Wikipedia - becoming astounding

Years ago I tried to find a clear and useful reference on 'comparative advantage', a foundational theory in economics. I was frustrated by a great deal of noise, and at that time the Encyclopedia Britannica didn't help.

Today I tried again, and Wikipedia had a good summary. I knew Wikipedia was good, but it's becoming astounding.

Update 9/25: See the comments. Brittanica actually has a reasonable article. Hard to believe that's new, so either I misremembered using them or I bobbled my old search. So I'll still say Wikipedia is amazing, but I should have been nicer to EB.

Educational apartheid in America -- noble intent, crummy article

The public schools in many american cities are utterly dismal and largely black: Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid JONATHAN KOZOL / Harper's Magazine v.311, n.1864 1sep2005.

It's an eloquent albeit long-winded article, but why is it dismal? Because when I search on the string 'property tax' I get no hits. How can someone write an article on public schools in America without discussing how they're funded?

Katrina has been called America's shame, but it's only third best. America's true and staggering shame is the funding of eduction through local taxes, particularly property taxes. Satan could not have invented a better method of perpetuating poverty. (Second best shame? Health care of course.)

A covert source of Krugman columns -- post NYT OpEd paywall

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Web Page

I don't know how long this site will stay up, but it's republishing Krugman's columns.

Google secure access

The interesting part of Google's latest 'dropping of the dime' (wireless SF network service):

Gordon's Tech: Google secure access -- and one ring to rule them

Google secure access, combined with Gmail, is turning Google into a vast identity management service. Next up is providing backup service and Google's PayPal annihilator.

There's no way Google won't be taking out PayPal. eBay must be in panic mode now. I like Google and despise Microsoft, but I hope Microsoft isn't completely zombied by their claustrophobic bureaucracy. We will need a counterbalance to Google someday soon.

Remote Desktop Connection for the Mac -- pretty good, but not perfect

I've used Remote Desktop Client for Mac intermittently over the years, but now I have a 100MBps switched connection between my 20" iMac and my XP box. Not only that, but the standard apple kb is really more a PC kb than a Mac kb. So I figured I'd try again.

Annoyingly, even with all this horsepower, there's still keystroke lag. In fact, RDC felt about as fast when I used my G3 iBook and a slow 802.11b connection. I guess the rate limiting step is neither local CPU nor network. Overall, not worth the bother for two machines that are side-by-side.

I still need to test out Apple's VNC implementation, but I gather it's even slower.

I'm tired of waiting for Apple or Microsoft to finally jump into the thin client market. They're taking their time ...

Very disappointing news on schizophrenia

Study Finds Little Advantage in New Schizophrenia Drugs - New York Times

The article might have been titled - no great meds for schizophrenia:

The study, which looked at four new-generation drugs, called atypical antipsychotics, and one older drug, found that all five blunted the symptoms of schizophrenia, a disabling disorder that affects three million Americans. But almost three-quarters of the patients who participated stopped taking the drugs they were on because of discomfort or specific side effects.

I suspect the 75% discontinuation rate is similar in older meds.

I'm disappointed. I was still seeing patients when the first of these meds came out, and I was very pleased with the benefits some of my schizophrenic patients seemed to receive.

We desperately need more basic science and clinical research in the treatment and management of schizophrenia -- one of the most terrible of all diseases.

Good-bye NYT, Hello WaPo

The NY Times (and NYT contributions to the IHT) OpEd page has gone behind a paywall. I wouldn't mind paying $20 a year for the columnists, but they want $50. For that I'd have to be getting the entire newspaper -- or they'd have to negotiate a package with something else (ie. Slate + NYT OpEd, Britannica + NYT OpEd, etc). I'm surprised they're charging so much for so little.

It will be interesting to see if they win this battle, or cave on price, or add something better.

Meanwhile, I've switched my news page link to the Washinton Post (WaPo).

Weird SPAM from SPAMIS -- using my email address

Another weird twist in the old spam and identity theft saga. This spam is a message from "me" to me. I didn't send it though, it's spam. The header says it originates in keromail.com, but of course that could be faked (thought that site is pretty weird).

Getting spam from someone who's hijacked my email address is not new, but this appears to be spam from someone who has an axe to grind with Microsoft. They're not trying to get rich, they're spamming the world to attack Microsoft.

I have a bad feeling this sort of thing will catch on. Sigh.

From: jfaughnan@spamcop.net
To: jfaughnan@spamcop.net
Date: Sep 16, 2005 9:59 AM
Subject: BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft Plans to Outsource Over 10,000 Jobs to China
...

MICROSOFT PLANS TO STOP SUPPORTING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
BY OUTSOURCING MORE THAN 10,000 JOBS OVER 10 YEARS TO CHINA

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002468560_msftgoogle03.html

....
COMMENTS AT: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/04/2256208&tid=109&tid=218

----- ---- --- -- - -
Public Service Announcement Brought to You by SPAMIS :
Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam
----- ---- --- -- - -

[ SPAMIS NOTIFICATION ]:
Thanks to Individual and Server Contributions, SPAMIS is Now "FULLY READY"
to Begin Increasing Microsoft Public Service Announcement Emails to 20 Times
the Amount of Internet Email Users by 25 Times the Current Sending Rate &
Speed When a Certain Activity Transpires to "ANY" Past, Present or Future
SPAMIS Member(s) and/or "ANY" SPAMIS Affiliate(s).
[ CURRENTLY IN WAITING FOR THIS ACTIVITY TO TRANSPIRE TO BEGIN ]
[ SPAMIS / PO Box 1259, Seattle, WA 98101 - USA ]

So what's the 20x bit about? Some kind of blackmail scheme?

If Bill Clinton were president for a day ...

Bill Clinton talks about what he'd do, were he president for a day:

Clinton's worldview - FinanceAsia.com

...If I had 24 hours, I would at least lay down where I think we ought to go in the Middle East to finish the business between the Israelis and the Palestinians after the withdrawal from Gaza.

I would put a healthcare plan before the Congress that would end this insane system we have that's bankrupting the American economy and is leaving huge numbers of people out. And I would do my dead-level best to change the energy and environmental direction that the current government has.

And of course, now I would have to give them a budget plan to get rid of the deficit I got rid of once, and now - (chuckle) - he's brought it back.

Those would be the things I would do in my day as president.

Deep sigh. Bang head against wall. Contemplate future cave-based historians weeping at the election (bad) and re-election (unforgivable) of George Bush II.

Clinton gives more detail on globalization, employment and the Bush tax cuts:

...On trade, the fundamental problem is that in this decade America has found no new source of jobs. Now when you do a trade deal, the benefits normally cover 90% of the people and the real burdens only fall on maybe 1% of the people. The problem is that the benefits are diffused and the burdens are concentrated. America should, whenever we do trade agreements, have an economic impact statement in which we cost out how much it's going to hurt the people who lose their jobs and their livelihoods and then invest in them and make sure they are restored and they can do something new, something different and they can manage this transition; otherwise, you are always going to have politicians who don't want to do that for ideological reasons, being protectionists.

Instead, they gave me four tax cuts. So you got this ragged edge of the American economy because even though we've been having pretty good growth on the numbers over the last couple of years, we're not generating jobs, we're not generating new income. And if we had, for example, decided to do what I just suggested, gone into on aggressive clean-energy future, we would have created millions of jobs just doing that - but we didn't.

So all of our growth is in corporate profits, housing (because interests rates have been low so there's a huge housing boom in America but that always bursts sooner or later) and consumer spending, financed because the Chinese buy our debt along with others every year.

The other big problem is the legitimate concern in America, or a genuine concern, over the Chinese military build up - and whether China is basically being nice now but some day, once they get the most modern military equipment in the world, is going to provoke some sort of a showdown with Japan, which will draw us in, and throw the world into a turmoil. And there are people in the Pentagon who push that line every single day. Just like there are people in the military in China who, every single day say that someday we're going to have to confront the Americans. They're too aggressive, They're too over-reaching. The Japanese are becoming militant again.

They key is: Where are the people? And where are the leaders? There will always be people who will have an institutional interest in finding an enemy - and finding division. And I don't think we've answered that question yet. So yeah, I'm concerned about it.

We live in a dark age of American politics. It's Taft all over again.

More encouraging news from brain science: your frontal lobes are toast

Assuming you're middled aged that is: PLoS Biology: Gene Expression in the Aging Brain.

Recent articles claim that while the average age of non-neural tissue is 10 years, brain tissue age matches chronologic age. (Yeah, a few years ago there was a claim that brain tissue actually regenerated, but that's looking like wishful thinking now.). Now it appears the frontal lobes, the seat of judgment and foresight, wear out fastest.

Brain rot. It affects all of us, and it starts in our twenties. By our forties our brains are definitely hurting (quick, get into management!) and by our sixties we're ready to retire -- except, oops, we can't any more.

There will be a lot of fighting for those grocery bagging jobs @ 2020.

In the meantime, despite all the 'use or it lose it' cliches, it's worth noting that this decay of the frontal lobes (aka, the person) may be related to protein oxidation -- which is related to mitochondrial activity. Perhaps it's better to give those lobes a rest. Stop reading this blog and turn on the TV! Or better yet, go to bed.

Flying over Africa with Google Earth and National Geographic

I'd mentioned earlier that Google has web National Geographic's Africa flyover to Google Earth.

Today, using the map from the Natl Geographic Sept 2005 supplement I tried it out. Here's one link I followed up on:

Megaflyover @ National Geographic Magazine

The houses, like others we have seen in the older parts of the western side of the Djado Plateau, are built from blocks of salt collected in the oasis. They were stacked into an unbelievably complex maze. The houses without roofs reveal room after room, some only a few feet square, hundreds of rooms. What they were used for is beyond me. Like other old habitations, this one looked like a ghost town. There were no people milling around or pots and pans around fireplaces or clothing hanging on lines. These old salt castles are fast melting into the desert they came from. Newer towns are built of mud brick and have satellite dishes and telephones.

I thought they'd have a larger volume of higher resolution images, but this is all still miraculous to an old timer like me.

I'd like to talk with someone who lived in a solt village, but I probably never will. (Though there are probably only six degress of separation between that villager and me.)

Tracking references with Bloglines and Google Blog Search

I tried the Google's blog search on one of my blogs to see how much they index:

Google Blog Search: blogurl:http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/

Superficially it looks quite up to date (latest was yesterday), but they only go back to July 2005. From what I read that's their current limit, but they will extend backwards over time.

Once they get all my posts indexed this will be a great service for searching my own site. In the meantime, it will be intersting to compare the results of these searches to searching on usenet or the web.

You can subscribe to the search results as an RSS feed, so if there's a topic you want to follow you can add that as a search to your blog reader.

For example, this is a link to a search that finds recent references to Gordon's Notes (as you can see, there are few links!). At the bottom of this page is an Atom feed link that references the same search.

I took the URL from the Atom feed link and entered it in my Bloglines collection. So now when I review my blogs there's an entry that will track any references to Gordon's Notes. Kind of neat, really.

The New Balance 991: Cult of the Geek Running Shoe

What running shoe does a geek wear?

The requirements are steep.

It must come in different widths, to suit the neaderthal geek and the anorexic geek. It must never change, so one can order a new version of the same shoe online every 2-4 years. It must be suited to bicycle pedals, frisbee toss, walking the dog, work and lounging. It ought to be very plain, but have highly reflective materials for night time safety. Did I mention it must never change?

There's really only one choice. The New Balance 991. Astoundingly, still made in the USA (by prisoners? illegal aliens?). Worn by Steve Jobs. They made some minor cosmetic changes 4-5 years ago and haven't modified it since (the outcry must have been terrible).

My last pair still worked, but it was getting extremely shabby. It took a few minutes online to get the new ones, which fit exactly the same way the old ones did. The only delay was looking for a C width, but (alas) nowadays they only come in B, D, 2E and 4E. I stuck with my B width, which works very well. The size range is quite impressive:

New Balance:
2A: 8-13,14,15,16
B: 8-13,14,15,16
D: 7-13,14,15,16
2E: 7-13,14,15,16
4E: 7-13,14,15,16

You know you're a geek when you mail order the same running shoe every 3 years. I intend to be cremated (recycled?) in a pair.

Google Earth Integrates National Geographic Africa: this is so bloody amazing

Here's the quiet announcement on Google's Blog:

Google Blog: The illuminated continent: "Have you ever dreamed of Africa while reading National Geographic? The exotic photographs and thoughtful articles take you there with a magical sense of place. Today we embraced that magic by releasing Google Earth data layers that index National Geographic stories, images, journals, and even a live webcam in Africa.

Just start Google Earth, enable the National Geographic layers, and begin exploring.

Across Africa, you will see the familiar yellow National Geographic logo. Zoom in to see the title of each feature article or photograph. Click the icon and a pop-up balloon shows a photo and description along with links to the content. Follow those links to read the entire story right where it happened. Not only will you learn about Jane Goodall's Fifi, you'll see her home. Joining the stories and images are layers for National Geographic Sights & Sounds multimedia resources, a live WildCam in Botswana, and a collection of Mike Fay's Megaflyover images.

The Megaflyover images are stunning. Mike spent more than a year taking 92,000 high resolution photographs of the continent. That project is described in Tracing the Human Footprint, an article in the September 2005 National Geographic. He selected 500 of his favorite scenes of people, animals, geological formations, and signs of human presence and annotated them in Google Earth. Look for the red airplane icons as you fly over Africa. Each of these marks a spot where a high resolution image awaits your own personal voyage.

I bought that issue of NG for the articles and the map. I kept the map, now this will be a fantastic complement.

Maybe I'm not too old to work at Google. If I dye my hair, get plastic surgery, move the family to California ...

An evolutionary biology blog on the ASPM and Microcephalin papers

Excellent commentary on an anthropologist's blog. Evolutionary biology is one of his key interests. I'll add him to my bloglines list.

John Hawks Anthropology Weblog : Recent human brain evolution and population differences

See also my prior post.