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Just wanted to plug the latest and greatest version of WordPress, its interface is easier to use (I hated the WYSIWYG after awhile). Plus it has auto-save built-in.

Also, if you are shopping the market, my webmaster operates a company that specializes in hosting and design: www.betanaught.com (Mike is an econ PhD student at UCSD… betanaught is an inside joke to statisticians).

Or maybe you do.

Peter Klein pointed to a recent piece on Slate regarding the fallacious need for an FCC, how its existence hurts market innovation much more than it helps.

See also: The Spectrum Should Be Private Property
The Evaporation of the FCC

Apropos my windy discussion on Wikipedia comes a sweet surprise: various court cases have cited entries found within Wikipedia to give context to certain issues.

Again, as a general reference guide, Wikipedia is typically good enough as a starting point, however it would behoove you to find more meticulous research on a specific topic for say, a doctoral dissertation.

Assuming you visit every hemisphere on a crisp, clear evening, a human observer with good eyesight is theoretically able to see about 9600 stars with the naked-eye. Realistically however, you might be lucky enough to only see half of these due to numerous variables (e.g. weather conditions, low altitude).

These stars range from the seemingly up close and personal North Star (at 430 light-years) to Deneb which is 1,600 light-years away. The closest star to our own Solar system is actually a trio located a little more than 4 light-years away (Alpha, Proxima Centauri).

In addition, humans are supposedly capable of seeing stars up to a threshold of around 4,075 light-years (Rho Cassiopeia). And the most distant object we can see with our unaided eyes is the Andromeda Galaxy, approximately 2.5 million light-years away.

I mention this because various proponents of a theistic creation (Young-Earth Creationists specifically) and Intelligent Design suggest that the Earth is a mere few thousand years old.

The problem with this is that, as I detailed above, there are thousands of visible stars spread out over hundreds of light-years.

And it takes a lot of energy to move mass through space, as the object must counter numerous forces acting upon it (e.g. gravity from planets and stars).

In fact, the fastest moving space probe launched into space (New Horizons) screams through the cosmos at over 40,000 mph (it will get an extra nudge thanks to a gravity assist by Jupiter) — it also weighs 1,000 pounds, a paltry sum compared to stars.

However, even at that relatively brisk pace, it will take the probe hundreds of years to reach the closest of neighboring stars.

At this point, it should be noted that the most accurate method to measure the movement of colossal amounts of mass (expansion of space) is by their Red Shift, formulated by the late Edwin Hubble.

And guess what? None of the several thousand visible stars floating relatively near the solar system are moving away at much more than New Horizons, let alone the speed-of-light.

In fact, one of the fastest moving objects ever discovered is cruising at a spry 10 million mph (about 1.5% the speed-of-light). However, “ejected masses” like these are few and far between.

And it is the speed of our neighboring stars (or lack thereof) that raises the question: if an omnipotent deity capable of transcending the known laws of physics, supernaturally placed these stars in their current location, why would the same deity purportedly claim that Earth and homo sapiens had been around for only a few thousand years — when the visible evidence suggests otherwise?

You see, the biggest problem in denying that something fishy has taken place is that enterprising individuals like Galileo tinkered with lenses and ultimately pioneered the telescopic industry (the scope he used to peer onto the moon’s surface had a 20x magnification).

And as a result, we are now capable of seeing billions and billions of stars located millions of light-years away.

So, either astronomers are wrong; or YECists cannot acknowledge that distances between stellar objects exist and is muy vast, otherwise this key part of their theology is wrong and/or is a loyalty test from Zeus himself…

If you have watched the new film “The Pursuit of Happyness” there is a scene in the film in which Will Smith’s character is trying to check into a shelter and a shelter worker tries to stop him.

That worker (whose meat space name is Robert Peters) emailed me after reading my recent Mises article letting me know that,

Came across this the other day, which you may have seen.

Interestingly enough it lists Bhutan as being the 8th happiest country.  Of course it is easier to please people when their view of the number of choices in the world is severely limited.

It is interesting to compare it to Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom.

I see a close correlation.

It reminded me of the fable in which the socialist bemoans to a capitalist that there are just too many choices for an individual in a free-market economy… it is too confusing. 

And the capitalist retorts that at least they have those choices, those options, those possibilities — because entrepreneurial activity and private property are allowed to exist.

Burn (#1).

So this guy named AC emailed me earlier today, about an online petition he started.

It is a grass-roots effort to try and convince Nike to make those laceless shoes that Marty McFly had in Back to the Future Part II (circa 2015 AD).

And while I doubt the petition will be of much use, the self-made commercial is pretty funny.

Perhaps this could be one area homemade 3D printers can be of use.

I can hardly be accused of being a pinko-hippie granola crunching populist (unless you ask my older sister), yet I still enjoy Colbert much more than O’Reilly.

And I barely watch Comedy Central to begin with.

That said, I managed to catch O’Reilly’s appearance on the Colbert Report last week.  It wasn’t nearly as explosive as I thought it would be (see the video here).

In fact, if you want to watch these guys go toe to toe, check out the recent visit Colbert made to O’Reilly’s studio (video).  O’Reilly was well, O’Reilly — spewing anger and hatred at his guest.

And while Colbert was very witty, the funniest part of the segment were the snickers you can hear from the production crew, to Colbert’s tactful comebacks.

Note: one wonders if the self-righteous Lewis Prothero (”Voice of London”) in V for Vendetta was partially inspired by O’Reilly’s pompous arrogance.

See also: O’Reilly versus Krugman; and O’Reilly versus Moore

Be sure to visit neatorama to view a larger version.  And also check out the brief clip of MacGyver on Family Guy.

And if you liked that, then you will probably chuckle at this small diagram from XKCD.

And lastly, if you have any teenagers that frequently text message one another, then they might like this before & after.  An albino gorilla?!? Kenny Rogers?

It seem Bob Parsons is too hot for TV.  Or rather, his company ads (GoDaddy.com) are.

This is the second year that the Super Bowl ad they created got cancelled.

Here it is in all its glory. 

And for what it is worth, I think the one from last year was much more “racey.”

If you’ve watched all of the Star Wars movies then you will probably get a kick out of this “between the lines” revisionist history of the plotline.

Today’s online edition of The Wall Street Journal had a great article by economist Charles Murray, “What’s Wrong With Vocational School?” 

The sub-heading actually sums up his thesis best: Too many Americans are going to college. 

The piece does in 2 pages what I couldn’t quite do in 17.  

And while the piece does have several interesting insights, one tangent popped out: his example of craftsmanship. Stating,    

A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason–the list goes on and on–is difficult, and it is a seller’s market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman’s job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?

Interestingly enough, two recent trade articles discussed the ongoing revolution in constructing homes. 

Last October, Popular Science published an article entitled “Building Blocks: The House of the Future” (pdf) which details a new endeavor that combines existing manufacturing methods with an open-source flare. [Note: Popular Mechanics interviewed the designer in 2005] 

Basically instead of building homes from the ground up on location, architect Kent Larson and others at MIT have developed an open, standardized process in which homes can be prefabricated at a central location and shipped out in smaller units (kind of like trailer homes). 

The analogy he uses is morphing the finished goods into Lego-like blocks, and as stated in the write-up, “the industry needs standards analogous to the USB standard for computers.”   So Larson suggests that, “[y]ou don’t have to agree on the toilet, but you have to agree on how the toilet connects to the wall or the floor.” 

The Open Source Building Alliance and the Open-Built endeavors are spearheading this modular fantasy.  And the projected savings are not just limited to construction and labor costs, but also in time and wasted material (which typically amounts to “several dumpsters” compared to just a couple trash cans under the Open-Built system). 

And if that doesn’t worry general contractors and craftsmen across the country, this past weekend, The Times Online ran a piece nefariously entitled, “Robo-builder threatens the brickie.”  

And you guessed it, the author discusses the complete automation of construction labor… which unfortunately is only limited to homes for now. 

Among other things, the accuracy involved in using robotic labor not only reliably creates a safe living environment, but it can be contorted in zany, creative ways that human laborers have great difficulty in doing (such as the twists and turns in innovative designs). 

Oh, and if living on the ground is too ancien for you, perhaps Loftcubes will tickle your fancy –  customized/prefabbed homes flown onto rooftops.  

In conclusion, I do not think this diminishes Murray’s thesis at all, in fact, if anything it should strengthen his main point: that you do not necessarily need to attend 4-year colleges to become a successful entrepreneur or master in a trade.   

And this is certainly true in a dynamic labor environment that is adapting and adopting new innovations on every front - including construction - in which trade schools can be much more flexible and effective in modifying their curriculm and instruction… to get with the times.

See also, The Prefab Home Is Suddenly Fab

Are you a fan of faux billet-reading?

Johnny Carson has some of the archives up from his old sketch: Carnac The Magnificent.

And be sure to watch Houdini: Unlocking The Mystery on the History Channel. 

Not only was Houdini a superb magician, but he was also passionate about debunking the paranormal… just like Penn & Teller or Randi.

See also, Jacob Grier, a magician and friend of mine.

The question has come up whether a guild master of the weaving industry should be allowed to try an innovation in his product. The verdict: ‘If a cloth weaver intends to process a piece according to his own invention, he must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission from the judges of the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after the question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of the oldest weavers of the guild.’ One can imagine how many suggestions for change were tolerated.

Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the button makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the cloth-button makers. But the wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to search people’s homes and wardrobes and fine and even arrest them on the streets if they are seen wearing these subversive goods.

The above quote is surprisingly from the late economist Robert Heilbroner — who typically defended State intervention and regulation.

It is these protectionistic policies that Frederic Bastiat parodied in the ”Candlemakers’ Petition.”

Via Techdirt.

While he’s got a weird thing for older women, his dancing on SNL was quirky enough to be funny.  What else can he bring back?

• Salvation Army - HomelessVille
• Benny’s - OmeleVille

See also: Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I’ve mentioned our survivalists friends before.  Some can live in extremely hot places, others in very cold environments.

Now it appears that some of these versatile microbes are smaller than the typical bits of pond scum found on your fishing pants.  In this case, this newly discovered specimen is the smallest known living organism — smaller than bacteria, and just slightly larger than a virus.

I wonder if they have any pygmy or dwarven cousins.

I’m not a fan of patents or NASA, so call me biased, but I just received an email regarding my recent article.

It was from an engineer/lawyer in England who pointed out the latest Audi ad campaign: to get to the A6, Audi filed 9,621 patents. In contrast, to date NASA has only filed 6,509.

But is that really a smart comparison to make?

The first problem, because it is entirely funded through public monies NASA has no financial incentive for patenting anything it does (whether it succeeds in innovating or not).

Plus, generally speaking, by law some research receiving federal funding (such as NASA) is required to release their discoveries into the public domain (various legislation proposed last year wants to place all federally funded research into the public domain).

The other problem is that NASA does not make automobiles, nor does Audi build rockets (yet) — so isn’t this just comparing apples and oranges?

Why not simply find a moribund American carmaker (like GM) and compare the fewer patents they have, and then flex and grunt to show your superiority?

Ultimately however, what do consumers care about patents? Did market research find that many people still associate space travel with “great technology”?

Of course, a true cynic would think that the A6 blows up 1-out-of-every-50 uses…

#45 - Cows can have regional accents, says a professor of phonetics, after studying cattle in Somerset. This and 99 other random factoids were recently compiled by the BBC.

This may not be too surprising for anyone that has raised a dog… after all, our canine companions have to adopt and learn various dialects based on the region and household you live; sometimes even two or more (a Ukrainian friend of mine has a Golden Retriever that is obeys commands in three different languages).

So why wouldn’t other animals have regionalized tongues (or even chirps)?

Via LewRockwell.

My younger brother mentioned that none of his teachers let him cite or reference the popular online encyclopedia, due to published errors in various entries. This despite the fact that peer-review journals such as Nature have independently found that Wikipedia is about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica (in at least the sciences). [Note: Britannica should have seemingly won this war years ago.]

While that is not unexpected, there are other ways to handle this conundrum.

The first, and perhaps most instructive would be to offer students extra credit to revise and correct the errors of an entry. Not only would the student learn some basic, potentially valuable web-based editing skills, but it will allow future readers to understand the material better.

In some ways, the teachers reaction to this resource and tool was similar to how many administrators reacted with MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites — by banning them and setting up strict consequences for accessing or having an account on them.

While social networking and encyclopedias are not the same thing, students can still learn valuable web-editing, time-management, and organizational skills that they can use later in life (e.g., Facebook has a very useful “Event” feature that makes it much easier to schedule specific social gatherings like service projects, reunions, and of course parties).

Embrace or ignore?

Earlier today I received a curt email from an Air Force officer with a little too many bones to pick. I had attacked his golden egg (NASA) and should among other things, give my parents a refund for the tuition and fees charged by A&M (because, you guessed it, I’m retarded).

He starts his letter by insinuating that Wikipedia was not a legitimate source for reference material:

Since you appear capable of using Wikipedia as a large source of your
learned and august “research,” I suggest you point your browser to…

He then links to a number of other online resources such as TheSpaceReview, Scientific American, and SpaceQuotes — sites that are completely foreign to me… [Note: he has since sent yet another email filled with a sundry of links proving his point: that he has a hard on for all things NASA.]

To be honest, in the past I’ve referenced journals, books, and many other professional periodicals for various projects and articles. However, for the topic at hand, the Wikipedia entries I linked to in the footnotes were not only concise and succinct, but also fairly accurate.

In addition, sprinkled throughout the footnotes were links to other mainstream press articles about the numerous problems, both engineering and economics-based, that the shuttle program has had and continues to have.

Completely succinct?

I received another email this morning from a different reader, who noted that the shuttle success rate should actually be even lower than the 1-in-50 that I cited.

There is also an abort to orbit mode, which was used on STS-51-F, evidently not one of the better missions. One of the shuttle main engines failed, and the _Challenger_ was told to abort to orbit. Obviously, this failure did affect the mission, and must be included with the two catastrophic failures.

Apparently there were five other pad aborts, missions STS-41-D, STS-51-F, STS-51, STS-55, and STS-68, which cost taxpayers a bundle. So all told, between 8 or 9 partial and full failures in 117 missions — a ratio that is not yet in the Wikipedia entry. For shame.

Contrast this with Burt Rutan’s privately financed endeavor: SpaceShipOne. Because his company operates under a different business model (one not financed by taxpayers or manipulated by politicians), he has to break even or he will go bankrupt. Therefore it is in his best interest to succeed, or rather, not blow up his clients. Every time.

As a result, Rutan has had only one partial non-catastrophic failure in seventeen flights, of which sixteen were manned. And again, he had to build the engines, frame, and flight systems from scratch — on a limited budget.

Retrospecticus

This will probably not be the last time I will discuss this issue. In addition, the actual article wasn’t about comparing apples (airplanes) to oranges (shuttles) as implied by various Digg posters; it was more abstract and dealt with business models. And unfortunately, the casualities in this nationalized endeavor are the unseen opportunities stifled and prevented from ever taking place because of the mass diversion of scarce labor and capital.

In closing, there are several other references that come to somewhat similar conclusions of cancelling the shuttle project. In their words, its development is an “example of a poor quality national commitment to a major technological undertaking” and “…even if the worst happens and the Shuttles are mothballed … the loss to science will have been negligible.”

• A Rocket to Nowhere (well-written prose, see footnotes too)
• The Space Shuttle Program: A Policy Failure? (Note: this is the abstract at Science, you need an institutional account to access the full paper)
• The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped from Time magazine
• Beam Me Out of this Death Trap, Scotty from Washington Monthly

Apparently I really enjoy making lists, plus it helps me procrastinate a little more before I respond to some lengthy emails (NASA has some “griefing” fanboys mad at my latest piece).

Some news junkies subscribe to dozens of periodicals and buy copious amounts of books in order to stay on top of their industry each year.

Because I am poor and because it exists, I use an RSS reader to fulfill most of the habitual need to stay ahead of the curve. I made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader this past fall and look forward to the healthy competition in the future. Below is a list of sites I tend to frequent and heartily recommend (the actual list is 100 or so):

Techdirt: despite my disagreements with Mike on some issues, I think Techdirt offers some of the best commentary on the technology news industry bar none. Mike & Co. also have a useful information analysis service called: Corporate Intelligence. Not that he would hire me, but this is certainly an endeavor I would like to be part of. It is the long-tail of tech micro-news (think: a lower-cost Forrester Research or Gartner subscription, but with more frequent updates similar to that of Bloomberg wire reports).

DealBreaker: if you don’t have time to read The Wall Street Journal, or get annoyed by Cramer yelling all the time, yet you need to stay on top of the interesting stories in world finance, this site is for you. As I told founder John Carney, DB is much more interesting and informative than any finance class I took in college… and has a spunky refreshing attitude that makes me look good at cocktail parties. Plus, if a 20×20 grainy jpg is any indication, Muffie is kinda cute. The sometimes Austrian-bent also doesn’t hurt either.

ArsTechnica: I’ve been reading these guys daily for about 8 years now. ArsTechnica is one of the largest sources for original computer news and reviews. Plus, they have two excellent supplements: Journals.ars and Nobel Intent, both of which discuss the latest reports found in numerous scientific journals.

Organizations and Markets: If you have spent much time working for The Man or consider yourself an entrepreneur of any stripe, then you have at some point thought about how firms should be organized: flat, horizontal, vertical, Terry Tate-ish, ad nauseam. I find the academic debate surrounding these issues interesting, though at times, completely Ivory Towerish. However, Peter Klein and his Denmarkian friend make the discourse interesting and germane. Plus I have a soft-spot for their Austrian-esque approach to Bureaucracy.

DamnInteresting: What’s not to like about a site that frequently posts informative, typically historical, articles? Not only is it well-written prose, but they actually cite sources and allow readers to publicly critique and comment on a piece… proto-Open Peer Review?

CoyoteBlog: While one of the few non-tech-centric feeds on my Reader, Warren Meyer posts some interesting cultural brain droppings he finds around the intarweb. If you like him, you will probably find Overlawyered of interest too.

The GMU Four: I have mentioned that I think academic institutions should consider using blogs as a cheap means to advertise departments, recruit passionate students, and keep the public informed of current events (especially research). Over the past several years, numerous economics professors at George Mason University have maintained frequently updated blogs on topics ranging from economics, culture, statism, technology, and just about everything else (even sports). They also happen to be somewhat libertarian-leaning and Austrian-friendly:

• Cafe Hayek (I’ve met Boudreaux, good guy, plus having the legal background adds more flavor)
• Marginal Revolution (a friend in the PhD program says Cowen is as eclectic and informed as his blog posts)
• The Austrian Economists (articulate)
• EconLog (I’ve corresponded with Kling several times, he’s on top of the game)

People that should post more frequently:

• Rose Blog (who is trying to disprove this status and my inability to predict winners)
• LibertyGuys (they actually respond to emails)
• Cantillon’s Paradise (a grad student I snookered into the blogosphere)
• lettuce have peas (I’ve coauthored a piece with him)
• lowercase liberty (”my” grammar editor)
• Crash Landing (I interviewed Gene Callahan here and I use to harass Murphy on a listserve)
• Not Even Wrong (he wrote a critique of String Theory which I discussed here)

Note: despite the fact that I think most of their users are complete morons (RTFA), I still read Digg and Slashdot everyday. And the emo-marxists at BoingBoing can be interesting too.

If I didn’t mention you or your blog, I might start if you happen to be a hot chick or want to fund an empty scholarship. Or both.

In comedic fashion, Dave Berry wrapped up 2006 with lots of laughs and inside jokes.

Through and through, it reminded me of that old Mark Twain quote, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

More from Berry:
One nation, purple or maybe plumb, with goofiness for all
‘The Da Vinci Code’ cracked

Via CoyoteBlog