So I'm getting a Wii. Not directly, and not through the secondary speculative gaming market (aka eBay). a co-worker and his wife waited all night at a Best Buy a few weeks ago and bought two. One they sold to our boss who began each day with the phrase "Gotta get a Wii. Find me a Wii" until he got his Wii.

The other Wii was kept in the packaging, unopened until he decided what to do with it. Resale on eBay wasn't fetching much of a profit. $100 or so after you take out the eBay commission. So I offered to buy the Wii from him. Unfortunately for me, I'm broke. I earn just enough to pay the mortgage, food, bills, and health insurance premiums. And I just bought $3500 worth of a new floor (to replace all the carpet that has been ripped out due to my allergies). So I offered to buy the Wii on installments, just enough so he earns $5 which covers the interest he would have earned on the money had it been in his savings account.

Today, after the MPC Bowl game, which I am attending with TItle Sponsor MPC tent tickets (woooo free hot chocolate, coffee, beer, and food!). My employer is a customer of Micron PC so apparently we also get their tickets to tent city so I'm not complaining.

And after the bowl game, I'll be picking up my Wii from my coworker then heading over to another friends house to play with his Wii. Now we will be able to play head to head tennis because we will have two controllers. Fun fun fun. I am giddy. I got my Cube about 2 years after it came out. The Wii will be my first ever console launch purchase. I"ll be part of the few, the proud, the nerdy, the Wii Mii crowd. And I'm loving it.

I'll eventually create a Mii on my system (already have it on my friends) and probably will post it. Here. Have fun, you Wiiless masses (except you TL, and the other elite group).

Jason

From Various Sources

FoxNews

or

CNN

I guess you could say that I recently came out of the closet. I had been a party line Republican because the alternative, killing babies and taking all my money, is not attractive. But Republicans and still taking all my money and then wasting it still so over the past 3-5 years, I have trended more towards independence from the two party system.

I slowly turned Libertarian. Was I born a Libertarian and just now realized it? Hard to say. I've always been a bit rebellious and annoying, like many hard core libertarians. But I questioned my orientation when I realized that the public school system is doomed to failure because parents and trying to use it to raise their kids instead of doing the job them self. That opened my eyes to a whole new world. Not everything is D or R but there is a L. Libertarian.

So I have been reading articles by the Cato Institute, and the L.V. Mises Institute. Classical Libertarian, market driven, hands off type of thinking.

And I'm not alone. There are lots of people just like me. That share my frustration with the nosy Democrats trying to legislate everything to death or the useless Republicans wasting money while pretending to be against waste. At least the Democrats tell you they are going to waste your money on more programs and crap. You know what you get with the Clintons and Kennedys of the world.

So I found another good article from someone I did not expect to be a Libertarian. Dave Barry. Not only can he voice opinions with class, or at least a kind of class, but he also is funny, which makes reading that article very easy. Go ahead. Don't be ashamed. I promise you won't feel dirty afterwords.

jason

I love a good prank. Especially it it involves covering everything in a cube with foil while a co-worker is on vacation. So check out the fun pictures and be glad you don't work with me. :-) For the record I didn't do this prank, I just love it.

jason

By Jim Fedako
Posted on 12/21/2006
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Most of us would never think of asking our neighbors to foot a personal bill. We accept responsibility for car and roof repairs as ours alone. In addition, we don't bang on the door across the street in order to demand a contribution towards our children's figure skating lessons, taekwondo classes, etc. That which is consumed or used by our families is to be paid from our pockets -- the definition of personal responsibility.

Now let's change the situation slightly. Instead of a figure skating lesson -- the realm of the private good, consider the local public high school football team -- the realm of the supposed public good.[1] The technical definition of a public good -- a good that is nonexcludable, nonrivalrous, subject to free riders, and hence will only be provided by government through coerced tax dollars -- has been corrupted in the modern lexicon to mean anything that is perceived to benefit society in general, no matter how specious the benefit argument.

Based on the technical definition, football is not a public good as teams are excludable and rivalrous since each team is limited to 11 players on the field without penalty. But no one really applies the technical definition to derive public goods. For if they did, the concept of public goods would disappear from economic textbooks and from debates over the need for government interventions in the market.

Instead, the collectivist definition -- the vacuous, yet now standard, definition -- applies the general welfare argument to elevate football from a private activity to that of a public good. The argument goes something along these lines: football is beneficial because it prepares boys for adulthood, keeps them off the streets after school, and provides them with a place where they can excel.

The public goods argument as currently stated says that the benefits that accrue to the child also accrue to society in general. In this collectivist view, raising children is the role of society since society benefits when it's done right -- a better work force -- and suffers when it's done wrong -- more crime and criminals.

But this argument can be applied to almost any expenditure that parents make while raising their children. Better to be jumping on ice or practicing a roundhouse kick than to be out loitering on street corners. Why limit the concept of public goods to football, basketball, baseball, softball, etc? Based on recent history, it is only a matter of time before public goods subsume more activities, with the costs spread over the community in the form of increased taxes: the complete socialism of parenting.

The problem with the concept of public goods is that it misdirects the debate. In modern society, every action I take has a perceived positive or a perceived negative external effect on other members of society, and most of the time there are perceived positive and negative external effects occurring simultaneously. When I mow my lawn, one neighbor perceives the noise as a negative -- reducing calm and tranquility -- while another neighbor perceives my well-kept lawn as a benefit -- invoking calm and tranquility.

I use the qualifier "perceive" because the whole public goods argument for coerced funding of football teams is based on the perception of the observer. The parents of the football player, the player himself, as well as local high school football fans, perceive the team and games as a positive for the community. Some say that it benefits the kids, while others say it strengthens the community. Both views see tax-funded sports, football in particular, as a winner for the community.

Yet the parent struggling to make ends meet each month, the retiree living on an inflation-robbed pension, the lover of freedom, etc., see their ever-increasing tax bill as a negative. For the parent, a child's dental appointment goes wanting for the sake of the football team; for the retiree, the higher tax bill comes at the cost of a colder house in the winter; for lovers of freedom, additional money lifted from their wallets is another slap in the face by collectivists.

The argument over what is and what is not a public good is a meaningless exercise. There is no good that meets the technical definition of a public good. Of course, muddled logic can be applied to the definition in order to form a pseudo public good out of the mire and subsequently justify increased government interventions in the market. But even muddled logic cannot turn a true private good -- high school football -- into a public good.

So, who supports sports on the public dole? It's not just young athletes, their families, and fans; the school system is the biggest winner. When a new sport is added to a school's program, a new dependent constituency is created. Where lacrosse used to be the private responsibility of player and parent, it has become the public good funded by the community's tax dollar. The lacrosse bill is now split between parent and neighbor. And, the threat of withdrawal of the tax-funded, school-district-redistributed, funding source frightens the parents of athletes into action. They rally behind the schools for tax increases, no matter the reason, no matter the amount.

Sometimes the actions are overt, such as a school district stating that parents of athletes should support an operating levy since the additional tax dollars are less than the cost of sports -- a cost that would be borne by the parents of athletes should the levy fail at the ballot. If every homeowner is forced to pony up an additional $500 in property tax, the parents won't have to pay the $550 in per-child athletic fees. By stating the need in this manner, the public school system admits that it engages in theft and redistribution as it takes tax dollars from homeowners to pay for bills that are the personal responsibility of those directly consuming the good or service: football parents and players in this case. Of course, the concept of public goods provides the cover of "doing it for the kids" and "community pride" so the parents can feel good about their theft through the ballot box.

Ask your friends and neighbors if they are willing to split the bill for your child's taekwondo class. Not through some sort of fund-raising activity, but a simple splitting of the bill; fifty-fifty. Go ahead. Most of us would be too proud to even consider asking that question; we wouldn't want to be seen as begging for money. Yet in a collective sense, we accept the same means through the ballot box.

Those who push for additional taxes to benefit high school sports are not the champions of a greater good. No, they are simply bandits using more accepted means to force their neighbors to split the bill. Asking is seen as inappropriate; coercing is celebrated.

Public goods are a cover for coercion, and public high school football is a private good funded by someone else's tax bill. Don't believe otherwise.

Asside from my overzealous use of the letter W, frequent readers will remember my report two short journals ago about the WiiHaveAProblem web site. A site dedicated to overzealous gamers chuckign their Wiimote through $3000 LCD flat screen displays, laptop displays, walls, small furry pets, etc.

Well today Nintendo announced a recall to replace the 0.024 inch strap with a much beefier 0.04 inch strap (presumably made of carbon fiber nano-tubes?) at a estimated cost of over a million dollars.

While this Nintendo Fan Boy applauds their decision, this will cause me to get my Wii that much later, and I might not be in favor of that decision. Besides, I don't have an expensive TV for my Wiimote to go flying through causing fatal damages resulting in humorous videos and pictures posted online. Some enterprising individual actually tried to test the tensile strength of the strap but let me remind my readers abotu the difference between static force and dynamic force. A strap may be able to hold a sustained 40 lbs of force, but if that same 40 lbs of force were exerted in the time frame of .1 seconds, then that strap is going to break? As a rock climber you know that to take a fall the best way possible, you need lots of rope out so that the stretching capabilities of the rope can be used the increase the time the force is applied to the rope. This is why climbers can climb with twin 8mm ropes and not just the beefy 11mm ropes of the big wall climbers.

So rejoice Nintendo fans and wait a little long I suppose.

jason

Filmmaker Stuart Browning shows the callousness of "single-payer", government-run health care systems as practiced in Canada.

When a person has to wait 8 months for surgery, or 4 months just for a MRI, then you know there is a problem with your health care system. And when your single-payer, aka-government monopoly, system is struck down as unconstitutional in one province, that should be another red flag. There are many more examples of why a universally poor monopoly on a service, especially a life threatening / saving service, is a bad idea.

Give that video a look-see. Enlightening to say the least. The Libertarian in me shudders to think of this scenario playing out in the US.

jason

So I found this on.... I have no idea where I ran across this site..... but in any case the title tells you a lot about the site. Oh right, Penny-arcade. Go check out their comic. Gotta be in the top online comics (at least of the comics that cater to gamers, profanity, and kitchen appliances with NC-17 habits).

Wii Have A Problem is a "blog focused on bringing you the latest trend in gaming violence. That of damaged electronic loved ones caused from Wii related activities. Why? Because we're fan boys that's why."

That should sum up a lot of their content right there. 40" plasma TVs destroyed by vigorous games of Wii Sports. Laptops that got in the way of the true Wii experience.

And then there is this post which includes a YouTube video that is just......funny? Or is it Sad? Here is the short of it. Complete gamer geek stays up for days hopped up on sugar and some OTC drugs. Gamer waits in line for the Wii with some friends. Some media / Video Blogger comes by and asks the usual "so you're waiting in line for the [fill in blank] system" questions. But this guy is so ..... I don't know.... Geeky? Not quite right. The term Geeky just pales in comparison to the aura this guy broadcasts.

Go ahead and laugh if this was you a few years ago. Wii understand. Wii are hear for you.

Jason

First found here

by Michelle Malkin

In between breathless condemnations of the Bush administration for stifling its free speech, endless court filings demanding classified and sensitive information from the military and intelligence agencies, and self-pitying media industry confabs bemoaning their hemorrhaging circulations (with the exception of the New York Post), my colleagues in the American media don't have much to time to give thanks.

Allow me:

Give thanks we don't live in Bangladesh, where you can be put on trial for writing columns supporting Israel and condemning Muslim violence. Just ask Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of Blitz, the largest tabloid English-language weekly in Bangladesh. He is currently facing a sedition trial for speaking out about the threats radical Islam poses in Bangladesh. He has been imprisoned, harassed, beaten, and condemned. In court last week, his persecutors read these charges against him: "By praising the Jews and Christians, by attempting to travel to Israel and by predicting the so-called rise of Islamist millitancy in the country and expressing such through writings inside the country and abroad, you have tried to damage the image and relations of Bangladesh with the outside world." For expressing these dissident opinions, he faces the possibility of execution.

Give thanks we don't live in Egypt, where bloggers have been detained by the government for criticizing Islam and exposing the apathy of Cairo police to sexual harassment of women. Just ask Abdel Karim Suliman Amer, 22, who was arrested earlier this month for "spreading information disruptive of public order", "incitement to hate Muslims" and "defaming the President of the Republic." Ask Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, and has been outspoken in his criticism of Egyptian brutality. He was detained this week along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger. His host, 24-year-old reformist Muslim Muhammad al-Sharqawi, had been detained by the Egyptian government this spring as he left a peaceful demonstration in Cairo where he had displayed a sign reading, "I want my rights." Sharqawi was beaten in prison over several weeks.

Give thanks we don't live in Sudan, where editors can lose their heads for not kowtowing to the government line. Ask the family of Mohammed Taha, editor-in-chief of the Sudanese private daily Al-Wifaq, who was found decapitated on a Khartoum street in September. He had been kidnapped by masked jihadi gunmen. What did Taha do that cost him his life? He insulted Islam, and dared to question Muslim history, the roots of Mohammed, and other Muslims. Before his murder, his paper was shuttered for three months and he was hauled into court for "blasphemy."

Give thanks we don't live in China, the world's leading jailer of journalists and Internet critics. Consider Yang Xiaoqing, jailed for five months because he reported corruption among local officials in the central Hunan province. Or Yang Tianshui, sentenced to 12 years in jail this spring for posting essays on the Internet supporting a movement by exiles to hold free elections. Or Li Yuanlong, a Guizhou reporter for the Bijie Daily jailed for two years on subversion charges because he dared to criticize the ruling Communist Party on foreign websites. Or any of the other 32 journalists and 50-plus bloggers behind bars.

Give thanks we don't live in Lebanon, where outspoken writers pay with their lives. Journalist and Christian Orthodox activist Samir Kassir, who was critical of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, was assassinated in a Beirut car bombing in 2005. His colleague, An-Nahar newspaper manager Gibran Tueni was killed in a car bombing last December. Lebanese TV anchorwoman and Christian journalist May Chidiak survived a separate car bombing last fall, but lost an arm, leg, and use of one eye.

Give thanks we don't live in Russia, where investigative journalists routinely wind up dead. Last month, unreleting reporter and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in her apartment. In the days before her death, Politkovskaya had been working on a story about torture in Chechnya, according to her newspaper Novaya Gazeta. She joins a death toll that includes Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, who had been investigating the Russian business underworld, and was gunned down outside his Moscow office in 2004; Valery Ivanov, editor of the newspaper Tolyatinskoye Oborzreniye, also shot dead after investigating organized crime and drug trafficking in 2002; and Larisa Yudina, editor of the opposition newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykia in southern Russia, who was stabbed to death by former government aides.

Give thanks we don't live in Denmark, where the cartoonists who dared to caricature Mohammed and challenge creeping sharia are still in hiding, in fear for their lives.

Give thanks we don't live in Italy, where a spineless judge bowed to jihadists and put famed war journalist Oriana Fallaci on trial for her sharp-tongued critiques of Islam. She succumbed to cancer before they could exact a vengeful penalty against the lioness. But they made the price of "insulting" Islam known far and wide to the cowering Western media.

Give thanks we live in America, land of the free, home of the brave, where the media's elite journalists can leak top-secret information with impunity, win Pulitzer Prizes, cash in on lucrative book deals, routinely insult their readership and viewership, broadcast enemy propaganda, turn a blind eye to the victims of jihad, and cast themselves as oppressed victims on six-figure salaries.

God bless the U.S.A.

There will soon be some real neat video from the Micron Team's Baja race cars. Micron CEO Appleton, with his brother in the car, drove the Baja 1000 and won the race for their class of vehicle. There are some neat clips on the site and more will be available on various news reels to be released soon.

Now Steve Appleton isn't exactly a slouch when it come to doing fun things, having been a motocross racer and a stunt plane pilot. But part of his team's win is no doubt to the hundreds of thousands (if not million or so) that goes into all the support crews, vehicles, etc. Consider that he leased some vehicles from the guy that created some of the first Baja race cars, so he had some good vehicles.

In other news, I just found out that the fastest compact flash, and possibly the highest quality flash memory, made under the Lexar brand is actually Micron memory. Wooo! Go Local guys. And some of the best PC memory is made by Micron under the Crucial name. Nifty.

Back to the Baja. I highly suggest at least watching the trailer for, if not the movie of, Dust To Glory which is made by the same people that made Step Into Liquid the amazing documentary about surfers. The trailer for both is available in a variety of formats. It is an all digital production (HD filming and digital delivery) so the clips look amazing. Windows Media 9 and Quicktime available. And when they say "Large trailer" they are not kidding. 1000kbps is available. The Dust to Glory trailer is available on YouTube if you want to see it in low res.

There is just something neat about seeing guys / gals racing the 1000 in massive racing trucks and then seeing some other guys racing the whole thing on a motocross bike! How crazy do you have to be to drive that thing for 40 hours straight by yourself on a bike! Then there are some guys racing it on 4 wheelers and others in dune buggies (like Appleton). Amazing physical race in any case. Look at a list of some of the people racing and it is a who's who of racing including Indy, Nascar, Motocross, and more. That seems to indicate that if you are into racing, then this is as hard as it gets.

In any case, the Baja 1000 is the source of many neat videos, so hit up your favorite video sharing site and see what is new.

Journal Spam (Many at once). I've just got a lot to say and since you are reading this, then you at least pretend to care. :-) Here is your FLOOR - Friday Link Overage Or Deluge. Enjoy!

1. A new Star Wars Exhibit at OMSI (Thanks to PK)
2. Scary article on the Front Page of Slashdot about Russian Bot Nets that send 1 BILLION spam a day for Pump-and-dump stock scams.
3. Assult on gay student was fraudulent, Police report
4. Boise Micron CEO driving in famous Baja Race.
5. A 14 yr old girl who's art is worth millions.
6. Wal-Mart rolls out their cheap generic drugs to Idaho.
7. Boise State & The BCS

1) Star Wars & OMSI.
This is cool for so many reasons. I am a long time SW fan (1999 SW Celebration participant in Denver CO!) so these things just push all the right buttons. It is OMSI so it even to start with it will be fun. Then it involves Star Wars. And then to finish it off with a bang, the exhibit has modern engineering thrown in! You Cannot Go Wrong With That Combination!

2) I read a _lot_ about security online. I am responsible for several small companies IT needs (as an independent consultant). And this is just freaky and fun, all in one (any rhythmically rhyming!). The sophistication of modern organized cyber crime is astounding. The common internet surfer almost doesn't stand a chance against these criminal brains at work. But I give the virus writers some credit.... they bundled their trojan with an anti-virus detector so that the machine would not get any other viruses (except theirs of course) so the owners might not even know what is going on.

3) There was a BIG stink in town recently about a gay student who said he was attacked by some homophobic students shortly after reading derogatory material on a restroom wall written about him. It turns out that he made the whole thing up and beat himself up to fabricate the evidence. Naturally the activists and loudmouths that usually hang around a college campus set up a big pep rally, the usual "Not In Our Town" thing. Understand that I am not in favor of any beatings, physical intimidation, or anything similar, against ANYONE. Period. Even child molesters deserve to be able to live with out death threats (doesn't mean I won't hesitate to take one out if I see him/her fiddling with my kids). So having said that, I am still not surprised that the activist students believe that there is a climate of "extreme hate" on the BSU campus. What? I went there. I missed this extreme hate that is suppose to permeate the campus. You want to see extreme hate.... go to the U of Idaho wearing BSU's Orange & Blue. That will be an example of some hate. Or show up in Michigan chanting "Buckies" to see what hate means. Or go to Iraq. That entire country is full of seething hate for almost everyone.

What really pisses me off is the utter waste of resources this selfish student created. For something like this selfish attention grab, dozens of cops would have been pulled off of regular duties to canvas the area and several detectives working on other cases would have been reassigned to interview potential witnesses / suspects in the area. This probably cost the city thousands if not more than ten thousand dollars chasing bogus information. But that isn't even the worst part. What crimes went unstopped because the cops were not where they should have been? What other investigations were put on hold because this had "hot button" issues attached to it so administration and command staff felt guilted or obligated to act because of the extremely effective lobby efforts of this movement.

4) The entire Micron executive team was required by the CEO Steve Appleton, to race the 2006 Baja 1000 as a showcase for their flash memory products and digital sensors. They will be racing 4 car/trucks (what do you call them any how) and will record all 4 cars video feeds for the entire race to demonstrate the quality of their products. Our KTVB has the interviews and fun facts about Micron's race attempts. See here for a shameless plug for Micron where the give a closeup view of the camera and storage system to be used. Any idea how much storage is needed for ~30 hours of video? Yeah I know..... It depends on resolution, frame rate, bit depth, compression, etc. But this is Micron, so they can probably afford to stick 100GB or so of flash ram in an array and hook that up to their cameras. Live Track the Micron Team. Looks like the race has already finished, but I want to see the video. I wonder how or when they will release this content.

6) (yes out of order) Wal-Mart is extending their generic prescription drugs to Idaho. Here is hoping that SingulAir will have a generic and that it is available soon.

7) BSU (6-0 in conference and 10-0 overall) plays against Utah State (1-5 in conference 1-9 for the season) and for some love from the BSC rankings. Here is hoping we at least get #12 and a bowl game. Our QB has had the chicken pox so his performance last week against Fresno is understandable. Our nation leading RB Johnson has finaly gotten out of the hospital due to a collapsed lung from the SJSC game last week. He probably will not play.

5) Akiane Kramarik, a binary child prodigy (art and poetry) has an art exhibit opening in Boise tomorrow. I'll just quote Ch6 News... At the age of four, Akiane Kramarik could draw better than many adults. By the age of seven, Akiane was painting and writing poetry and by the age of nine, this Idaho girl was declared a child prodigy in both art forms. She can paint and write poetry, but at age 4 she had some visions where she said God took her up to heaven for what seamed like days, but was just hours. Now many readers will say this is the product of overbearing parents. But her mother is an immigrant (and atheist) and she never heard of the word "God" before that vision. That doesn't mean she couldn't have read something somewhere, but the story is still amazing. Check out the paintings at the new Boise-Downtown art gallery or at KTVB's good link. Her parents took video of her painting to prove that it was actually their daughter and not themselves doing the painting. Now apparently the girl is taking up the piano. She even has a book available on Amazon. There is an audio podcast available for the vary curious (technically not the best audio production, but an interesting interview with the girl). Christianity Today has an article as well. She gets up at 4am so paint before the rest of the family is up. Then she spends +8 hours on her homeschooling homework and chores. Listen to the podcasted interview and she is amazingly articulate for how young she is.

Religious issues aside, this leads me to believe that there are some people that just get all the talent and the rest of us are here to gave on in amazement and then go back to our hum-drum lives wondering what we can do that will add beauty and love to this world.

Jason

Those Wacky Leonids Are At It Again

I am talking about the annual Leonid Meteor shower. There should be a new moon (aka little visible moon light) so the sky should be nice and dark, providing that you live in the correct side ofthe globe that is effectively "facing" the oncoming path of the debris as the earth moves across this section of the solar system. Check out SpaceWeather.com for a great map of the solar system that contains this debris cloud. Here is a sky map which tells you what part of the sky to look for and where the streaks are likely to go. Not a guarantee of course, but a good chance. You of course need to visit NASA's site dedicated to the Leonids for a bunch of other good information. According to this map, which indicates which part of our rock will be facing "forward" (i.e. facing into the direction of travel around the sun), Europe and the Eastern US get the best chance to see the shower.

Viewers along the northeastern coast of the United States and Canada, as well as people in Europe and western Africa might get to see a possible "outburst" of as many as 100-600 meteors per hour. This spike in activity is predicted for 11:45 p.m. - 1:33 a.m. EST on November 18-19 (4:45 - 6:33 UT on November 19). This outburst is tied to Earth's passage through a particularly dense debris trail left by the comet 55P Tempel-Tuttle during its 1932 pass around the Sun.

From Nasa...
The traditional maximum of the annual Leonid shower is earlier on November 17, around 16:45 UT, well placed for the western USA (early morning of November 18 local time). More information:

Extra: Don't believe everything you read. While meteor forecasters have done a splendid job predicting Leonid outbursts in recent years--sometimes "nailing the peak within minutes"--they could be wrong in 2006. The outburst might happen at an unexpected time or it might be better than expected. Cooke urges enthusiasts everywhere to keep an eye out for Leonid meteors the nights of Nov. 17th - 19th. "The best time to look," he says, "is just before local dawn when the constellation Leo is high in the sky." (last paragraph from here.

Details aside, I found it amazing that astronomers are able to back-calculate the path of celestial bodies and find out what parts of the solar system, which is moving as a whole through space any way, were visited and when. Amazing. Simply mid bending calculations needed to find those places in space. Lets face it.... space is B I G and there is a lot of it. These have to be some amazingly complicated related rates calculus problems.

So got get up earlier than usual. Put on some coffee or hot chocolate, grab some blankets and enjoy what could be only a faint meteor shower. But what else do you have to spend your time on? Honestly. I would probably just be sleeping away then so why not put my time to better use.

Jason

So from this Nintendo Fan boy to you.... the PS3 videos that I have seen are making me week in the knees and my will is melting. Why? Because it is beautiful. MoH: Airborne is absolutely amazing looking! Who knows how these games will actually be when it comes to playability, camera angles, etc. But they make you drool for the video shots. The scenes that you can find out there don't look like cut scene animations they look and seem to be playable sections of the games. And keep in mind that almost any videos you get to watch are not in HD so the actual footage is even better.

Now lets just talk about the launch madness going on all over. The Front page of Slashdot has some of these stories as well.

But mainly I wanted to complain that I don't have the disposable income to have either a PS3 or a Wii. I will be sitting dejected at home (or possibly somewhere else while my carpet gets torn out) playing Super Monkey Ball on my cube. I suppose I'll enjoy it. If I have to. I guess.

jason

EDIT 2006-11-16 0930hrs MST: Presidential Announcement link from GMontag.

For what it is worth, the President proclaimed that today is "America Recycles Day." Full text here. Politics aside (and I am assuming the Democrats are mad that they didn't get the chance to say something like this instead of the hideous enemy "W") does this proclamation matter?

Is there sufficient economic incentive to recycle in the first place given the economic and negative environmental impact of recycling to begin with (not all recycling uses less energy / resources than consumed to create a new item or to recycle the item). I don't think that America is ready to recycle with any concerted and meaningful effort. This from a guy that picks through his trash to put vegetation in the compost bin, and all possible plastics, paper, glass, and metals in the sorted recycling bins for Monday delivery to who knows where (the other side of the dump as the garbage?). I am a habitual recycler. EVERYTHING possible gets recycled. I don't buy / use plastic disposables if at all possible including cups, plates, sporks, etc (except zip lock bags which I attempt to reuse a few times by washing them).

There might even be a better way to hit the same goal (of hugging trees and saving mother earth) by just following the first two R's of the 3Rs: reduce & reuse. Check out this piece by Jim Fedako of the Mises Institute, a noted Economist's foundation. Mises was the first economist to link Macro and Micro economics and show their relationship. Not an easy thought experiment if you ask me. Reducing consumption and reusing consumables is essentially FREE because you either don't spend money, or you use something more than once when you would have thrown it out. You CAN'T beat that for efficiency on a micro level. Recycling involves more industrial processes and as such inherently costs more resources to re-produce a product. Some recycling has the net effect of reusing a product, but it costs other products to reuse the first product. Is this even a net gain for the environment?

Americans know little about recycling other than what is fed to them by the mass media, and the mass media is scant on actual facts and heavy on hype because hype sells readers or attracts viewers. Save the earth! Recycle! But what does it take to recycle right now? How about this interesting bit from commonly available scientific studies and economics 101 courses everywhere:

Ironically, recycling does not eliminate environmental worries. Take newspapers, for example. First, recycled newspapers must be de-inked, often with chemicals, creating a sludge. Even if the sludge is harmless, it too must be disposed of, probably in a landfill. Second, recycling more newspapers will not necessarily preserve trees, because many trees are grown specifically to be made into paper. A study prepared for the environmental think tank Resources for the Future estimates that if paper recycling reaches 40 percent (compared with the present 30 percent), demand for virgin paper will fall by about 7 percent, and "some lands now being used to grow trees will be put to other uses," according to economist A. Clark Wiseman. The impact would not be large, but it is the opposite of what most people expect. Finally, curbside recycling programs usually require more trucks that use more energy and create more pollution. ...
Recycling is not a panacea for environmental problems. Instead, it is only one of several means for disposing of waste. It is widely used where the economics are favorable. Where they are not, government regulations may override the economics, but only by requiring actions, such as curbside recycling, that people will not do voluntarily. A fairer way to encourage recycling is to price the costs of disposal accurately.

In fact, how about you read the entire article (only 1 page).

Lets compare Japan's recycling to the USA. Japan recycles 50% of solid waste, according to this site compared to the US's 30% but consider that Japan has 1/2 as many people crammed into a land area that is 3.9% that of the US. Compare population densities and you get the picture. They simply have no room for landfills and _have_ to recycle to make efficient use of their land.

Now lets talk about the why of recycling. What makes or prompts a person to recycle. Guilt? Peer pressure? Common man.... every ones doing it! May be. Laziness and accessibility may play the biggest role in determining a person's willingness to recycle. Unless it causes a person physical pain to not recycle (an interesting thought exercises) or makes them give up their luxury priced, sugar filled, fatty lattes, then the average schmoe won't change their behavior.

What ultimately allows someone to recycle, let alone compels them to recycle, is available facilities. If no one will take the trash and recycle it, then you cannot recycle even if you want to. Oh sure you could fill up a pickup and drive across the state line to some other state, but that costs both time and gas, which creates even more pollution completely negating the desired positive effects.

Simple economics determine this part of the equation. Until the government gets involved (not always a bad thing despite me being a Libertarian). Lets look at Japan again.

April 1, 2001 a law went into effect in Japan that requires owners of appliances such as washing machines, televisions, air conditioners and refrigerators to pay about $60 to have their used goods taken away and recycled.

This is good an all, but in the US there is too much empty land where a consumer can toss out the old microwave and avoid paying that fee. I feel that pay first mechanisms offer a greater incentive to consumers to recycle. Add the $60 at the cash register (pain in the butt for commerce I must say, but not impossible to keep track of) and then have that money go back to the government held in trust until the old appliance is returned to a recycling center where the consumer gets their money back. Mean while the government gets to keep the interest on that floating time period as an administrative cost (it will just get wasted but that is the nature of things).

Granted, a pay-first scheme is decidedly un-Libertarian of me, especially if the government keeps the float, but consumers (and voters by extension) are pissy little bastards and can't be trusted any more than they can be trusted not to screw up their home computer with spy ware and viruses or their ballots with hanging chads (doesn't everyone run their hand along the ballot to make sure each hole is completely punched? I know I do... but I digress).

Are there limitations to the pay first / last incentives? Of course. Citizens will go to states that do not have economic recycling "incentives" (aka extra taxes) and then toss the used item in the nearest field, swamp, forest they can find creating far worse ecological problems than tossing it in a land fill. No law escapes the humans that govern it, created it, and abide by it, which is why I ultimately believe that no law will work more than about 80% of the time and by work I mean induce the desired effect in the population.

So lets bring this discussion back to recycling and away from government where all discussion ultimately become futile and cost $100 a screw driver...

• Scrap aluminum went for $1,090 a ton in 1997, according to R.W. Beck Inc., which tracks the recyclables market, and it takes 95 percent less energy to turn aluminum cans into new ones.
• Thus it is not surprising that 64 percent of aluminum cans are recycled.
• But it takes only slightly less energy to recycle glass containers than make new ones, and because glass must be sorted by color and may be transported hundreds of miles to reprocess, recycling may use more energy than making new glass.
• Also, the price of clear glass recyclables fell 20 percent in 1997 to $37 a ton.
  Since the market for paper -- which is nearly 85 percent of all recycled materials -- collapsed in 1995, politicians are reportedly taking a more skeptical view of recycling programs. Many cities hoped to finance recycling programs from sales of recovered materials. But the price of newsprint, for instance, fell from more than $100 a ton in 1995 to $15 in 1997; thus collection programs require subsidies to operate. Source: "The Economics of Recycling," Congressional Quarterly Researcher, March 27, 1998.

If recycling uses more energy than creating a new item, then depending on the source of the energy, a GREATER ecological harm has been committed. Lets hit up the DOE.gov and look at the numbers. And while I am on the subject of the DOE, use the stats from their site. In my fair state, we run 80% Hydro power. Yep. About the cleanest power generating state there is. And we are a net producer. Go Check out your state [PDF]. So for recycling centers in Idaho it may actually be generically "greener" to recycle than in fossil fuel heavy states. I STRONGLY suggest a quick read through that document as it contains a wealth of information about your state, where it gets its energy and how much _crap_ is being spilled into the air to get it. Of course our fair state can only supply so much power via Hydro which is why natural gas fired plants have been built to help out with the California invasion (dam yuppies). Hydro can only go so far. Granted global warming will increase rain fall (more water in circulation and less tied up in useless ice) so hydro production may be able to keep up with some of the invasion. But in states where dirty production methods are used the environmental impact of recycling might be worse than just composting and letting nature digest the stuff.

This isn't to say that recycling will NOT eventually be economically as well as ecologically viable. Hopefully technology will improve to the extent that the cost to recycle provides significant incentives over not recycling. I hope to see companies competing for recycling indicating that there is profit to be made and the earth to be saved.

But what if recycling always produces more waste than is saved and takes more energy than is saved? Should we not recycle and focus on the first two Rs, Reduction of consumption and Reusing consumables? I'll plug the Mises Institute article again.

What's wrong with recycling? The answer is simple; it doesn't pay. And since it doesn't pay it is an inefficient use of the time, money, and scarce resources. That's right, as Mises would have argued: let prices be your guide. Prices are essential to evaluate actions ex post. If the accounting of a near past event reveals a financial loss, the activity was a waste of both the entrepreneur's and society's scarce resources..... If landfills were truly in short supply then the cost of dumping waste would quickly rise. I would then see the financial benefit to reducing my waste volume, and since the recycling bin does not count toward waste volume, the more in the recycling bin, the less in the increasingly expensive garbage cans. Prices drive entrepreneurial calculations and, hence, human action. Recycling is no different.

The will to recycle also depends on the "Why" of your recycling. Like hugging trees? Great. Feel good about recycling, while actually cost the municipality more in time, oversight (it is government after all) and energy to recycle than would have been needed otherwise. Taxes increase to cover the increased contract fees demanded by companies forced to provide recycling services. Back to the Mises article again. I think it turns a bit sarcastic, but from a pure economics point of view, there is little room for argument.

The concept of lost materials is fraught with errors. Glass headed to the landfills will sit quietly awaiting someone to desire its value. The glass is not going anywhere, and should glass become as dear as gold or even something less dear, you can bet that entrepreneurs would begin mining landfills for all those junked glass bottles, not to mention plastic, aluminum, etc. The only caveat to this train of thought is what Rothbard wrote about when he discussed psychic profit: the perceived benefit one gets from performing an action, even if that action leads to an economic loss.

Who reaps the real psychic reward from recycling? The statist do-gooder and the obsessed conservationist. Since recycling is now a statist goal, the do-gooders and greens force the cost of recycling on the unsuspecting masses by selling recycling as a pseudo-spiritual activity. In addition to these beneficiaries, there are those who have not considered the full costs of recycling, but their psychic benefit is more ephemeral than real. The other winners are the companies that do the collecting and process the materials, an industry that is sustained by mandates at the local level.

As a consumer, if we are at all logical then we might actually need to NOT recycle to save the earth so that one day when we need to we can recycle to save the earth.

jason

Just stumbled on to this gem on YouTube.

A very well done master's student animation with some great motion. I had a roommate working on student animations for his digital arts degree so I know the hard work that goes into these. Very good keyframing or even better scripting software. Probably keyframed.

Spoilers Below this point.....

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Does the kiwi die? Does it matter?

jason