Eisenhower warns of a corporate government: Part 2

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This posting is part of a series from a speech made in 1961 by then-president Eisenhower. It accurately warns the citizens of the Untied States of the times to come, the time when the military and sociological agenda of the Untied States would be dictated by military industry. At the time, this was corporate America. In modern times, this speech rings painfully true as an unheeded warning to the level of control corporate America now holds on our country.

I post this speech not as a criticism of our current government, but as a criticism of the control it has allowed itself to fall under, and the losses, both physical and ideological, which we have suffered.

—–

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Eisenhower warns of a corporate government: Part 1

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This posting is part of a series from a speech made in 1961 by then-president Eisenhower. It accurately warns the citizens of the Untied States of the times to come, the time when the military and sociological agenda of the Untied States would be dictated by military industry. At the time, this was corporate America. In modern times, this speech rings painfully true as an unheeded warning to the level of control corporate America now holds on our country.

I post this speech not as a criticism of our current government, but as a criticism of the control it has allowed itself to fall under, and the losses, both physical and ideological, which we have suffered.

—–

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

Eisenhower warns of a corporate government: Intro

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This posting is part of a series from a speech made in 1961 by then-president Eisenhower. It accurately warns the citizens of the Untied States of the times to come, the time when the military and sociological agenda of the Untied States would be dictated by military industry. At the time, this was corporate America. In modern times, this speech rings painfully true as an unheeded warning to the level of control corporate America now holds on our country.

I have chosen to go back to this era, as it seems to be ‘where it all went wrong’ in modern America. You will never hear these types of warnings again, as it seems that corporate America has finally purchased its way to the top. In reality, it is my sincere hope that this speech inspires any readers of this blog to stand up for what is right, for what they believe in, and to refuse to let the power of money over-run your own sense of morality.

The fears of President Eisenhower to date have been, and are currently being realized. When asking yourself what happened to the United States of the Moon missions, Norman Rockwell, apple pie, etc., consider this speech as it was in 1961: a warning of what was to come.

I post this speech not as a criticism of our current government, but as a criticism of the control it has allowed itself to fall under, and the losses, both physical and ideological, which we have suffered.

The nature of human intelligence

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In writing my last post on email client satisfaction and dependence on users, I dedicated the 45-minute commute home to thinking about the nature of people’s intelligence, whether technological and otherwise. No radio, etc. :-)

I’ve thought up a basic roadmap, but need other’s comments to fine-tune it. Here’s what I came up with so far:

Knowledge
Otherwise known as ‘book smarts’ Being knowledgeable is something to can attain experience or study. Being knowledgeable seems to be useless without the intelligence to know what to do with all of that information, except for on Jeopardy.

Intelligence
Intelligence seems to be inherent in a person, though there seems to be ways to increase one’s intelligence. Intelligence seems to be the ability to know what to do, even if you don’t know how. Suprisingly, intelligence seems to have the ability to grow via the brains situational profiling.

dependencies on each other
It seems that knowledge is the useless storage of information without intelligence. Intelligence is the inability to accomplish recognizable goals without knowledge.

Conclusion
It seems that the ideal environment for making one’s self more “intelligent”, then, is to start with a basic library of knowledge to work with, and to be placed in enough situations where your mind becomes efficient in searching through that knowledge and coming up with the best solution to a given situation.

Example
There are two venture capitalist investors.

The first has seven years of training, and seven years of practice. After 14 years, the first investor is able to recognize good investments in the area of his expertise, and to be successful.

The second investor has 14 years of training, but no practice. Although the second investor is more knowledgeable about investing, he/she has a hard time applying that knowledge practically since he/she can’t recognize what situation they are in.

Something interesting happens as time goes on, however. At this point, the first investor is able to leverage 100% of their knowledge at year 14, and will continue to do so until year 21. The second investor can leverage 0% at year 14, and perhaps 100% at year 21. In short, the second investor could possible be twice as good as the first, but perhaps take 1/3 (133%) more time to get there. In this respect, it seems as if the second investor has an advantage.

However, as we all know, the learning process doesn’t stop at the end of the knowledge-gathering. The use of knowledge via intelligence opens up more opportunities for knowledge, and this continues in cycle.

If we apply this principle to our example, the first investor is at 100% knowledge in year 7. As they approach year 14, they approach 100% intelligence, as they learn how to leverage that knowledge. Through years 7-14, however, this process opens them up to more knowledge-gaining opportunities, and they may, perhaps, be at 200% of their original knowledge, and since they were utilizing this knowledge along the way, at full efficiency. Therefore, the first investor would arrive at year 14 with the ability to make use of all 14 year’s work of knowledge.

This is in contrast to the second investor who arrives at year 14 at a much lower efficiency, as they are only able to utilize the intelligence naturally inherent, not learned.

What does it all mean?
It seems like this makes the case for not only a broad-spectrum, short-duration education (such as a 4-year liberal-arts, or ‘something of everything’ education) to facilitate multi-situational effectiveness. In addition, it also seems that the stockpiling of knowledge needs to be weighed against the cost of not using the majority of it, as that would have been time better spent a.) efficiently using the knowledge you have, and b.) opening opportunities for knowledge that is more relevant to current situations.

Help me out here, and post your insights!

Ed Brill and client satisfaction

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Ed Brill

Got into a good discussion, wanted to post my comment on my own blog as well.

On the topic of surveys of end user satisfaction with software products:

Overall, I haven’t put too much weight on these types of surveys. What I WOULD be interested in is a survey of end users who have used multiple email systems, and their preference.

It seems like Notes would blow others out of the water, if the end users knew what they were missing. But often they don’t. A perfect example of this is a sametime rollout I was involved in for a small company of about 400 users. No-one understood why we were rolling it out, they were satisfied with what they had. Two months later, we were averaging 10,000 sametime conversations per month, 80% of them business related. About 6 months later, we had a minor error with the server’s hardware, and you’d better believe people missed it.

I think of it like this – people using exchange or others are like workers with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. The tools allow them to do more work more quickly, and they are happy with what they have. Then you give them the dump truck and backhoe of Notes 6/6.5/7. Not only can they continue doing the same old thing, but they have the tools to accomplish much more.

The only dependants are the user’s desire to learn how to use their new tools effectively, and the ‘drive factor’. By ‘drive factor’, I mean the choice the user has to make whether to continue putting forward the same amount of effort with the new tools and accomplish more, or accomplish the same goals with less effort.

I think the latter happens a little too much, and this seems to me to be some of the source of the ‘Notes is too complicated’ argument. Not that I think the Notes UI is complicated, I think it is very intuitive. But I think the real argument some of these people are making is, ‘Notes is too complicated…because I don’t need such a capable tool to accomplish the lower goals I have set for myself’. For end users, this is a management problem, but it’s not hard to see this attitude in management, developers, etc.

More info on the Hybrid eCycle

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I love this thing. Here’s some specs I found. The article is good too. (US conversions done by me)

Motoring – Hybrid eCycle is fun and super-eConomical:

Motor: Air-cooled two-stroke diesel twin.
Capacity: 125cc.
Power: 7.5kW. (10 hp)
Induction: Parker Aerospace Macrospray injectors.
Ignition: Compression.
Starting: Electric.
Transmission: 2-speed constant mesh with final drive by belt.
Suspension: 48mm FAR inverted cartridge forks at front, Penske Racing hydraulic shock absorber at rear.
Brakes: 298mm (11.73 inches) disc with four-pot opposed piston Grimeca calliper at front, 216mm (8.5 inches) disc with single-piston Grimeca calliper at rear.
Tyres: Front: 110/70-17 tubeless. Rear: 130/70-17 tubeless.
Wheelbase: 1321mm. (52 inches)
Seat height: 762mm. (30 inches)
Dry weight: 132kg. (291 pounds)

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The electric GPR

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GprHome:

Motor: Rare Earth Magnet
Power: 15 Peak Horsepower
Top Speed: 45 to 65 mph (adjustable)
Range: 20 to 40 miles (adjustable)
Brakes: Dual Hydraulic Disks
Charge Time: 3.5 hours

What’s nice about this is that you can actually buy one of these, unlike the eCycle, from what I have found. The downside (?) is that it’s entirely electric, so it’s range is limited by who will let you plug in.

However, with its range, it remains a viable solution for commuters or weekend fun, but probably wouldn’t be too good on the interstate highways, with a max speed of 65 mph.

Still, for a $7000 bike, not bad performance at all.

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Hybrid Motorcycle!

Geeky 4 Comments »

Hybrid PR 5 25.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Nice. The hybrid motorcycle. Not exactly the cargo room I need, but the 180 mpg sounds nice! Top speed of 80 mph and 0-60 in 6 seconds is also nice.

Now they just need to put out an update on production, it’s been 8 months or so since they put out the press release.

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Consider diagonal size when going to a widescreen TV

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Here is some advice when looking into some of the newer widescreen-format TV’s… with excel sheet data, of course…
(by the way, 16:9 (for example) is a type of measurement in how the sides of the screen relate to each other. 6 inches tall for every 9 inches wide. This is called aspect.

So basically, throwing the marketing aside, I have a 30″ Sony Wega. Here are the stats for that unit:

32-inch diagonal
4:3 aspect ratio
24 inches wide
18 inches tall
432 square inches
(also 163 pounds. That doesn’t have to do with anything, it’s just fun to point out how ludicrous moving it around is…)

So if I wanted the same amount of screen space (square inches) in a 16:9 TV, I would have to do the following:
31.8-inch diagonal
27.7 inches wide
15.6 inches tall
432 square inches

So now that we’re viewing the signal from Comcast in widescreen mode, I can see more of the signal being sent to me. In the past, where my TV would have been cutting off the sides of the signal to show it in 4:3, it now shows the entire signal being sent in its native 16:9.

But wait! Something’s wrong here. If I watch a DVD on both TV’s, it’s true that I get to see more of the picture with the widescreen (1.85 inches on either side). But because this is 16:9, my “32 inch” 16:9 TV displays people in the movie 2.4 inches shorter! In effect, a person on my 16:9 TV is the same size as on a “26 inch” 4:3 TV. I gained extra picture on the sides of the 16:9, but the actual size of what’s being displayed gets smaller on a 16:9 if you compare the 16:9 and 4:3 “32 inch” TV’s next to each other.

Well that just won’t do. I want to keep the same image size I’m used to, but just get the extra inches on the sides that I’ve been missing. In order to replace my 30″ Sony and keep the same image size, but add the extra picture on the sides, I would have to look into a 16:9 TV with the following specs:

36.7 inch diagonal
32 inches wide
18 inches tall
576 square inches

Whoa! A “36.7 inch” TV? Yep, if I wan to keep the picture I am used to, but get the benefit of the extra picture on the sides, that’s what I’m looking at. And that’s what you should be looking at if you’re thinking of switching from a 4:3 TV to a 16:9. So what if you don’t have a 30″ TV? Well, the following chart should help you out:

So what’s the bottom line? Well, it just so happens to work out that no matter what size diagonal your 4:3 TV is, if you take the inches diagonal of the 4:3 (30″, for example) and multiply it by 1.2238, the number you get will be the size diagonally that you will need in your 16:9 so that you have the same height screen as your 4:3.

Here is the excel sheet to prove it!

OLD 4:3 TV NEW 16:9 TV

w h d w h d inches diag diff % diag difference
04.0 03.0 05 16.0 9.0 18.4
16.0 12.0 20 21.3 12.0 24.5 4.5 22.38373%
17.6 13.2 22 23.5 13.2 26.9 4.9 22.38373%
19.2 14.4 24 25.6 14.4 29.4 5.4 22.38373%
20.8 15.6 26 27.7 15.6 31.8 5.8 22.38373%
22.4 16.8 28 29.9 16.8 34.3 6.3 22.38373%
24.0 18.0 30 32.0 18.0 36.7 6.7 22.38373%
25.6 19.2 32 34.1 19.2 39.2 7.2 22.38373%
27.2 20.4 34 36.3 20.4 41.6 7.6 22.38373%
28.8 21.6 36 38.4 21.6 44.1 8.1 22.38373%
30.4 22.8 38 40.5 22.8 46.5 8.5 22.38373%
32.0 24.0 40 42.7 24.0 49.0 9.0 22.38373%
33.6 25.2 42 44.8 25.2 51.4 9.4 22.38373%
35.2 26.4 44 46.9 26.4 53.8 9.8 22.38373%
36.8 27.6 46 49.1 27.6 56.3 10.3 22.38373%
38.4 28.8 48 51.2 28.8 58.7 10.7 22.38373%
40.0 30.0 50 53.3 30.0 61.2 11.2 22.38373%

How to pay off your credit cards and get paid to do it

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If you’re sick of high interest rates, or fearful of how the new laws designed to protect you from yourself will most likely bankrupt you, you’re probably feeling pretty stressed, like I am.

I don’t like having credit card debt, but giving a good vacation to the wife/girlfriend, trying to not have a disappointing Christmas, or buying furniture for that new house usually forces most people to put some amount on the credit cards. Since the credit card companys want you to stay in debt, and have made an entire industry out of doing just that, it’s difficult to get out from under that stress.

I have an idea. Haven’t tried it yet myself, but I wanted to open it to the blogosphere and get some feedback, because technically it makes sense…

Debt (credit cards, loans, bills) is what you owe people, this is negative. Assets (a car you have paid off, stuff you can sell on eBay, money) are what you use to get rid of debt (anti-debt?), which is positive.

Here’s the interesting thing:

The positives can have interest rates (stock market, savings account), but this interest rate is usually small, as in 3% or lower small.

The negatives have larger interest rates, but the range is much larger, from 0% on a new car to 30%+ on a credit card.

There’s nothing we can do about the positive interest rates. We can get better real estate or invest in riskier stocks to try and get more in interest, but we’ll never get to a 30%+ gain per year.

So let’s try to get rid of the high-percentage negative stuff. I’ve already talked about how to get credit card payments cut in half with one phone call, so let’s say out bad interest is in the range of 0%-15%.

An optomistic good interest range is in 5-10%/year, for stocks, real estate, etc. Yes, there are exceptions, but this is an example. Let’s say we’re gaining 10%/year on a $200K house, and 10%/year on $30K of investments. That means our money is making us about $23,000 per year.

However, in the bad interest group, we have 13% on the $5000 of credit card bills, 8% on the $200K mortgage, and depreciation on the paid-off car, currently worth $10K. That means our stuff is costing us $22650.

Overall, our investment gains are being eaten up by our debt interest, so here’s the plan: make the debt’s appetite smaller.

Step 1: sell the car.
It’s going to need maybe a thousand over the next year to keep running properly, compared to a new car? It’s worth 1/3 of what it was when you bought it? It has 60K miles on it? ditch it, we’ll get another one in a bit. in the meantime, borrow a car if you can, or take public transit for the next month while we:

step 2: use the car money to pay off the credit cards
these cards are going to be the end of you. Pay off all the cards, but don’t close the accounts. Just keep paying the $3 monthly fee to keep them open. Credit cards debt goes away, and (after a motnh or two) your credit score skyrockets (once your low balances are reported), which will come in handy next:

step 3: refinance?
now that you have a great credit score, see if you qualify for a lower interest rate on your mortgage. Even 1% can make a world of difference, in this case, about $2000/year. Take your mortgage savings (in this case, maybe about $165/month) and put it towards:

step 4: get a used car
Your old car was used, so you don’t need a new one. besides, the chances are that you can go find a car exactly like yours with half the miles. The good part is that most of a car’s depreciation is in the first few years, so a 2-year-old car will have depreciated to 50% of its original value, but will have only 30K miles, compared to your old car that had 60K miles and was worth 40% of what it was when you bought it. That difference of 10% value only adds up to $2000 on a $20K car, so don’t worry about the cost difference. With your new high credit score, you can get a good car loan, which your mortgage savings help pay for. You can even use any extra money left over from paying off your credit cards to lower the cost of the car, and therefore, the monthly cost. While you’re at it, collect some of that crap that yu haven’t used in years and put it on eBay. After all, you’re not using it, and it’s not going to get more valuable just lying there in your moldy basement.

Your budget for the new (used) car is this: if you are getting a 48-month loan, for example, the total cost of the car + total interest paid (minus savings on mortgage over this period of time)has to be lower than the total cost of paying off your credit cards in 48 months. If the car costs more per month than it would have cost per month to pay off the credit cards in 48 months, you have to find a cheaper car, otherwise there was no sense in doing all of this work, all you did was move your debt from credit cards to a car. (but you did raise your credit score, so a minor kudos to you)

step 5: (optional)
you may want to call it quits right here, but you may want to consider taking what you would have paid to pay off your credit cards over 48 months, and subtracting your step 4 cost (cost of used car over 48 months minus mortgage savings). If this number comes out positive, say, $150/month, that means all of this work has not only paid off your cards and gotten you a better credit score, but lessened your monthly debt. Feel free to put that money towards the house, or more likely, towards that investment fund you had that was making 10%/year.

the end result:

the good

you have no (or lower) credit card debt

you have a better credit score

you have a lower mortgage payment

you have a newer car with less miles, and possibly still under warranty

you are putting more into your investment account

the not-so-good
you had to get rid of your car. get over it.

your new car might have more problems than the last. make sure it has some kind of warranty for the next few years.

you had to be without a car while you waited for your credit score to rise. yeah, that kinda sucked.

you have car payments. yeah, before you didn’t have car payments or credit card payments. That’s because you weren’t paying off your credit cards, which put you in this mess in the first place. So you tell me, car payments at maybe 5%, or credit card payments at 30%?

If you’ve got any ideas or anything to add, please comment!


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