Mar

11

Is the Media Left, Right, or Does It Even Matter?

Filed Under Gov't & Politics, News | Leave a Comment

Newspaper x is Liberal (aka favors the Democrat Party). Television show y is Conservative (aka favors the Republican Party). Neither claims to be biased. Both claim to be party neutral. You could go back 210 years and change x to the Federalist Party (y would need to be another newspaper), but the result is that the media was even then run by people who have an interest in telling the story of their side. If you wanted to run for office, then you should start your own newspaper.

Everyone has beliefs. Those beliefs filter what information gets internalized. No one who reads this and disagrees with me will remember it. So why the pretense of objectivity? I think its because we so highly value objectivity. We all feel its better to strive to bring no biases to the table. However, I question the value of lying about our objectivity.

Mar

10

Hypocracy?

Filed Under Corporations | Leave a Comment

I’ve noticed lately lots of commercials for a phone company’s web site equivalent of their book. These commercials emphasize the strong effectiveness of thte combination of their book and web site. These commercials run multiple times per day on the radio and television.

So… If the book and web site are so effective, then why the need to use other advertising means?

Mar

6

DST vs IT

Filed Under Computers, Corporations, Gov't & Politics | Leave a Comment

Time Change a ‘Mini-Y2K’ in Tech Terms - New York Times:

For the roughly 7,000 public companies in the United States, Mr. Hammond estimates the total cost of making computer fixes to deal with the daylight saving time shift at more than $350 million. “It’s causing a lot of corporate technology people sleepless nights,” he said.

…

The 2005 energy bill gives Congress the option of repealing the daylight saving time extension, if energy savings are not achieved.

In my opinion, Congress repealing the DST extension would be another unnecessary headache. So, all you out there, lets save several billion in energry costs so that the extension will stay in place. Otherwise, next year we might be doing this again. :(

A disappointing aspect of this article is why IT is scrambling. Patches for several computer vendors were released very recently. So people in IT only have a several weeks to test, verify, and implement. We’ve found that after applying Sun’s Time Zone Updater, dates moved. Though the testing has been confusing as each test gave us different results (first only one set of dates moved, then everything moved, and lastly about hald dates moved - only for dates between March 11 and April 1).

This does feel like a bad early April Fool’s joke by Congress.

Mar

4

Science News

Filed Under Science | 2 Comments

News about scientific topics annoys me. The latest, on the melting of the Martian polar ice caps hinting at a warmer than usual Sun causing global warming makes me wonder if Kate reads about science as voratiously as I do? I mean, as I started to read this, I recalled that the number and size of sunspots was related to the amount of solar wind from the Sun. It was tied to that the Sun is currently in a decades long period in which it would make the Earth hotter. A simple Google search yielded this web page from 1997!

At present there is no concern about another Little Ice Age. Recent satellite measurements of solar brightness, analyzed by Willson (4), show an increase from the previous cycle of sunspot activity to the current one, indicating that the Earth is receiving more energy from the Sun. Willson indicates that if the current rate of increase of solar irradiance continues until the mid 21th century, then the surface temperatures will increase by about 0.5� C. This is small, but not a negligible fraction of the expected greenhouse warming. Ref: Sunspots and climate

It doesn’t make sense to me that either one of these must be wrong. A hotter than normal Sun * an Earth predisposed to trap more heat than normal = a hotter Earth.

Mar

1

Insanity

Filed Under Computers, Quotes | Leave a Comment

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)
The Quotations Page

Very nice! I’m nearly insane from working with computers.

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