After an online journey to National Review Online this morning, and later looking at competing articles on MSNBC and AOL, I noticed a curious thing. A blog seems to have the power to sway thought without any reference to facts.

For those espousing something not popular this may be a real boon, but how difficult is it, in this age of the Internet, to check facts? (As I typed this last sentence, the program I’m using shows me now that the word Internet should be capitalized — it’s respectable now, you know.)

It remains strange how writings, diverse in their premise, may continue to reference facts, which, in courtroom parlance, are not in evidence. Sometimes the facts are not given, but instead are alluded to, so they need not be backed by reference. This is how so much unsubstantiated nonsense gets into the public conscience.

I was reading an article in NRO [here] where the author concerns himself with the work of Rachel Carson, a pioneer in the ecology movement. In his eight paragraph article, he gives citations that judge her work as irresponsible, as he attributes many deaths from malaria to her pushing for the discontinuation of the widespread use of DDT as an insecticide. No reference is made as to why other pesticides have not been used, just the inference that without DDT, millions of people would otherwise be alive. This is an instance where incomplete facts are used to sway the reader, because complete facts would neither be so simple, nor as persuasive.

In yet another article on NRO [here] a different author cites the fact that no refineries have been built in the United States since 1976, again hoping that the reader will leap to the conclusion that the ‘left-wing, tree-hugging, Al Gore-lovin’ liberals have caused this problem. After a quick lookup on Google, it becomes apparent in cited facts [here], footnoted at the bottom of the article, that the Liberal factions in this country have had little to do with the lack of refinery building permits. This was not the desired result of the ‘fact’ in the NRO article.

As long as half truths, and assumptions made with incomplete evidence are allowed to stand, unchallenged, the vast numbers that make up the ‘unwashed masses’ will continue to bounce back and forth between the ranting of the two factions, all the while believing that both must be ‘crazy’ and no action need be taken.

Tags: national review online, msnbc, aol, portal, rachel carson, ecology movement, ddt, pesticides, google

That got your attention, didn’t it? I found this early this morning on MSNBC. It is a very interesting article that explains a condition suffered by some women and what the doctor has done to fix the problem. It is truly amazing how many difficulties and diseases we don’t know about, although they are happening all the time.

Tags: doctor, surgery, birth defects, surgical correction, journal of human reproduction

…from not being able to harness the power of the technology they offer.

I have always felt that if one is not the master of the technology they use, they will be the poorer for it.

Just a few minutes ago, I was almost asleep, happily downloading something with this computer, while listening to Internet radio at the same time. It is a regular occurrence at this house. Both my son and I schedule large, or long downloads during the small numbered hours of the day, so as to not interfere with other traffic throughout the day.

I realized, in some way, that something was wrong, and was soon awake enough to realize the connection with our DSL modem had been lost. This has been occurring since January, and I have been trying to get it through to the ‘customer representatives’ at Verizon that the problem was either faulty equipment at the local Central Office or the Actiontec modem I had been given about 18 months ago.

After going through the drill of restarting the modem/router three times, and having no WAN connection showing, checking all the appropriate places where a physical problem could be (we have cats!), I called the support number. After going through the voice prompts, I was soon in a loop of requesting tech support, and being told that I had had a support issue, but that it had been rectified and closed yesterday. After two revolutions on this merry-go-round I pressed ‘0′ and got a ‘person’ to talk to.

I was immediately treated like I was ‘not smarter than a fifth grader’, and asked to do exactly what I had done three times in the previous 12-15 minutes. After this miraculously did not repair my connection, I told this ‘expert’ that I had been on the status page of the router, and was not able to sync with the equipment in the CO. All was well on the network here at home, as I could see and transfer files with the remaining two computers still connected at this time. I kept telling the person I was getting a ‘red’ light on the WAN light. This, according to the Actiontec manual, which I apparently know better than the tech support, indicates no connection to the equipment at the CO. Still this did not seem to register with him. He kept insisting that my problem was that I was using Opera instead of Internet Explorer. (Oh, how I do wonder how the Internet survived until the advent of Internet Explorer!)

Finally, after about two more minutes of listening to his scripted drivel, the light went magically from red to green. Just as he was about to tell me there was no more he could do right now, I told him the connection was now up and running. Since he was using equipment to diagnose the condition of the connection at that time, why was it not he who informed me that all was well?

He then told me I must have an intermittent problem with the modem, to which I told him I had been trying to get this fact across to the business office since January of this year. I had explained that this was the reason for the trouble ticket that had been issued yesterday, and that the ‘trouble’ had not been resolved. I asked why the system kept repeating that the problem had been resolved. And why, since I have been a customer of their DSL service since early in the year 2000, I had to be treated like an idiot, instead of possibly looking at the notes in their system, and giving me the benefit of the doubt when I said I had conducted all of the stuff he made me do, before I called.

He ended this ‘fine’ support call with the words I have come to hate. “Sir, I cannot do anything further this evening, as the billing office will have to be contacted during their business hours to get a new modem sent out.” I related the fact that I knew that, and twice this week I had gotten home at about 4:30, gotten on the phone immediately to the billing office, both times being transferred to tech support, and then after another couple of handoff’s, along with the obligatory wait in queue, told by the tech support that I was speaking to someone who could not help. I should have called the billing office. When I related the fact that this very call was started with the billing office, and my unfortunate transfers, I was then told I would have to try again tomorrow, as the billing office was now (at 5:17) closed.

Ever wonder how big business makes any money? I know I do.

Tags: verizon, internet, isp, tech support, dsl, technology, phone queue

Just now, the new summer show with the above title finished. I was watching, with the barf bag at the ready, but was pleasantly surprised.

This show is everything that American Idol should have been.

First, the contestants do more than sing, as if singing was the ne plus ultra of existence.

Second, the judges are good at judging talent, without making pretenses about their qualifications. They also are not preachy, which is wonderful, because hearing Simon Cowell preaching about talent is as welcome to these ears as Jim Bakker espousing the benefits of matrimonial fidelity.

Lastly, we see people who don’t get coronary occlusion when told that they haven’t made the cut. Also, words of encouragement given have a ring of sincerity. How refreshing that is.

The only disappointment will be if the show gets an early cancellation notice a la the Fox network. It has been happening more and more on ABC, as if one of the top execs is channeling Rupert Murdoch.

Perhaps ABC will have a winner for the second season in January, since the new fall shows at that network, for the past couple of seasons, seem to have the lifespan of the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Enjoy with no reservations.

Tags: abc, next best thing, talent, fox, simon cowell, jim bakker

It’s been nearly a month since Qualcomm has stopped selling the full version of Eudora, its well known and polished mail client.

It was announced several months ago that the development of the program had stopped, leaving time for the company to crush Nokia in court over patent infringement. Yes, that Qualcomm.

At that time, an announcement was made that Eudora would be moving to Open Source, as a project of the Mozilla foundation. As I have been really disappointed with its other e-mail offering of late, see here, I was wondering how much of the personality of Eudora would go into the new project, codename Penelope.

It would seem that most of the underpinnings of the program will stay with the Thunderbird code. That could be both good and bad. The good part is that the strict e-mail part of that program is very solid, and does exactly what it should. The less than adequate part of this is knowing that Eudora users are used to doing things a certain way, and if that way is changed, the user base will move somewhere else, or stay with revision 7.1 of the product.

More good news is that on the development page for Penelope, a quick perusal reveals that all six of the core team have worked at Qualcomm, and five of the six are developers that have been working with the code base for a long time. This should lead to a very mature product, in a short period of time. If, however, there gets to be any qualms over the basic coding, this could be a very long production cycle. Hopefully, all will agree on the Thunderbird way of doing the basics.

There is a map of the proposed development, the current bug list, and a discussion area, here. If you are as excited about these new developments as I am, go and at least discuss the hopes and wishes you have for this software. And perhaps we’ll discover how Penelope is related to Eudora.

Tags: eudora, email, qualcomm, thunderbird

Over on MSNBC, an article by an unknown author gives ideas. put forth by the scientific community.

Volcanic Dust

Proposal: Using balloons, jet engines, and artillery, to put millions of tons of sulfates into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling from volcanic dust.

Problems: Expensive, tens of thousands of pounds needed per month to produce enough cooling; no effect on carbon dioxide; could cause drying of the Mediterranean and Mideast.

Solar Umbrella

Proposal: In 20 million launches over 30 years, deploy 16 million refracting disks in orbit between the Earth and the Sun.

Problems: Cost could be $4 trillion; no effect on carbon dioxide.

Carbon Capture

Proposal: Capture carbon dioxide from major emission sources and deposit them into salt formations, depleted oil and gas reserves, or the ocean. Current commercial systems can reduce the carbon dioxide emissions up to 90 percent per kilowatt-hour, but waste is not currently stored.

Problems: Expensive; leakage a risk to humans, ecosystems; entire volume of ocean may change.

Artificial Trees

Proposal: Use industrial size artificial trees to filter 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the wind per year. Each tree could filter 6.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per second.

Problems: Separation, transport, and disposal costs high; leakage a risk to humans, ecosystems.

Geritol Effect

Proposal: Dump iron ore dust into the ocean to create an algae bloom that would absorb carbon dioxide and sink.For each ton of iron oxide dumped into the ocean, 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide would be absorbed by the resulting algae bloom.

Problems: Could change sea temperature; political implications in international waters.

Hmmmmm…
Let’s think about each of these for a moment. ‘Solution’ #1, Volcanic Dust injection, reverses what we have been trying to do for the last thirty years. Reducing sulfur has removed the major contributor to acid rain and all that it causes. This one doesn’t even pass the Homer Simpson ‘Doh’ test.

On to ‘Solution’ #2, Solar Umbrella, wasn’t this the theme of an Outer Limits episode? ‘Nuff said.

‘Solution’ #3, Carbon Capture, sounds almost plausible until one realizes the colossal expense, and the idea of ocean storage is something any 1st year biology or chemistry student would not put forth. Carbon dioxide mixed with water forms carbonic acid; it is a very weak acid to be sure, but the net effect on the pH of the oceans of the world would make the current destruction of the Great Barrier Reef look like the experiment of a five year old boy by comparison. Oops!

‘Solution’ #4, Artificial Tree construction, with removal by sodium hydroxide, and then storage. Sodium hydroxide is, for the uninitiated, a very destructive compound, that when the pelletized solid absorbs moisture from the air forms lye, and does still more nasty things. Handling of this stuff would indeed be costly. And what about those trees? Can you say, ‘destroys the natural landscape’, boys and girls?

‘Solution’ #5, Geritol Effect, this has the same net effect as ’solution’ #4, only worse. There would be untold amounts of carbonic acid in the ocean, a multitude of iron compounds, not all yet known, because this type of experiment has never been done in a ‘live’ environment, and yes, other countries could get really upset when we ruin the waters for fishing, or conceivably, travel. Algal bloom in natural waters is why phosphates were removed from detergents in the 1970s, as it was seen how poorly the ocean’s ecosystem responded to this type of growth.

When is some serious thought going to be given to these problems? This ‘public isn’t smarter than a 3rd grader’ nod to problem solving is simply wasting time.

As the Rolling Stones put forth in song, ‘Time waits for no man, and it won’t wait for me.’ Time is, regardless of your political affiliation, running out.

Tags: msnbc, political affiliation, greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, science, solutions, algal bloom, rolling stones

Looking at several Web pages where discussion of operating systems, their relative merits, and histories were being discussed, I became aware that although IBM was criticized for failing to support it, OS/2 had nearly no detractors from a usability standpoint.

The Workplace Shell was an object oriented model, with many features still not incorporated into Windows XP or Vista. It made accomplishing many tasks simple for the user, and was instinctual, much like the interface of OS X.

Person after person recounts how much was done with so little in physical resources. It also was rock solid, with the blue screen of death rearing its ugly head only when hardware was faulty. Keep in mind that when this OS was starting to become popular, a megabyte of RAM cost around $100, and during its lifetime the price of memory was still nowhere near the commodity item it is today.

With so much bad press surrounding Microsoft for its attacks on the Open Software community, perhaps a sign of good faith by Microsoft would be the release of any liability for disclosure of source code by IBM, and the negation of any expected royalty payments for OS/2.

This would give both Microsoft and IBM some exposure in the press, and some bankable good will to be used at a later date.

It would also give the Open Source community a great basis for a solid operating system, with an interface easily understood by users of Windows.

MS could use this development of code as a basis for needed changes in current Windows, in a manner similar to the RedHat - Fedora business model. To see this, it is necessary to understand that much of the NT core has common code with OS/2.

Since this operating system is so frugal with memory, it could serve as the system on the One Laptop Per Child PC, and Microsoft would benefit 2 ways. It would not have to cripple a version of XP or Vista, with people complaining about those annoyances, and, it would still have a Windows - like user interface, which would get all those children ready to buy whatever version of Windows is available when they graduate to other hardware.

Tags: microsoft, ibm, os/2, workplace shell, olpc, xp, vista, os x, object oriented interface

While there are many opinions about what is wrong in this country, there are few that give solid evidence of any thought for remedy.

The problems are easily seen by most. The economy of the nation, sliding slowly towards inconceivable levels of debt, the global thermal crisis, leading to uncharacteristic changes in huge land masses, the fear of terrorism, rising to levels previously unknown, are but three of the puzzles that must be solved within the span of but one generation.

The current political climate is so exceedingly divisive that expecting cooperation in government is unrealistic and foolhardy.

This lack of civility in government is merely an indicator of the erosion of social graces in the general populace.

This lack of decorum has led to many ills, but more than ills, it has put this country in a state of collective inertia.

What had made this country a leader in a growing world is waning, like the candle at the end of the wick. What is needed is a movement, started by thoughtful, careful people, spread by courage and deliberate action. A national will must arise to master these difficulties, much as has happened several times in our history.

When this nation was conceived, it was almost folly to think that independence could be had by a band of ill-equipped farmers and ranchers, waging battle against the British war machine, still near the height of its power. A very few months later a new nation was born.

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected, the country was suffering from the effects of a depression that had forced rational men to commit suicide, by jumping from tall buildings. FDR called for the government to come to the aid of the people, and the many projects which brought us from that dark time were formed. The WPA alone resulted in a national road system of magnitude not seen since the height of the Roman Empire.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy called for something that some people thought could never be accomplished, the travel by man to the moon, and then return to the Earth without harm. At the time of the speech, mankind had barely set foot off the planet, yet the need was there to move the country forward, with this grand project.

If a tally is made, literally hundreds of things, we take for granted today, were brought about by the research which took those Apollo spacecrafts to the moon. The number of problems solved by these inventions are uncountable.

It has been forty-plus years since that last crusade, that did so much for this world. It is well past time for another.

Tags: will, apollo moon missions, wpa, franklin d roosevelt, john f kennedy, accomplishment

If one asks many people the question above, they simply can’t answer. Many I’ve spoken with (those under 25, anyway) go with the former, immediately getting sheepish and wondering why they did not study more in high school.

Actually, an article on Slate magazine clears all this up rather quickly. Helvetica seems to be the most important typeface ever invented. It came into existence in 1957, in the Swiss town of Munchenstein, at the Haas Type Foundry. The typeface was designed by Miedinger, in response to a request by his employer. The font Akzidenz Grotesk, had been around since before the turn of the century (1896), and apparently familiarity had bred contempt. Miedinger was given the task of taking the ‘grotesque’ out of Grotesk.

The resulting typeface has become the most widely used today. It is so popular it has inspired a film by that name. Most who have a comment about it use words like clean, legible, neutral, to describe what is is and why it is so popular.

Helvetica has been used so many places that it is almost not thought of as anything other than ‘normal’. Corporate logos use it extensively. American Airlines, BMW, Crate and Barrel, ConEd, the Gap, Panasonic, Sears, Staples, and Verizon are just some of Helvetica’s adoring users.

If you miss the article on Slate, or are not inclined to see a movie dedicated to a type font, you could still catch the full effect it has had on the world by attending the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As Windows users look through their list of fonts and wonder why they (usually) don’t have Helvetica, they should look to Microsoft, who did not want to pay licensing fees involved, and had the Arial typeface engineered. Helvetica fans, and Apple owners, which have always had Helvetica as a resident font, look down on Arial as an unwanted, ugly stepchild. The oddest thing about this is that MS chose Helvetica when emblazoning its logo on all that it produces.

After a short period of rebellion, where ‘grunged’ fonts were in vogue, Helvetica is back again, as the superhero of everything from the Selectric to the linotype.

Tags: helvetica, arial, museum of modern art, swiss typeface, munchenstein

News today, on the MSN portal, describes how the three members of the Police are readying themselves for their upcoming tour.

Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland have put aside the petty bickering leading up to the breakup of the band so long ago, for the full-on bickering that Copeland says makes them play that much better. He insists the fighting is all in the name of better music; three individuals who all have firm ideas of how the music should be.

The story continues with the tour schedule and the fact that tickets are going for as much as $225. Pretty amazing, since one could purchase their entire catalog, at retail price no less, for just a little over $100.  If one is willing to go to the top ticket price, the entire catalog of Sting, as a solo artist, could be included.

This either speaks well of the live Police experience, or the amount of disposable income the average Police fan has.

I just wonder…is it too late to find a guitarist and drummer, and become famous as the only bass player who became famous after years of marriage?

Tags: police, sting, andy summers, stewart copeland, tour, rock music