Panoramio and Google Earth

Panoramio is a Google earth geo-location photo mashup service. Upload photos, provide geo-location, and people view them via Google earth or as a Google Map mashup.

The Google Earth integration is particularly impressive.

Once cameras all integrate geo-location, and even target geo-location (trickier), this will all get easier, but the results are impressive even now. Try flying Google Earth around San Franciso with the Panoramio layer enabled...

If you're a photo hobbyist who enjoys landscape and city scenes, you can build karma by using Panoramio to show Google Earth passengers the world ...

Why college tuition continues to increase: Mankiw

This is what I've long thought, but Mankiw is a top flight economist:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: On College Tuition

.... One reason college tuition has risen was explained by economist William Baumol. Consider an industry that uses only labor in production and experiences no technological progress, assumptions that arguably approximate colleges and string quartets. The price of its output will have to grow with the price of labor. The price of labor (the real wage) will, in turn, grow with economy-wide technological progress. Using the numbers in the above table from the Times, one finds that Harvard tuition has grown at 2.8 percent per year (note that this is adjusted for overall inflation). Real GDP per capita grows about 2 percent per year--a rough measure of economy-wide technological change. Thus, much of the increase in tuition, but probably not all, can be explain by the Baumol effect.

3. Over the past thirty years, the college premium has risen substantially. That is, workers with college degrees have enjoyed stronger wage gains than those without--a phenomenon often attributed to skill-biased technological progress. This rising college premium has had two effects on college tuition. First, colleges use a lot of educated labor in producing their output, so their costs have risen faster than they otherwise would. Second, the rising college premium has increased the demand for the services of colleges. Supply shifts left, demand shifts right, and the price unambiguously rises.

4. Colleges have gotten increasingly good at price discriminating. (Recall the discussion of price discrimination in chapter 15 of my favorite economics textbook.) The list price is set high, and then many customers are offered a discount called "financial aid" based on their ability to pay. Here's the secret plan: In the future, Harvard will cost $1 billion a year, and only Bill Gates's children will pay full price. When anyone else walks through the door, the message will be "Special price, just for you.

The implication of #1 is that smart buyers can get a bargain courtesy of those who are unable to judge quality. My own experience is dated, but I have never seen evidence of a correlation between quality and price in the many educational institutions I've attended and the two that I've taught at.

Apple's feet of clay: OS X Simple Finder

You can't delete a file using OS X Simple Finder.

Yes, we all know that the Finder is flawed, that Apple broke their beautiful Classic OS file indirection system with OS X, that Apple's metadata management (file type, creator, etc) was screwed up in OS X compared to classic, and that OS X's smb network services are feeble -- but these are all minor flaws compared to Simple Finder. At first glance this looks like a great way to introduce a non-expert users to OS X, but the pretty face is deceiving. Simple Finder in Mac Classic (OS 8+) was a great piece of work, in OS X it's proof positive that Apple can be as incompetent as Microsoft.

Don't do what I did. Don't spend hours trying to make Simple Finder work as a user environment.

Yech.

iTunes sales and the status of DRMd music: next steps

Infinite Loop: iPods, iTunes, and iDiots—Forrester says iPods don't drive iTunes sales is a good rant on a recent NYT article claiming iTunes sales are declining. It's a great rant, though I would not be surprised if a lot of people are realizing that even the relatively enlightened iTunes DRM strategy is a non-starter. Ok, a bit surprised. I didn't think people would figure the scam out this fast.

If it is a some great awakening, if enough people have run into DRM problems that they're soured on the whole idea, then the entire digital music industry will need to reboot. It's not a biggie for Apple -- they make their money on iPod hardware sales, but it's huge for everyone else. Note Yahoo is now selling non-DRMd music ...

I posted a comment about the rant and some of the comments. Excerpts below:

• We also have 3 iPods in active use and may add a Shuffle. All from one music Library. Of course the interesting point here is that copyright holders HAVE NEVER APPROVED OF A FAMILY LIBRARY. So by sharing the music library with my spouse and children on separate iPods I'm probably 'stealing music' as far as the RIAA is concerned. They would say that each person should have their own library, irregardless of relationships.
• ... the beauty of the iPod was making our hundreds (thousand?) CDs new again. It takes a long time to explore that much music, so many consumers may have a very long latency period before they start buying new music again -- whether classic CD or DRMd.
• In terms of IP theft I wonder if the biggest methods now are merging iTunes Libraries (attach external drive, drag and drop, it's easy as pie) and ripping tracks from Library CDs and from purchased used CDs that are quickly resold to the dealer. I'm sure the RIAA knows that, but it's not something they talk about much. They prefer to think about file sharing.
  
• Controlling all those non-DRMd CDs in the world is a tough task. The way to do it, of course, is rather like gun control. Buy up all the CDs on the market and then destroy them. In time the price of used CDs will rise to the level of new DRMd CDs. In fact, smart people should start hoarding used CDs now in anticipation of when the the prices will rise. The next step is to make it impossible to play non-DRMd digital tracks or CDs/DVDs. It's a big project, but I'm sure the RIAA is working on it.
• Lastly, it's not really that hard to get real data on what's happening. Medical researchers study far more sensitive topics than this all the time. The issue is that only the vendors will pay for the research, and they won't share what we find. So we'll make do with rumor and anecdote.

Realm of wonders: Ocean census VI

The Independent has an excellent and concise summary of the results of Ocean census VI. The range of what is "possible" in terrestrial organisms continues to expand. If we are still making discoveries of this magnitude in 2006, it is overwhelmingly likely that many more astounding discoveries lie ahead. I am looking forward to the inevitable coffee table book companion to this research report.

Minnesota: what the heck are these people doing here?

Bruce Schneier may be the world's leading geek security expert. He lives in Minneapolis.

Neil Gaiman is a writer of witty fantasy novels, often set at least partly in London, and a hot Hollywood property besides. He lives on the nearby St Croix river. Backpackit, a hot web 2. company, is local. A number of OS X shops are local.

A number of the blogs I read turn out to be unexpectedly written by local folks. What are all these people doing here? For that matter, how the heck did I end up here anyway?

(The influx is likely to worsen. This weekend my son played baseball in shirt sleeves. Outdoors. In December. The ice rinks are all puddles. If word gets out that the Minnesota winter is gone, we'll go the way of Atlanta ...

Thoughtcrime

Schneier is on a roll, but of course he's got great material. I didn't have the heart comment on this when I first read it, but we now have statistical models that will predict the probability of violent crime based on indirect measures and past records. Sigh. Risk scores will lead to more and more hassles for the unfortunates, which is sure to make them feel and act more like outlaws, which will lead to realtime monitoring ...

Those who score too high will yearn for exile to old Australia.

Speeders will be strip searched ... reputation management II

I am so completely unsurprised by this. The US assigns risk scores to travelers, supposedly "international" only (includes Canada!). Emphases mine:

Schneier on Security: American Authorities Secretly Give International Travellers Terrorist "Risk" Score

The scores are assigned to people entering and leaving the United States after computers assess their travel records, including where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

Have you had more than one speeding ticket in the past five years? Did you order a vegetarian meal for your flight? You should wear clothing that's easy to shed ...

If people ever figure this out, they'll fight every traffic ticket in court tooth and nail ...

Hacking your reputation: the wars begin

Reputation management is an ancient issue, familiar to all who live in small communities. The early digital age was anonymous, but increasingly everyone knows you're a dog. Anonymity is being replaced by its antithesis; the panoptical state of transparency.

Except, of course, the reputations can be hacked. And so the ancient battles restart on new terrain ...

American terrorism: Cuba and the Bush connection

The November issue of The Atlantic reviews thirty years of American terrorism, with a thread of once-removed Bush connections. Emphases mine. Bosh and Postada, anti-Castro cubans, are the alleged masterminds. The youths who blew up the plane were quickly arrested and served twenty years in Venezualan prisons...

Twilight of the Assassins

It was the first act of airline terrorism in the Americas: thirty years ago, seventy-three people died in the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane. Now, one alleged mastermind lives freely in Miami, while another awaits trial on other charges in Texas...

...why did the Reagan and Bush administrations hire Posada and grant Bosch U.S. residency, when the CIA believed they’d had a hand in blowing up the plane?...

...the attention Posada garnered from the Times series was more than he had bargained for. His boasts of masterminding the bombings compromised his supporters in South Florida and New Jersey, some of whom he named as providing him with money. If the attorney general decides to try Posada for acts of terrorism, Exhibit A will be Posada’s own admissions. Two grand juries, one in El Paso and another in Union City, New Jersey, empaneled intermittently to investigate Posada’s activities, have subpoenaed several exile militants and detained one who refused to testify. What’s clear from the meandering investigation, however, is that the Bush Justice Department has been reluctant so far to prosecute this case....

... George H. W. Bush became director of the CIA in January 1976 and served through January 1977. Bush succeeded William Colby... Colby had implemented major reforms, including a prohibition on political assassinations, and was the first director to give major public briefings to Congress on agency operations. These actions deeply alienated some of the CIA’s more committed Cold Warriors, many of whom backed the appointment of Bush.

When Bush took up his post, he offered Ted Shackley, the former head of JMWave, the CIA’s third most powerful job: associate deputy director. Bush appears to have had contacts with Cuban exiles as far back as the 1960s, when, according to a declassified memo by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI briefed him on their response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy...

Shackley was a divisive figure, and relations between Henry Kissinger’s State Department and George Bush’s CIA were painfully strained—so much so, according to William Rogers, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, that the State Department rarely relied on CIA intelligence. “The agency was controlled by hard-liners,” he said. “They had an agenda, and the intelligence was lousy.” Shackley later played a role in the Iran-Contra affair.

Bush’s tenure at the CIA coincided with the worst spate of bombings and assassinations by Cuban exile militants in Latin America and in the United States. At that time, bombs went off regularly in Miami; sometimes there were several explosions in one day. In December 1975, thirteen bombs went off in forty-eight hours, striking at the very heart of the city: the airport, the police department, the state attorney’s office, the Social Security building, the post office, and the FBI’s main office...

...In 1989, securing Bosch’s release was one of the cornerstones of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s congressional campaign in Miami. She praised Bosch as a hero and a patriot on exile radio stations and raised $265,000 for his legal defense fund. Her campaign manager was a political neophyte, but one who had the ear of the White House. His name was Jeb Bush.

On August 17, 1989, Jeb Bush attended a meeting he had arranged for Ros-Lehtinen with his father to discuss the matter. The following July, President Bush rejected his own Justice Department’s recommendation and authorized Bosch’s release... ... Two years later, the Bush administration granted Bosch U.S. residency.

...In 2002, Governor Jeb Bush appointed Raoul Cantero, Orlando Bosch’s attorney, to the Florida Supreme Court...

The Bush family has not always been unequivocally opposed to terrorists, even terrorists who've bombed American targets. (I'd forgotten about the Miami bombings -- back when Miami was a small town. That was around the time the FLQ was bombing and kidnapping in my home province of Quebec.) I am sure a similar story could be told about many American political families and the IRA. The Bushies and the Kennedys seem to have more than a passing resemblance in several respects.

The story adds another gloss to George W's Oedipal complex, and to the passionate hatred of "terrorism" that became his watchword. As has been pointed out many times, "terrorist" is a relatively meaningless term. It also suggests reasons why Jeb could never have run for the presidency -- even before 9/11.

Lastly, politically controlled and worse-than-worthless intelligence was not an invention of George Jr and Dick in Iraq. George Sr pioneered it when he ran the CIA ...

Humanity: we just can't decide what to do about them

When my fellow Zorgonians gather to discuss the state of humanity, we rend our clothes and tear our hair. And yet ... human civilization has not collapsed yet. There are random and seemingly inexplicable bursts of what almost passes for reason. It is non-linear, truly chaotic, but it cannot be ignored. This human frames it well: Are Humans Totally Stupid? / Either we're hell-bent on self-destruction, or we truly care about the planet. Or, you know, both. Both. Sigh. And so another Zorgonian summit adjourns without any decision on the human problem...

Phillip Carter on the Iraq study group recommendations: mediocre and disappointing

Phillip Carter, officer, veteran, lawyer, blogger, journalist and recent volunteer for Iraqi service, dissects the report the Iraq study group: The Iraq Study Group talked to generals when it should have talked to corporals. - By Phillip Carter - Slate Magazine. Briefly, the study group did a mediocre job. What they got right was obvious, what they missed was enormous. I can't summarize the article, Phil put a vast amount of thought into it. Read it and try to get your local representative to read it.

The Lundehund and the genomic plasticity of canines

Years ago few cared much about the biology of dogs. They are, after all, so common - and so "artificial". It was far more interesting to study wolves or sharks.

Times change. Dogs are weird. They are the among the most successful large terrestrial mammals in history based upon population, range, and their almost complete lack of predators (humans eat dogs in South Korea and in some parts of China). It is likely, given our longstanding commensal relationship, that they have altered human evolution. They have extraordinary variability in aging rates for a single species. They can read human faces and mimic human expressions and emotions. They're very hard to clone, and they have a weirdly plastic genome. Consider the Lundehund:

Damn Interesting � The Norwegian Puffin Dog

...To enhance traction on slippery rocks, and gripping in tight places, the Lundehund is a polydactyl (multi-toed) dog. Instead of the normal four toes a foot, the Lundehund has six toes, all fully formed, jointed and muscled. Polydactyl dogs are not terribly uncommon, but in most breeds the extra toes are dew-claws - non-functional vestigial toes, not the fully formed variety of the Lundehund. The dog uses these extra toes to gain purchase and haul itself along in positions where only the sides of its legs are touching the rock, a fairly common occurrence while wiggling through tight spots. They also help the dog gain additional traction while scrambling around on steep, often slippery cliffs...

The Lundehund is a weird animal, though much of its adaptations may come down to a connective tissue disorder which is also seen in humans (hyperelastic joints). Canine biology is fascinating indeed. The more we look at the history of human "breeds" 30,000 to 100,000 years ago the more interesting canine "breeds" becomes ...

Hail to the volunteer firefighters of Antioch, Illinois

Not every search works. All too often the rescuers find nothing, or a body. This time, in the dark of a cold night, they struck gold.

Wisconsin boy missing from hunting party found alive

... Two Antioch, Ill. firefighters, who were part of a large search group, found Ben Maerzke of Kenosha laying in the snow at about 1:40 a.m. Sunday about a quarter of a mile from where rescuers stationed their command post, sheriff's Sgt. Horace Staples and Floeter said.

... Staples said the boy was coherent but about to fall asleep and in a deep hypothermic state when firefighters found him in the 1,000-acre New Munster Wildlife Area.

... He was taken to Memorial Hospital in Burlington, where he was recovering from frostbite to his feet on Sunday night, the television station reported. He was to be kept overnight in the hospital and possibly released as early as Monday afternoon, the station said.

It's about 16 miles from Antioch to Wheatland. The Antioch firefighters are volunteers:

...The Antioch fire department consists of volunteer firefighters and a volunteer rescue squad...

These men (and women) were joined by a "large" (I'd guess hundreds) group of fellow heroes and family in the dark cold night. Hail to them all. They shouldn't need to pay for their beer for a while.

Update 12/7/06: Across the nation, another story of search ended in a mixture of sorrow and rescue. A two state search is so difficult, it is a minor miracle that Mr Kim's family was found alive. Rest easy Mr. Kim, you did all a father could do.

Wisconsin: 10. Minnesota: 1. State health rankings

As a Minnesotan, I am obliged to point out that Wisconsin was barely in the top 10:

State health rankings: The best and the worst

TOP 10

1. Minnesota
2. Vermont
3. New Hampshire
4. Hawaii
5. Connecticut
6. Utah
7. Massachusetts
8. North Dakota
9. Maine
10. Wisconsin

BOTTOM 10

41) Florida
42) Georgia
43) West Virginia
44) Oklahoma
45) Alabama
46) Arkansas
47) Tennessee
48) South Carolina
49) Mississippi
50) Louisiana

I must confess our ranking does not only reflect the smart living of Minnesotans. Yes, we do sweep the bicycle paths in January, and they do get used (I was once among the users, but now I have dependents). Yes smoking is less common every day. I must confess, however, that winter is hard on the infirm. They tend to die or move south.