest.

Someone must think we are low on wine, because I came home to a ridiculously large box, containing a very generous gift basket and four bottles of wine.  Kat was heartened to see at least one bottle of white.  We have about ten reds but no whites until today.  Whoever sent this (the card was unsigned), thank you.  You rock.

I’m sure I can think of someone in the Frozen North who could put one of these trees together…

The tree has a MySpace page.  That’s just wrong.