Physics

http://xkcd.com/669/

Uh-oh, Big Doo-Doo

So Google paid Twitter for the ability to search through tweets. In return Microsoft paid Twitter and Facebook for access to search through their content. Why's this post entitled uh-oh, big doo-doo? Because, if you follow the logic of this post from Gizmodo, if Facebook and Twitter are asking for money to search their content, why shouldn't everyone else? This would include newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, and I'm sure others as well in the future.

Are we going to have to search with ten different engines depending on what we're looking for in the future? Who knows.

Loved this Article

http://gizmodo.com/5403322/racing-on-carbon-fiber-legs-how-abled-should-we-be

It's part of a series Gizmodo ran called "This Cyborg Life," a series which explored enhancements to the human body. The author, Aimee Mullins, was amputated below the knee before she was a year old. Despite a doctor saying she'd never walk, at the age of 19 she set world records in the 100-meter dash and long jump.

I loved her commentary on being "disabled" and how people view athletes who have undergone various "enhancements," and what actually is an "enhancement."

Hopefully you'll enjoy her essay as much as I did. The Aimee wrote two other articles for the series, which I enjoyed as well, that can be found here:

http://gizmodo.com/5404227/normal-was-never-cool-inception-of-perception

http://gizmodo.com/5401408/is-choosing-a-prosthesis-so-different-than-picking-a-pair-of-glasses

A testament to our very own irrationalities

Cellphones: we all have them. Have you ever thought about the ridiculous prices that cell phone companies force us to pay? My family pays $80-90 a month for like 1000 minutes and 3 lines or something like that, plus the $10 a month extra that my brother and I add on for only 250 measly text messages each. You know how frequently people text nowadays!? 250 really gets you nowhere, and text messages are essentially costless to a carrier!

Anyway, I digress. The NYTimes recently ran an article on cell phone pricing, a topic which even confuses economists. After all, most businesses want to encourage higher usage of their services by offering lower rates for increased usage, a principle cell phone companies diverge on when they charge huge fees for overage.

I found the psychological effects on consumers due to the pricing models really interesting, though. As the article states, "those high charges for going over your allotted minutes, for example, are designed to cause you enough pain that you will switch to a plan with a higher regular fee." That's actually exactly what happened with my mom, as we went crazily over one month (to the tune of around $200) due to completely unforeseen circumstances, and my mom's upped our plan ever since by $30. We never come close to using all of our minutes.

Some other highlights that I really enjoyed from the article:

• "When companies introduce certain discounts — like Sprint's recent offer of free calling to any mobile number — the effect is that customers often switch to more expensive plans."
• "Americans spend more money each month on their wireless bills than people in any other country." (I would just like to add that our cell phone capabilities are also way behind many other developing nations' like Japan)
• Cingular's introduction of Rollover minutes actually ended up encouraging people to buy larger plans. "It turned out that people were happy to buy extra minutes if they knew they could keep them, rather than having them expire."
• Since people have been texting more and talking less, "revenue from voice plans has fallen 31 percent since peaking in 2003. To fill that hole, the carriers raised the price of a text message from 10 cents to 15 cents, and later to 20 cents. These fees provided nice cash, but as with the voice charges, the main purpose was to persuade customers to subscribe to text-message plans" (they totally got me on that one, which I'm still pretty bitter about)
• And then there's this whole thing on the pricing of the iPhone and how consumers essentially screwed themselves (well, just a little) on it which is also pretty interesting. I'll let you read the article for that part.

I loff it

http://brownsharpie.courtneygibbons.org/?p=1156

Yay for Happy Asians!!!!!!!!!!!!

Continuing with all that happiness hub-bub, this article from Economix reports on a Gallup survey which says that Asians are the happiest people of them all!

Please read here: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/poor-people-more-likely-to-have-experienced-depression/

The Broadband Gap between us and other countries

These posts have been sitting in my inbox for a while and I've been planning to summary what the four of them say, but it's been a while since I've read them and now I've just gotten lazy so I'll just post them up. If you're interested in the internet and the speeds your ISPs offer the articles might be worth taking a look. The two that I enjoyed the most were about the difference in cost between US broadband and other develop nations', which are the first two links.

World's Fastest Broadband at $20 per Home

The Broadband Gap: Why is Theirs Cheaper?

The Broadband Gap: Why is Theirs Faster?

The Broadband Gap: Why do They have more Fiber?

Quick Update!

Over the summer NYTimes.com heavily advertising their new "global edition" that they publish with the International Herald Tribune. They were actually pretty obnoxious about it, so much so that every time you'd go to the regular version a bar would pop up asking if you wanted to switch over. So me, the wish-I-was-worldly-but-really-am-not sort of person I am decided to switch over so every time I visited I'd all sorts of international news to keep me well versed in worldly issues. Oh, that and the stupid bar that kept popping up just got annoying and I just wanted it to stop appearing.

Too bad I'm actually quite unworldly. Aaaaand as a result I've barely read NYTimes.com since.

I just switched back after realizing why the site has been so uninteresting to me recently, but man is that a case of advertising gone wrong.

German dates

"It's 9-9-9 today. Everyone's excited, except apparently the Germans. According to translators, they just keep saying 'No-No-No.' "

Financial Crisis Play-by-Play

Ever wonder how that financial crisis unfolded? I was pretty confused when all that Bear Sterns - Fannie-Freddie - AIG stuff all came down, and it was hard to wrap it up and put it all together in my head.

Luckily, PBS Frontline made a review called Inside the Meltdown of what occurred over the past couple of years, which really a) allowed me to make more sense out of all of it and b) changed my perception of Hank Paulson. So if you're curious, give this hour-long program a shot.

P.S. Also neat were some of their other programs, such as the one on Wal-Mart.

I feel like a tool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_button#more

My dad said the same thing to me too

He didn't work in an eyeglass factory, but he did work in a casting factory involving lots of lead (I'm referencing the last paragraph of the article).

But the summary of the article is that being a part of the blue collar working class correlates with lower overall well-being.

Article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/happiness-and-the-working-class/

This is sooooo cool

You ever wonder how people spend their day normally? The NYTimes put out this graph depicting what people do on a given day.

Any interesting observations? I didn't really find anything terribly unexpected except for the difference in working and TV & Movie usage between blacks and whites.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html

Remember Cover Flow?

Remember when Apple released that? I feel like so many people were so hyped up about it.

Quick question: who actually uses it now?

By the way, for those who don't know, cover flow is iTune's ability to display songs and album art like the picture below.

From a friend, and sorry it's slightly inappropriate

Friend: And it's not mine! My sister-in-law was watching it and told me that it was funny because she knows I like turtles. And I thought sex wasn't a big deal anymore anyway.

Me: Adults who are like 30 who are married get it on regularly and maybe even go to the bars to supplement their getting it on still think that sex is a big deal. I feel like sex is the biggest deal for human beings, and always will trump drugs, alcohol, music, and possibly even good in the end. Maybe not good for so long as sex is seen as "dirty," but definitely the rest of them.

What brought this exchange about? This video:
http://www.break.com/index/the-north-american-humping-tortoise.html

Twitter as an outlet for... Throwing Down?

So big name restauranteur Stephen Starr (owner of very well known places here in Philadelphia such as Buddakan, Morimoto, Continental, and many more) recently opened up a burger, yes a burger, joint here in Philadelphia. In fact, he's also planning on opening up a pizza restaurant in the near future as well.

Well, as it appears, Mr. Starr has managed to set off a few restaurant owners with his comments about current restaurants in Philadelphia, one of which being "you can't get good pizza [in Philly]".

Obviously, if you're an established restaurant insulted by such comments and wishing to defend your honor, the next step vindication is to challenge Stephen Starr to a burger-off... via twitter. In fact, challenger Tommy Up even writes a declaration of what pretty much amounts to war:

PYT VS Stephen Starr

"War is a continuation of politics by other means"
- Carl von Clausewitz

It's hard to say where the war started. If I had to guess, it would be when Stephen Starr smugly proclaimed, "I can't get really good pizza here in Philadelphia". But to lay that bit of blasephmy [sic] down as the sole cause would be too simple. I think it all started with the pajamas on servers and the conveyor belts for food.

I remember in high school, there was this wrestler who widely thought to be unbeatable. He was a brute. We all heard the stories of how his parents had flown him to Russia to train with the greatest combatants in the world and that he had won 1000 matches before he was 13. He was an unstoppable force and had dominated the state for years. Until he was stopped and pinned to the mat... by a previously unknown 17 year old child. The child had not believed the stories of this prodigy and he trained for a full year, alone, carrying monster truck tires up and down the stadium stairs with only one simple goal in his mind: I will win.

So Stephen Starr, we say to you, and to your legion of SRO minions all wearing identical black suits and black t-shirts that have been washed one too many times: we are your 17 year old unknown. We make a better burger than you and we will prove it.

Going after your latest venture, Nerdburger- sorry, SQUAREburger- makes the most sense. We are both new and are both focused on the burger. But it has been brought to our attention that the burger there is hardly worthy of a challenge. So we extend with confidence the challenge to any burger in any of your many, many venues. Burger VS Burger. Two burgers enter, one burger leaves. You get the picture.

Ignore this challenge if you will...like you have been ducking me all week ( SeeFoobooz or Grub Street ), but you can't duck the truth. I stand here, a simple man, without a conveyor belt or an army of giant buddhas, waiting to beat your burger into the ground. Pun intended.

Tommy Up
PYT

Oh man, I hope nobody gets hurt!

Beef in your French Fries and Frozen Foods better than Fresh Produce?

Quickies from HowStuffWorks.com

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/10-quirky-facts-about-mass-produced-food9.htm

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/10-quirky-facts-about-mass-produced-food10.htm

Hah

http://xkcd.com/612/

Man, it's a jungle out there

You know, I knew tech companies competed heavily for market share, but I guess I never thought that their moves were so strategic as shown by these two articles. I wonder, if Google is facing such heavy bombardment from Microsoft and Google, how can afford to keep their motto "Don't Be Evil"? Will they break down and start business practices that internet users may disapprove of heavily? I guess they might've already started that with their behavioral targeting campaign (Wired article).

Oh, by the way, I didn't realize Zuckerberg was such a douche (Wired article again).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/opinion/13cringely.html

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall?currentPage=all

Firefox, I just dumped your ass

You were too slow, and took forever to start up. Safari's so much quicker. May your later revisions be faster.

The Submissive

I always wondered why when people are being mentored or not leading something they tend to take such a back seat in things. Basically, they seem to just go with the flow and do what they're told instead of questioning and thinking about the problems themself.

Well, I guess, as it turns out, when you're being given advice, your brain kind of just shuts off the decision making part of itself, so I guess you can't really act for yourself anyway. Interesting.

I wonder if AT&T wanted this to happen...

So I was going into New York City a few days ago and I saw this huge billboard for Sirius XM radio... on your iPhone. The ad was for an application created by Sirius XM for subscribers to listen to their satellite service over AT&T's cellular network on their iPhones.

And then I started wondering: did AT&T want this to happen?

When AT&T set up its 3G network, and when AT&T signed the deal with Apple to be the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, did it think to itself "I want millions of users to one day take up our cellular bandwidth and stream Youtube videos over our system and listen to radio over the air, and I want to have bus lines use our network so they can provide Wi-Fi cross-country to their customers, and... etc. etc."

I know 3G networks can handle a lot, but can it really handle that much? In 2007, iPhone users consumed 5 times as much data as the average AT&T consumer, and I'm sure that number's increased quite a bit considering we're in 2009 now.

Also going through my mind right now are "Tipping Points," since, well, I'm currently reading the book by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell defines the tipping point of a social trend to be the time at which the popularity of the trend suddenly exponentially explodes. A good example is the one he uses with fax machines. From Tipping Point, p. 12 by Malcolm Gladwell:

Sharp introduced the first low priced fax machine in 1984, and sold about 80,000 of those machines in the United States in that first year. For the next three years, businesses slowly and steadily bought more and more faxes, until, in 1987, enough people had faxes that it made sense for everyone to get a fax. Nineteen eighty-seven was the fax machine tipping point. A million machines were sold that year, and by 1989 two million new machines had gone into operation.

I wonder if the iPhone's hit its tipping point yet, but I doubt it. I'm seeing more and more people get smart phones whether they be Windows Mobile devices, Symbian devices, Android based devices, or iPhones, but it hasn't been that huge explosion that the fax machine saw in 1987. I'm sure there will be a tipping point, though, and when that happens, will the cellular networks be ready for it?

I guess on another note, I'm also curious as to where cellular companies see themselves going as internet providers. In 10 years, do they hope to be the next Comcast or Cablevision and be the primary internet provider for families? They're already making a pretty compelling case to do so.

Sprint's offering a $1 netbook with a two year subscription to their cellular broadband service. That's a pretty nice deal for people like my mom, who I would say is the average computer user. She uses her computer mainly to surf the web, write a few emails, maybe a Word doc or two, and that's pretty much about it. For only $30 a month more than what she's paying now for Cablevision internet, she can browse the internet anywhere on a lightweight, compact, netbook that she can carry in her purse. She pretty much gets the netbook for free (a $400 value, which covers half of the cost difference between getting Verizon Wireless broadband and Cablevision broadband), and she gets a free computer upgrade every 2 years. That's pretty sweet.

Anyway, back to my original questions: do wireless providers see themselves becoming primary internet service providers in the future? Can 3G networks (probably 4G by that time) handle all that demand? And has the tipping point for smart phones been reached yet?

I don't know the answer to those questions, but I wish I did!

Interesting Article on Giving

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A couple quick takeaways:

1) humanitarians are ineffective at selling their causes
2) the public has a distrust in the ways humanitarian groups convey their purpose and why they're needed
3) Stalin was right when he said "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
4) there's a new book I want to read (shoot).

From Peder Pan, the man who can fly.

His Vein!

This was a picture on the homepage of the Philly.com a while back. That's some serious vein poppage!

My first blog

Oh how naive we were. Hey "Shaz," remember this? Are you still paying for that domain, by the way? That's like $2 / yr * 4 yrs = $8 of web hosting never used!

I've been telling all my friends, so I should probably tell you too.

Not to say that you're not my friend, of course. But anyway, what have I been telling everyone? To go here. The National Alliance to End Homelessness's (NAEH) blog on, well, homelessness. As I've been saying to everyone else, I can't emphasize how much I've been wanting a blog on homelessness from a reputable source. And, well, the NAEH is one of the most reputable around. Anyway, just from skimming the most recent posts there's a ton of information there, from a brief history of homelessness to why homelessness exists. The page also makes mention of an article by Malcolm Gladwell, Million Dollar Murray, which is a neat article that kind of gives an overview of the distribution of the homeless and can give some context on the issues facing policy makers today. It also features Dennis Culhane, the professor I've been doing research with at Penn!

Anyway, be sure to check out the site. If you end up liking it, also be sure to subscribe to it and comment on it or something! Anything to give the site more hits so it can keep on writing!

http://abouthomelessness.blogspot.com/

Money and Happiness, Semi Pt 2

Ah yes, the summer months. Such are slow times at "Can I Turn that Frown Upside Down." But the reading of useless material has commenced once again so hopefully the posts will keep rollin'. For now, a link from the website of Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, who's book I've been wanting to read for a long time. It discusses money as a painkiller, and if you look at pain as the negation of happiness, then it indirectly refers to money as a source of happiness!?

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?p=637

EDIT: Part one can be found here:
http://nicke5012.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-think-money-can-buy-happiness-for.html

Mountain Biking: Take 2

Now that my friends are back from their cruise that I wasn't invited on (it's actually okay since they took a Princess line, which apparently is filled with old people. I'm going on a Carnival one with young people in July!) we took a second mountain biking trip before I head back to Philly tomorrow. We decided to try a new place and settled on a dinky state park close to our houses. Little did we know, that dinky state park would whoop our asses.

Last time we went mountain biking we went to a large state park, with a few beautiful lakes, and lots of foot traffic. A well known state park, the place was well maintained with lots of people around. The biking was really scenic, the we'd got up huge hills to reach some opening in the trees which led to some view of the landscape or of the lakes. It was great.

This time, it was legit mountain biking. The hills only led to, well, more hills. We got really intune with nature as throughout our entire trip we saw nobody but ourselves. The trails were sometimes crazy, really bordering on more of a hiking trail, as there were so many (huge) rocks we were afraid we'd break all of our bones down some of those really steep hills before making it back. Oh, and there were like no trail markers. Thank goodness for the iPhone and its GPS, because for most of the time we were just plain lost in the middle of the woods. There were no clearings, just trees, EVERYWHERE.

In the process of being lost we stumbled into some other reservation, which apparently wasn't public, with signs all over saying telling us not to trespass for fear of arrest. It was actually really creepy, because someone over there built stone walls all over, for no forseeable reason. And again, we were all alone. We even stumbled upon an envelope enclosed in a zip-lock bag which was hanging from a tree. We were pretty afraid that we stumbled across a drug deal and that we'd find money in the envelope, but luckily it was just a riddle... Uhhh, that's not sketch.

Anyway, we're glad to be alive and out of there. We spent a good 2 hours lost in the woods, and are pretty tired from walking half of it since the trails were treacherous. Aaaand, we want to go back there next chance we get!

EDIT: Shoot, I always forget something! So pretty early on, KRad, the most experienced mountain biker out of the three of us, was leading the way quite well. And then he came across our first really steep rocky hill. And then he went down it... tumbling literally head over heels with his bike. He was alright, but it was hilarious because he literally did a flip. Thank goodness for helmets!

Forced Seatbelt wearing will actually make you less Safe?

See the Peltzman Effect.

Also if you're wondering how many annual road deaths it takes for drivers in your hometown to slowdown and drive more carefully, see Smeed's Law.

Oh, and for an awesome site for city data see www.city-data.com. It's got lots of stuff and graphs for my small town!

Lebron James on a Spelling Bee

Okay, he wasn't really on a spelling bee.

But, right now the Eastern Conference Finals are on at the same time as the National Spelling Bee. And I gotta say, as excited I am for this Cavs vs. Magic game (mainly because I really want Cleveland to win, but they're down 3 games to 1) this National Spelling Bee is definitely much more intense than the game.

Laodicean, can you spell that!? That was the winning word.

I can't believe that Cleveland's blown a 23 point lead, a 16 point lead, and now a 20 point lead (they're down 67-63 right now after being up 30-10) in this series though.

EDIT: Shoot, I forgot to include this originally--http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/up/news/1823197/total_recall_pixars_winning_streak--Rotten Tomato's recap of how awesome Pixar is. I'm gonna make it a plan to watch my remaining ones from that list over the summer.

This one goes to OleKingKole

So a good friend of mine (who's actually biking across the nation this summer while building houses with Habitat for Humanity through Bike and Build) handed his old bike down to me for my riding (and commuting to math class) enjoyment, and I am PSYCHED. Okay, so he didn't really hand it down to me, he gave it to me for 20 bucks and a few stipulations, but that's beside the point. I have a ROCKIN, SOCKIN, bike, and I'm quite excited to travel around Philadelphia and everywhere around in it.

Krumbhaa, you now have a wingman.

In fact, I'm so excited that my friends decided to go bike riding a couple times in the past few days, one of which was mountain biking at the nearby Lake Minnewaska. It was my first time mountain biking ever, and I'm probably really bad at conveying my enthusiasm for the trip over blogging, but from that experience mountain biking definitely has a shot at being my second favorite hobby (next to snowboarding). It's got the speed and downhill excitement of snowboarding, with a bit of sightseeing mixed in, and a whole lot of fun sweat-equity (read: going up hills is a bitch but awesome when you get to the top). In fact, I really want to get a legit mountain bike now and travel around to different places to bike around. AND it's a summer sport, so I don't have to choose between that and snowboarding.

So thank you, OleKingKole, for giving me your bike and inspiring me to take on a new hobby. It's cardio-tastic, yet not nearly as difficult as running, and infinitely more fun. Who knows, maybe if I like it enough I'll take on the great wonder that is Bike and Build too.

I'll end this post with two remarks: JAI HO (because that song's stuck in my head) and if you're curious to see what biking across the nation's like, visit OleKingKole's blog here: http://jonkole.blogspot.com/

Oh wait, actually one more thing. You'll see in the pictures that I'm wearing a helmet. I'm actually quite glad I wore a helmet that day. Not because I almost ran into a tree or because I fell off my bike, but because at the very end of the day, as we were packing the bikes back onto the roof rack of the car, I dropped the thing on my head. Yeah, go helmet!...

The Men (Actually as fieresome as we look, I was actually really afraid of falling off the ledge in this picture because I'm a decent bit afraid of heights. And yes, we're FIERCE.)

Some lovely lake background scenery

97-96 Cavs

Lebron James is amazing. 1 second to go and 2 points down, he's inbounded a pass and jumps over Hedo Turkoglu to score a 3 and win the game.

That was amazing.

How were you going to compete with Wal-Mart again?

Yesterday's to buy list:

20 bags of red cedar mulch
6 bags of water softener salt (pellets)
1 set of replacement windshield wipers for the Sienna

Local Store Prices:
Red cedar mulch - $4.00 a bag
Salt - $11 a bag
Wipers - $26 for the set

Walmart Prices:
Red cedar mulch - $3.50 a bag
Salt - $6 a bag
Wipers - $22 for the set

I decided to buy my items at the local stores around town, and ended up having to go to three separate shops to buy all three items since the place we usually get salt from doesn't carry red cedar mulch. Walmart had all three in one store at lower prices. I'm a proponent of local shops, but jeez how can they expect to keep an edge against companies like Walmart?

Really Interesting Article

Looks like math has some urban use after all.

I'm really psyched to read his next 3 posts.

Link: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/

Heaven

"When it comes to heaven, I'm gonna be a fall tap."
-The Admiral

In Philly for the Summer?

Philadelphia Weekly just published their annual summer guide to Philly. It includes stuff about concerts, art exhibits, food events, etc. For "teh crazy," it even contains a guide to having sex in public and info on masturbation month... uuuummmm right.

Oh, and if you go to the link it'll ask you to sign in. The following username and password will work:
Username: bloopa
Password: bloopa1234

http://issuu.com/reviewpublishing/docs/051309_pw_opt

Reposted from Under the Button

Let's Rank the Presidents!

Lolz at Johnson, Filmore, and LBJ.

The tomato is a VEGETABLE!!!

The Supreme Court says so:

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed whether a tomato was classified as a fruit or a vegetable...The court unanimously decided in favor of the defense and found that the tomato was classified as a vegetable...

Of course, their rationale is much more logical than I made it seem. I just found it funny that the Supreme Court deliberated on whether or not tomatoes were fruits or vegetables.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden

lol wtf?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html

Good thing they didn't use cows. They wanted a "low carbon" approach, and apparently cows fart alot. Like A LOT. Enough to be a contributor of global warming.

Second link: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/Story?id=2723201&page=1

X-Factor

I just got an email from an email address formatted Firstname.Middleinitial.Lastname. Only the person's middle initial was "X".

So really, it looks like Firstname.X.Lastname, with the X looking like it's supposed to stand for X-Men, or X-factor, or something X-treme along those lines.

Hey, it's better than Nicholas.W.Eng, where the W might stand for something dumb, like "wuss" or something like that... =/

The Big Bang Theory

This post is actually regarding the actual Big Bang Theory and not some joke or TV show, and comes from my studying for my Astronomy final:

Describing both the follies and the achievements of the human race, Carl Sagan once said,

"These are the things that hydrogen atoms do--given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution."

(PS-BTdubs, the actual age of the universe is now refined to 14 billion years. Sagan died before scientists claimed us all a bit younger)

The Cosmic Perspective, 4th Ed., pg. 690.

Broadband's gonna be the next Cellular

Cellular providers suck. There are essentially only 4 major companies, all of which charge insanely inflated prices, force people into plans with minutes they'll never use, and destroy you on overage fees if you happen to choose the wrong one.
The one saving grace argument for them is that they need to generate all that revenue to raise capital to upgrade their networks to 4G.

You know what that reminds me of? Broadband service providers.

Let's see: there are essentially only 5 major companies (Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, Cablevision, AT&T), they charge inflated prices which are constantly getting higher (especially if you're getting TV from them, sheesh), and are beginning to destroy people with caps and metered billing.
The one saving grace argument for them is that average data usage per person is going up (due to things like YouTube, watcing shows online, etc.), and that they need to generate large amounts of revenue to raise capital to upgrade their networks.

But wait, is that true?

ArsTechnica reviews such a claim and finds that it's just not true. Even in the wake of upgrading systems and adding customers, revenues are going up while costs are going down. And it's not just average cost per customer that's decreasing, it's total costs.

So, are the major ISPs charging high prices just to generate increased profits? Most likely. Are the data caps and metered billing neccessary for them to stay competitive and solvent? Probably not.

Are they one day going to be worse than cellular providers? Probably. Afterall, ISPs are essentially natural monopolies since the fixed costs of entering an area are so high. So the incentives to generate competition (which leads to better services and more affordable pricing for consumers) are much less.

I'm interested to see what happens with all of this in 10-15 years.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/isps-costs-revenues-dont-support-data-cap-argument.ars

That looks like an awful device

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Chair

To: http://gizmodo.com/5239173/stake-chair-makes-my-delicate-parts-quiver-in-terror

I want one. (The 2nd thing! Not the first!)

Please tell me this is a joke...

"I don't think it is. Way too much effort for a joke..." - Ribnick

http://www.revengecrabs.com/

It's late

It might be because I didn't sleep last night and it's currently 3:23 in the morning on the day after an all nighter, but I have never felt more inspired by human achievement than from this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/27jeopardy.html?ref=technology

I have never felt more proud about my connections with IBM (being a former employee, having family work there, living in an IBM-based town) than from that article. Seriously, it makes me wish I majored in computer science and logic systems or whatever just so I could work on something like that.

It's weird though, since it's not like IBM is trying to make actual artificial intelligence. In essence all they're trying to do is create an information synthesizer: the computer only takes in an input question and spits out an answer; it never thinks on its own.

But I feel like this is a huge step for computers and creating computers that can truly interact with people. And oddly I've never felt more proud of being connected with IBM.

Big Banged Theory?

Names are redacted, of course.

Linus: my roommates have started calling [former girlfriend] 1.0, [recent fling] 2.0, and this new french-photographer- girl, [new girl], 3.0
1.0 was the great release, 2.0 the buggy released too soon version, and 3.0 no one really knows
3.0 is getting some testing this week at coffee
i will be wooing her while simultaneously convincing her not to work for me
Me: at least none are betas
Linus: well, 2.0 should have been
Me: now under this scheme, is it possible to upgrade?
Linus: 2.0 was like shareware; after 10 days she up and stopped being of any use and now just nags me
Me: and what if 1.0 comes back? does she become 1.1 or 4.0?
Linus: upgrades are possible, albeit heavily discouraged; legacy code is a bitch to deal with.
Me: and um, you're supposed to send shareware around to your friends, so they can try and see if they like it
if yes then they pay, if no then constant nagging ensues
did you do your civic duty to shareware?
and have you encountered any open source software as of late?
Linus: ok this metaphor has been stretched too far
Me: it's going on my blog.
Linus: just don't cite me
lol
or [school redacted]
context though - "my friend has a specific type of girl he goes for"
im just nervous about that biting me in the ass some day
Me: uh-huh
should've gone off the record buddy

Obviously, my friend's name is not Linus, but points to whoever gets the reference.

Leakage

Dearest Firefox,

Get your anal leakage under control. There's no reason to take up 192 MB of memory with 2 tabs open. It's kinda gross and slows down my biznass, so if you don't get that fixed soon, I think I'll have to start doing the nasty with Safari again. Or worse, I'll jump in bed with your sister: Camino.

Love,
Nick

I am an Owl.

Thanks goodness, the New York Times says there's hope for my terrible sleep cycle, which it also says I can blame partially on genetics! So just FYI, I usually stay up till 2 and like to get up at around 12-ish. I say "like" because we all know that the norms of society dictate that getting up at 12 really doesn't jive with everyone else. This essentially puts me in the category of an owl, who doesn't like to wake till 12 and is most alert after 6 (I'll blame my attention habits in class on that one). Luckily, this phase of my life is supposed to wear off soon, so there is hope.

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/guest-column-larks-owls-and-hummingbirds/

1 Steel > 500 Plastic

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/19/opinion/20090419bottle.html

I thought this would be an article about how steel bottles are actually worse for the environment than plastic, but alas, it isn't. Either way, it's good to know after 500 uses a stainless steel bottle is better than plastic in every way, and benefits can be seen for the environment as soon as after 50 uses.

Civic House: this is why you should be giving away those stainless steel bottles you're hoarding!!!

Batman > Superman, but...

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1884973

Memorable Quotes

Two great ones from The Chief:

1) From today's issue of 34th Street:
"Street: There are two types of people at Penn...
Bobak Parang: Those who take orders from Sally Katz and those who run their own organizations. Take that jump-start-kick-in-the-ass, non-existent senior society rivalry!"

And regarding Without A Net's last shows for the semester:
"Saturday night is the "Senior Finale" which will be chock full of slide shows, poems, and cheesy sentimental songs all about how great the senior are. Kidding. That's Off the Beat's thing."

El Cranemo, if you ever read this, sorry!

I can understand why they're pissed

In 2006, 69.3 percent of all federal taxes were received by the top 20% of American earners. That's a lot, and the graph below makes a huge jump from the fourth to fifth quintiles.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/how-much-americans-actually-pay-in-taxes/

I'm in school for the academics, right? Right.

These past 3-4 weeks have been extremely exciting, from hearing about jobs to meeting new friends, to just chillin and doing stuff in college.

But it's definitely time for me to focus on school. For the past four weeks/entire semester school's been nothing more than this thing in the background of my life where you were "supposed" to go to class (notice I didn't write "obligated" or "needed"). And as such my academic life has been really shoved under my bed posts and neglected the same way you probably claim denial to that sand monster lurking under your bed.

I gotta get my head back in this game.

But But But, I love juice!...

"Juice is not much better for children than soda; it's basically just sugar"
- Amy Hillier, Assistant Professor in City and Regional Planning at Penn

I love juice. Like all kinds of juice, especially grapefruit juice. You know how people like to taste exotic wines and beers? Well I like to taste exotic juice. Yeah, that's how I roll.

But that statement from Amy Hillier is gonna change my life. I've heard the claim before, but not necessarily from anyone believable. But this is Amy Hillier! She's got like a special interest in urban food and nutrition, and she's had so much influence over me throughout my Penn years (even though she has absolutely no idea who I am) that she's a primary reason for why I'm doing research in the first place!

Shoot. My juice drinking days are numbered.

I never liked vacations but...

I could sure use one right now.

Snowboarding. I'm thinking about my 3 days at Killington, Vermont right now snowboarding on a foot of fresh powder every day and getting snowed in every night. Disconnected from the internet and all we could do was watch TV every night till we fell asleep on the couch. Then waking up to do it all over again the next morning.

I would love for that right now.

Raysians

"You know you're Asian when you use Siracha like it's ketchup"
- Everybody loves Raysians

NBC is out to get me

I just saw that NBC put some original episodes of Knight Rider (from like the 80's) on their website for viewing.

This is bad.

I used to love Knight Rider, and I occasionally watch the new series when I'm really (really really really) bored. The new Knight Rider is terrible; the old Knight Rider is good.

=> NBC is gonna suck even more viewing time outta me.

Damn it.

Let The Ginormous Spamming Begin

It's over: Facebook has allowed people to just select all people from your school and invite them to events. Before, the only safeguard from mass spamming was that people had to click through every name, but nevermore! Be prepared to get invited to events left and right.

P.S. Although my post sounds negative, I've actually been waiting for this feature for years. Yay for saved hours clicking through names one-by-one!

UVA's taking down their computer labs, what do you think?

So the University of Virginia has found that 99.9% of their students have their own laptops at school (duh?), and 95% of computer lab usage is attributed to the usage of free programs, and as such they've decided to start dismantling some computer labs. Good idea?

Bringing it a Penn context, I don't think it'd be a bad idea. Labs take a lot of money to run and keep updated. But I wouldn't say to take them all down. I'd say consolidate them. For example, whenever I do research using SAS I have to go to McNeil where the computer lab is pretty small and is only open until 8:30PM. Since I need SAS, what I can't do is that I can't walk to the next building over to use the Huntsman computer lab which is much larger, much more widely used, and is open 24 hours. My suggestion? Close the McNeil lab since not that many people use it anyway, put SAS on the Huntsman computers, and use the money saved to give me my own version of SAS so I never have to walk down there in the first place!

Done.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/whats-the-point-of-running.ars

I always wondered how to do this correctly

http://www.gunaxin.com/a-lesson-in-hanging-toilet-paper/15802

If you ever want to be an analyst...

Learn SAS, the statistical programming language. It will open up so many doors for you. I had to learn it while I worked at IBM this past summer, and although I thought I would walk away from the job not learning anything relevant to my future, I was completely wrong. It currently stands as the most useful job I have ever had (however, waiting tables is definitely still the most fun job I've ever had).

And if you ever have a choice to learn SPSS or SAS, learn SAS. SAS is harder to use and people know that, so if you know SAS you can be easily adapted to SPSS whereas vice-versa is more difficult.

NYT Makes Sun sound like a Whore

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/intel-boss-says-sun-was-shopped-all-over/

For those of you not in the know (slash those of you who don't really care about the goings-on of IBM), IBM is in discussions about buying Sun for about $7 billion. I'm kinda scared about the possibility (for IBM's sake). I don't really know much detail about either one of the firms, so this is really just coming out of the dark, but just think Sprint/Nextel.

I'm sad

I actually feel depressed after watching Monday's episodes of Heroes and Chuck. Man.

Doctor Cox is Awesome

A line from Scrubs, as Doctor Cox is talking to his girlfriend/life partner Jordan:

"Now hun, and when I say hun I don't mean the 'short for honey' kind but rather the Attila kind..."

Scrubs Season 8, Episode 11.

Hopefully, by the end of the semester, This'll be me.

Honestly, I feel pretty shaky on my leadership abilities. I don't know how I get into the positions I get into, but often times I do wish I was as cool, confident, and tactful as Obama. As such, I really enjoyed the following quote from his appearance on Leno which said a lot about how he views leadership, and his role in management:

Mr. Obama seemed at a momentary loss for words only once during the session, which lasted 35 minutes (although some of it might be edited for the final show). That was when Mr. Leno, after asking about how Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is holding up, said that “I love that it’s all his problem.”

Mr. Obama recovered and said, “Look, I’m the president. So ultimately all this stuff is stuff is my responsibility. If I’m not giving him the tools that he needs to move things forward, then people need to look at me.”

He added: “One of the things I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for someone else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job.”

I'm working on it. =/

From http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/heeeeres-barack/

A Pick-Me-Up

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/100-funny-photos-taken-at-unusual-angle-humor/

I think money can buy happiness, for the most part

Sorry, idealists, but I'm gonna have to agree with the New York Times on this one. Unfortunately I've had quite the internal struggle with myself over prospective future income and future careers. I may save that discussion for a later time. Take a look at this article in Economix about the happiest states in America which contains a graph correlating Median Household Income to some happiness Index.

If you're a little low on cash though, you could try making it up by watching more porn (no, that link does not go to a porn-site!), or move to a gayborhood and see if that helps at all (gay does mean happy, after all. I should know that after going to an elementary school named Gayhead for 6 years).

If those suggestions still don't tickle your fancy, try watching other forms of copulation. It sure as heck raises the happy meter for AJ. Yum, slug sex.

Larry Summers on the Recession

I enjoyed reading it, and I thought it was informative. Beware the leftist siding.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/13/summers-on-how-to-deal-with-a-rarer-kind-of-recession/

Edit:
Some highlights of the talk can be found here: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/lawrence-summers-on-the-crisis/

And a more readable version of the full speech can be found here.

Life Dream #22? Check.

I gassed up my car all by myself today...

in New Jersey.


ooooooh yeah.

One of the Grossest Photos Ever

Gross, Gizmodo!

http://i.gizmodo.com/5166064/image-of-the-day-do-not-try-this-at-home

I'm such an idiot: Taxes and Incentives!

So I'm sitting on the Metro North train right now traveling home, and a guy just sat down next to me (he can't see my typing this, don't worry. I'm not THAT dumb.) And he didn't buy a ticket at the station.

The same probably goes for any train service, but if you don't buy a ticket before boarding the Metro North you have to pay like an extra 3-5 bucks for it. I always thought that was just a way for the MTA to squeeze a few mo' dollaz out of you.

[Insert line about me being an idiot here.] No! It's not about squeezing more money out of you! It's about making the train operate more smoothly! If they can create an incentive where you're more incline to buy a ticket before boarding than on the train (ie. make it more expensive on the train) then almost everyone will do just that (which they do). Having people buy a ticket before boarding then means they don't buy it on the train. Having less people buy tickets on the train means that the operators and people don't have to make 5 minute sales transactions with everyone to sell them a ticket. That means they have more time to actually check for tickets and do a more effective job of it. More effective ticket checking means a smoother ride for passengers, and less costs for the MTA.

Therefore, by enforcing a tax on the train, the MTA provides a public good: namely smooth operations.

Now this might be common sense for a lot of people, but honestly whenever I get some sort of tax on something my first inclination is to think about how I'm getting screwed, and how The Man is profiting off me for it.


I will make this post even longer by telling you about, a few weeks ago, I met someone from Harvard at a Civic Engagement Conference studying Folk Anthropology. At first, I was like "what's that good for?" And then he explained: Folk Anthropology studies traditional folk tales of cultures, but does so from the culture's prospective. One of the things he studies is why certain tales came about, and of course it was from the perspective of the studied culture. He said he wanted to major in that because he figured it would teach him how to think about social problems from the eyes of those who experience them, and not from an outsiders.

I think had I studied Folk Anthropology, I would have come to this conclusion about the MTA sooner. And it's too bad more people don't study Folk Anthropology, because then maybe we'd have more public solutions, and less reason for us to act purely for our own good.

One thing that comes to mind is a Nash Equilibrium of a Prisoner's Dilemma game. I won't explain the game as most introductory economics classes teach it (and I was do a down-right awful job), but in the game both participants end up worse-off than they could be because they are acting purely for their own good (which is perfectly reasonable, because else-wise they'd be throw in jail!). But if we'd consider the perspective of the other parties involved, then we might be a little better off. Case in point: had I realized the MTA was taxing on-board tickets for a reason that actually give me more benefit in the end, I would've been much less annoyed with them a year ago when I bought an on-board ticket.


And the last tangent I'll go on for this post will be about homeless shelters. Yeah, I'm taking you guys for quite the random ride, huh? Anyway, I was talking to a friend yesterday who said that Dr. Dennis Culhane (a professor and expert in homelessness in our Urban Studies department) stirred up quite the controversy yesterday when he said that homeless shelters should all be closed down during a homelessness panel.

A little extreme? Maybe not so much as you think. When I asked him about that today he explained by saying that most people don't understand how much the poor hate homeless shelters. They are degrading, crowded, and do not have the capacity to serve their demographic properly. Most of all, they're inefficient, and he argues it would be better just to give the homeless all housing (and the housing's out there, he argues), and that the same social services that a homeless shelter provides can be given more efficiently and at a higher level through other programs which are already in place. One point he argues is that nobody uses the social services a shelter provides unless they are actually in the shelter (as the homeless try to avoid the shelters as much as possible), and as the typical shelter stay is only 60 days long, people stay and receive services for 60 days and then leave, without much followup thereafter, which doesn't help much in terms of homelessness prevention. What the government should do, he says, is to put more money into government social services, and less into subsidizing private shelters.

You can probably imagine that after saying that homeless shelters should closed down at a panel for homelessness he was met with some disagreeance from the crowd. In fact, there was one man who worked at a shelter who had quite a few exchanges with him during Q&A. But what's interesting is that after the panel ended, some people who were homeless or were former homeless came up and thanked him for saying what he did. Because shelters really are that bad to be in, and we really should be focusing more on prevention rather than band-aids. I wonder how many people who volunteer at homeless shelters think about the homeless in that way: that it's the last place they want to be, that it's degrading, that everything about it is just awful from its efficiency to its cleanliness, that they just really don't want to be there. Sure, nobody wants to be homeless and in a shelter, but when was the last time someone thought of it from the homeless guy's perspective.

To really put some light on my last point, let's look at panhandlers on the street. I've seen situations where people have walked back with a carton of leftovers from eating at a restaurant and had a panhandler person ask them for some change for food. The passerby offers to give them his leftovers, but the panhandler refuses to accept. And the passerby leaves muttering words of "you'd think he could take what he can get" etc. to his friends. In fact, to be honest, I've probably been that passerby at one point.

But if you're the homeless guy, it's a pretty hard hit to their dignity to take someone's leftovers. Food that's already been salivated on, and eaten. Food that most other would not eat from a stranger. It's pretty hard to maintain a sense of dignity when accepting that option. Most would argue that nobody deserves to have their dignity completely stripped away from them.


So anyway, this post has drawn long and somewhat missed its original intent, but the main point is that we should all learn to study Folk Anthropology more. If we did, we'd probably see that a lot of things people and businesses do aren't really to screw us, but provide some public good that we don't see. That or we might learn that we're promoting a disservice to some even though we think we're just trying to help. Who knows what we'd come up with.

I, for one, would probably just be less cranky.

They go over this so many times in Stats classes

http://xkcd.com/552/

I like this

For profit solutions to social problems. Yes they can exist and they might even work better than non-profit solutions. I've always had my reservations about the effectiveness/efficiency about non-profits as they lack the ability to build capacity and capital in the same way that for-profit businesses do.

It seems like Penn students are getting into the "do business, responsibly!" crowd as well. Some students are trying to start up a Social Entrepreneurship Minor here, and there was just a Social Entrepreneurship Conference here last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/business/smallbusiness/05sbiz.html?_r=1&em

Excuse Me?

For lunch today I went to Magic Carpet (a vegetarian food truck on campus), and I started to get really self-conscious while standing in line there. Not only did the line take me like 7 minutes to get food, but it was all girls. Like ALL girls. I felt really fairy. I almost made a run for it.

And then when the man gave me food I heard "Is that all, ma'am?"

I really hope he said "Is that all, man?"

I really really really hope so...

Makes Sense

Maybe if more people cut their cable, then cable companies might have a reason to lower their stupidly high prices (which keep rising every year). Nobody really ever uses the TV in our house (at school, at home that's a completely different story) and I for the most part just watch everything on my computer now. And that bill's really damn expensive. We should cut that jawn.

Now the question is: in the next 10-15 years, will we see internet pricing skyrocket, or the creation of some ridiculous tiered pricing? Oh boy.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/new-yorkers-cutting-back-on-cable-tv-service/

Giz Says:

One Google search can take up to 1000 computers.

Wow. (Reason being, apparently, is because the entirety of Google's index is stored in RAM).

http://i.gizmodo.com/5157533/one-google-search-uses-1000-computers

I'm confused as to how this could happen

The Penn emblem is off center!? The same one that's on like EVERYTHING!? What!?

(Via Under the Button.)

A Two for one: Marsedit and Airline Layovers

It's 2:34AM but for some reason I don't really want to sleep. So I've been testing a new app: MarsEdit. It's a desktop blog publisher (so I don't have to log into blogger.com every time now. Those who know me know that I prefer desktop apps to browser apps).

It also integrates quite well with my RSS reader, NetNewsWire, so I can post things that I read online pretty easily now.

Anyway, below's a cool quickie about airplane layovers AKA expect to see more now that fuel costs have gone down.

The Economics of Airline Layovers: "A new working paper looks at the turmoil the United States airline industry has gone through so far this decade."
(Via Economix.)

WebMD Blogs and Dog Farts

I happened to have just discovered WebMD blogs. They're kinda neat in a medically-interesting-yet-phrased-for-a-layman sort of way.

This post is pretty funny, actually:
http://blogs.webmd.com/all-ears/2009/02/farting-dogs.html
and from what I've read I like his blog so far. I'll probably stick it in my RSS reader.

For a complete list of WebMD blogs, check here:
http://www.webmd.com/community/blogs

P.S. How is WebMD regarded as a website? I always kinda wondered. Do doctors scoff at the normal people who read it? Or do they think it's a good and legit source of information? Do normal people think that other normal people who read it are fools? Let me know.

Time Machine Fail = Nicke Screwed

It's been around 30 days since the last time I backed up my Mac. If I was an outside reader of this post I'd be saying aloud "Why the hell would you not back up your Mac!? It's so simple in Leopard! All you have to do is plug in your external drive and voila!, Time Machine takes care of the rest!"

Well you know what, Time Machine has its priorities screwed up. I have a 160 gb HDD which actually has around 148 gb of storage on it. My Time Machine partition on my external actually has 160 gb.

Let's do the math: 160 gb > 148 gb => (Time Machine Storage) > (Anything I will ever store on my HDD. EVER.)

Yet for some reason every time I backup Time Machine tells me that it needs 20 more gb of space to back up my disk. How can this be!? Don't I have more than enough space to hold all of my data?

Apparently not, as Time Machine likes to keep older versions on my files, which takes up extra space.

Now Apple, let's think about this, shouldn't Time Machine delete my old files to make room for my new ones? Me thinks yes.

I'll probably have to force Time Machine to completely redo my backup now. And last time TM had a hiccup in backing up my Macbook my HDD died. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

Digs

Bryan:
are you still living in that house or something?
or did you have to find new digs
that's right
i said digs
i dare you to look it up in the dictionary
i used it right

Wow, look it up. It's actually in the dictionary!

Fun Math Problem

It's kinda neat, semi-applicable to the real world, partially common sense, and very do-able:

"Twenty five boys and twenty five girls sit around a table. Prove that it is always possible to find a person both of whose neighbors are girls."

From the Penn Mathematics Society (that's the warm up problem).

They Should Make Trading Cards...

[While talking about how nice Columbia was when I visited]:

Shahzad:
penn is hotter
dont get corrupted by the city
upenn has a much nicer campus

Me:
yo they gotz jeff sachs and sudhir venkatesh
fucking jeff sachs!
the man writes on how to end motha fuckin poverty!
...

Shahzad:
sachs aint a real economist

Me:
lol
nor is levitt!

Shahzad:
sudhir is a sociologist ....LOL

Me:
We've got Diiulio!

Shahzad:
levitt at least sells books!


---
How cool is it that we can talk about our schools like we do about teams in the NBA!?

I wish I had a "Before" picture too...

Remember when I said I was swamped for a bit? Well I still kind of am, but not as bad as before. As a testament to my triumph, I'd like to present to you my Inbox, which currently only has 6 messages in it!


That's down from over 60 this evening! Too bad one of them is this:


oops.

P.S. I plan to have a comeback of the intellectual posts soon. I just haven't gotten around to them.

Oy, this is what I get for using an Electric Razor

I wish my electric razor had a battery indicator. See, then I wouldn't have a half-shaven face right now.

And it's like not even like one half's shaved and the other half isn't ala Two-Face or something. I just have awful patches all around.

I Love Logitech

I love Logitech. Today I called their customer support, and they're definitely one of the best customer supports I've ever dealt with (plus their products are great), and that's saying something coming from me. But for the story let's rewind:

So my wrist in my right hand has been starting to hurt, and sometimes the pain goes up to my elbow, and I suspect the culprit has been excessive laptop usage. Particularly, trackpad usage. I don't ever use a mouse, and now my wrist hurts whenever I start using my trackpad for more than like 5 minutes. It's not good. But I've always had a mouse! I've had a nice, comfortable, bluetooth, optical, Logitech v270 ($60) since I bought my computer, but I stopped using it a while back because my left click button was getting screwy.

Fastforward to today when I'm fed up with having to use a not-so-responsive-clicking mouse, and I'm searching the internets to find out how I can crack the thing open and fix it. I find out that the mouse has a 3 year warranty with almost no questions asked or documentation required. Needless to say, I call up Logitech.

They tell me my mouse is still covered under warranty, I don't have to send it in, they'll just send me a new one, AND they'll even upgrade my mouse to a newer model! Now I'll be getting a v470. Bluetooth and LASER. And the whole call took like 5 minutes, a record for any warranty replacement stuff.

I love you Logitech. You're awesome.

P.S. Logitech ties with iRiver for best customer support. I once needed to replace my $200 MP3 player, and they graciously sent me an upgraded player lickity-split. Too bad iRiver's kaputz now.

Under the Button

I really like our school newspaper's blog Under the Button. At times, it can actually have more news in it than our actual paper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, since many times the DP recaps what has already happened in terms of speaker events. Regardless, my fondness of Under the Button increased with this post, which included an xkcd comic, a mention of TechCrunch, and a bunch of other pretty nerdy things to do on V-day. Lonely for Valentines Day? Check the post out.

http://underthebutton.com/2009/02/valentines-survival-guide/

Kinda like a Prius, but for Electricity!

Google's testing a new thing that's pretty neat: monitoring home electricity usage. Now, let me explain before you think it's uber creepy. The service is called PowerMeter which, if you sign up, can monitory how much energy you use for you to view online.

So, I draw comparisons to a Prius because my friend has a Prius, and on the Prius it tells what your instantaneous fuel mileage is. When you accelerate you use a lot of gas to power the engine to get your car rolling. When my friend starting seeing just exactly how much fuel he was using every time he put the pedal to the floor, he started accelerating more gently, increasing his fuel economy. There are other benefits to accelerating gently as well, such as increasing the life of your engine (and for those of you who hit the brakes hard over a short distance when you have to stop, breaking gently is good for your car as well and prolongs the life of your brake pads and rotors!).

Anyway, so as one google engineer said, "It changes the way you think about electricty." This is from the same guy who realized his baseline energy consumption doubled whenever he turned on his kitchen lights.

I'd love to have this available for my home. I think it could drastically decrease the amount of electricity a family consumes each day.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/googling-your-home-electricity-usage/

Super Bowl Ads

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago (you know, when the Super Bowl was still relevant), but oh well.

The NYTimes breaks down the makeup of Super Bowl ads from 1984 to 2009. Ads containing humor are up, and ads featuring "beverages" (aka beer/man juice) are at an all-time high.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/business/media/20090202-business-superbowlads.html

Also, there were no credit card ads this year? I guess that's kinda surprising, but not really.

A Few Things I Learned Today

1) There are actually 3 Median Voter Theorems, but since the subject of Political Economy's so new, people call them all different things.

2) My milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard, and damn right, they're better than yours.

3) If the space of voting alternatives is unidimensional and ordered, and if the preferences of all voters are singled peaked, then the winner of a vote is the median of the distribution of peaks.

I thought number 3 was neat.

Fucking Awesome

http://www.fmylife.com/

My personal favorite:

Today, my boyfriend handcuffed me to the bed, naked. Someone pulled the fire alarm, and my boyfriend couldn't find the key. So he left me, and the Resident Advisor found me. The fireman had to cut the chain. FML

I'm definitely going there if I'm having a bad day. And to think the worst thing I'd write would be "I had class at DRL from 6:30 - 8:30 today. FML"

Wait, no, that's pretty bad.

A Conversation from a While Back

Nick: "Did you just Wikipedia that?"
Jenn: "No. I just know. I'm smart."
Nick: "Jennifer the Savant Bui."
Jenn: "What does 'savant' mean?"
Nick: " Know-it-all. Ironic, isn't it?"

Sheesh

Goooolly. I've been swamped for the past few days/week.

Commitments

"Punctuality is the expression of commitment"

That's the fortune I just got from a fortune cookie.

...Which brings me to my next post: my New Years Resolutions.

I know I know, its like almost mid-February, but better late than never, right? Well I guess not if you're abiding by that fortune. Oh well, here goes:

1) Be on time
2) Stay organized
3) Branch out

That's all. Please notice that "Don't skip classes" or "Don't procrastinate" isn't on that list. Because well, let's face it, I want to accomplish these things.

Bloomberg

My friend wants to work for Bloomberg's reelection campaign. Here's a good reason why:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06perks.html?pagewanted=1&hp

I'm confused

From a Po-Town Journal Article talking about the clients in the Madoff scheme who lost money to ol' Bernie:

"One client is Ira Sorkin, the attorney who’s defending Madoff against charges he perpetrated the biggest financial fraud in history."

What!? Madoff screwed him and he's gonna defend him!? (pronoun confusion, I know). Uh, I'm not putting my money on a good defense.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090205/BUSINESS/90205014&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

I can't tell if this is serious

"The relief you are experiencing is made possible by a gift from Mike Zinman"

That's what it says when you look up at eye level while at the urinal in the undergraduate study center of Van Pelt (our main library at Penn). I can't tell if I'm supposed to take that seriously or just laugh. Either way, I laughed.

It looks like Tax Rebates do work!

Edited: 2/5/09
I've always been kind of skeptical about tax rebates. Take the rebate that you got in 2008, for example. I think the rebate was for like $500 or so, which is a good sum of money, yes, but I always felt like it wasn't good enough. After all, what can you get with $500? I guess you could buy a cheap desktop computer (the kind the average consumer would buy), maybe a dishwasher, clothes washer or dryer, etc. But I just always thought that $500 wasn't enough to make people go out there and buy things, and that people would just stick it into their savings account instead.

Well, I was wrong apparently as Bush's 2008 tax rebate did induce a spike in consumer spending and kept it from plummeting (sooner).

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/do-tax-rebates-work/

Edit: Some more evidence: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/more-evidence-on-tax-rebates/

US Debt Pwnage

Lolz at you, US Debt. You think you're so high and mighty standing at $10.7 trillion. You know what can pwn you, though?

A Deathstar.

Yes, some crazy man has calculated how much it would cost to create a Deathstar with today's prices, and the result is that it would be 1.4 trillion times the US debt, or 15.6 septillion dollars.

And for those of you who found this post interesting, I invite you to take the GSAT, or Gizmodo's Geek Social Aptitude Test. Let me know what you got!

http://i.gizmodo.com/5146010/death-star-costs-156-septillion-14-trillion-times-the-us-debt

Valentine's Day

Me: "Have any cool Valentine's day plans!?!?!? Teeelll meeee!"

Anna: "Making out with you. Duh"

You wish, Anna Chute, you wish!

Hell Yeah Poughkeepsie!

This is a landmark occasion. A date to be remembered by all peoples far and wide. A date that should be marked on every calendar, even those that for whatever reason, revolve around the moon.

Most people reading this blog probably know that I'm from some town in upstate New York. Some scoff at the name, Hopewell Junction, but let me tell you now, we are a hometown to be reckoned with. Believe it or not, we were ranked as the 31st best place to live in America in 2005 by Money Magazine, as can be seen here. Not only that, but we are also a part of what urban economists call the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown Metropolitan Area.

So what, you say? Well, Poughkeepsie was mentioned in my Urban Studies class today!

Okay, so that was dumb. But it's kinda neat when you hear of such a random place you call home mentioned in class. Apparently, Poughkeepsie had the 16th greatest density gain in America from 1982-1997. And it gained a staggering ONE percent! Hell yeah to you, good ol' Po-Town!

And that, my friends, will end this terrible, terrible, blog post.