The Raitt Stuff

Back up to speed

2005-07-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

I've got a mailto link in place (bot-proof, at least today). I've got a site meter (current reading: 1). I've got comments and track-backs (although I need to figure those out). The only thing I seem to be missing is a blogroll.

But, if you are reading this, you probably already visit everyone who would be on my blogroll. So until I find a new and unique voice of the people, it's a slightly lower priority than, say, thinking up some actual content.

But welcome back, whoever you are.

2005-07-18T22:41:00.000-04:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2005-07-18T22:36:00.000-04:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2005-07-18T22:26:00.000-04:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Further admin notes

2005-07-18T22:22:00.000-04:00

OK, I've got a pleasantly obfuscated mailto link working again.

Blogger seemed to imply that it now supported comments, but so far I don't see any evidence of them. So for now, I guess I'll go ahead and ignore comments via e-mail.

Administrative notes

2005-07-18T21:57:00.000-04:00

I wasn't happy with something that was taking too long to load. So I blew out my old format, and fired up a new one.

The good news is that it loads quickly. The not so good news is that I lost a bunch of tweaks that I had put into the old format. That isn't such a bad thing, most of them were out of date anyway. Still, I am without comments at the moment, and without an obvious contact address. So...

I can be reached via email at lastname firstinitial at gmail.com There is no space between the last name & the first initial. But blogger has a seriously brain-dead editor, so I can't offhand figure out how to make it prettier.

There should be more than enough information within plain sight for anyone, but not anybot, to interpret that.

Comments will eventually be enabled, but they were never very active anyway.

Call me busy, call me lazy

2005-07-18T21:39:00.000-04:00

Just don't call me late to dinner.

OK, so I have been recalcitrant in typing anything here. Put it down to a supreme funk on the political scene, combined with an upswing in family life.

So, I'll ignore the political stuff for now. Suffice to say I am still not overly impressed with the current administration. Or my junior senator. Or my local representative, or my local state senator. Perhaps I'm not cut out of the right(!pun) mold for life in the North Hills of Pittsburgh.

On a family front, for those who know or care, things are going well. Almost a year into my job I am continuing to both enjoy and be challenged by it. When I consider the morale situation at my last job (before I got laid off) I still find it somewhat astonishing that there can be jobs where people show up regularly and are productive while they are there. It's actually pretty cool.

The rest of the family is thriving. More details are certainly available, but probably not for publication. If you want to be on our Christmas letter list, drop me a line at the above address.

On other fronts, Go Lance!

Oh, and don't get me started about the US Grand Prix. Astonishingly, the only party coming out looking good at the moment seems to be Michelin, and they were the ones who screwed up in the first place. Ugh. Still, I always thought that RoadAmerica or RoadAtlanta would have been better venues than the bastardized track at Indy, whose main purpose seemed to be to preserve the golf course.

George Bush, Undercover Liberal

2004-11-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

Wow, how long did that take me? Four days from swearing off politics to putting W in a post title. C'est la guerre, I suppose.

Anyway, the left blogosphere is twittering and muttering about the trial balloon tax proposal that proposes taking away health insurance deductability for employers. The theory seems to be that employers will drop health insurance for their employees like a hot potato as soon as the feds aren't underwriting it.

I say, why is this a bad thing?

It will cause short-term pain for a lot of people for whom I sympathise, and for whom I would hope that a short-term solution could be found. It will also massively increase support and momentum for the single-payer solution that many progressives (including me) consider to be the only rational way to provide health care. In the end, the effectiveness of an insurance scheme is directly proportional to the size of the pool. The only way to seriously provide insurance is to make the pool as big as possible. Realistically, the limit of that pool is pretty much the US population, but I'm sure that the odds work out better that way on payment than they do on the 80 (+ family) pool that I'm in right now.

However, my recent hospitalization (under an HMO) for five days, with visits from three specialists, a number of procedures, and the daily attention of my PCP (whom I had never met before) seems to have cost me $10. For that, I have no complaints about the current system, since I am insured. I am equally certain that most employed, insured people feel that way.

It seems that nothing except the massive abandonment of health insurance as a perk of business will encourage the single-payer plan. For his efforts in that direction, I have to salute W.

Weekend Outings

2004-11-15T21:06:00.000-05:00

After spending a long day on Saturday cleaning the garage and waiting for the Sears guy to come and repair our microwave (he came, but didn't repair it) we took a day out on Sunday.

In the morning we went to start the Christmas season by seeing "The Polar Express", which is playing (among other places) at the IMAX at the Carnegie Science Center. The boys loved it, and Valerie and I enjoyed it too, much more than the New York Times reviewer seemed to. The IMAXing worked well too, given a number of swooping chasing scenes that occurred in the film. Definitely a thumbs up from our small band of reviewers.

After that, we had a picnic lunch down in the cafeteria and let the boys play for an hour in the exhibits. Some of the best entertainment money we spend in Pittsburgh is our Carnegie Museum membership. It gives us access to four museums, and we don't feel guilty about leaving when the boys' attention span collapses since the marginal cost of any visit is nothing. And they are good museams, for us and even for Vincent, who is 2 1/2.

After the museum we headed out to Greensburg to look at a couch. We had hoped that the boys would fall asleep in the car during the hourlong drive out there, but they didn't. Luckily, anticipating a furniture shopping trip, we had brought enough electronic entertainment during the hour or so that it took us to decide to buy it. Then they both fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Nothing frantically exciting, but a good day out at a glorious time of year.

F1 Wrapup

2004-11-13T23:27:00.000-05:00

Not much to say, really. It was clear from the beginning of the season that Michael Schumacher was going to win the drivers' championship, and he did. Ferrar was going to win the Constructors' championship, and they did.

The season was astonishingly dominated by Ferrari and its drivers. They, and Bridgestone, have clearly figured out how to win under the current regulations, and no one else could stop them. Since it isn't really clear what will change for next year, I am expecting (although not looking forward to) another season of Ferrari domination next year.

In other news, Villeneuve will drive for Sauber (Ferrari Jr., so to speak) next year. Many see this as a foot in the door to get him into his father's old seat at Ferrari. While this might be an interesting combination, the record of Sauber drivers moving up to Ferrari is pretty much nonexistant. So I'd encourage a massive exhalation in Quebec.

As for CART . Hmmm... Is CART still racing? Somehow they lost my interest this year. This was probably a result of sticking their telecasts on SpikeTV (TV for guys?) and not carrying races live. The result was too ghastly to watch, so I stopped. I understand that Bourdais was the champion. As I have seen observed elsewhere, however, it really isn't clear that having a French champion is going to do a lot for their popularity in the US.

And NASCAR? Well, the new bizarre points system has produced a close race for the championship at the end of the season. Still, you have to strongly believe that a full-course yellow is a necessary part of racing before you can buy into it being a key part of the championship. As long as NASCAR continues to add vanilla 1.5 mile ovals to its season, I will continue to only watch those races that are interesting -- long tracks (Daytona, Talladega), Short tracks (Bristol, Martinsville), Road courses (Sears Point, Watkins Glen), oddball courses (Darlington, Dover) and the original 1.5 mile tri-oval, Charlotte. For the rest, I'll just check the results online and let the race fade off TiVo.

I'm Alive

2004-11-13T23:10:00.000-05:00

OK, so since I'm not ancient, perhpas I'm alive isn't too surprising. But a little over two months between postings is a little excessive.

Put it down to employment, health issues, and a general malaise.

So, employment is good, but time-consuming. Given that I feel awkward about blogging from the office, I would have to blog from home. But two young children, two middle-aged dogs, and a house to take care of, somehow the hometime doesn't seem to allow much activity. (Right now, it's 11:15 on a Saturday night, and everyone else (incudling the doge) has gone to bed. Can' do that during the week).

Health. Hmm, after five days of hospitalization, the conclusion is that I have issues that can be pretty much entirely treated by drugs. That's a good thing... But still, I've burned something like a year's worth of sick leave and vacation dealing with these issues, with more to come. That's not such a good thing, but a necessary side effect (I suppose) of employment (which is still definitely a good thing).

General malaise? Well, the November election caused that. Let me be clar about this. George W. Bush inspired me to get off my arse and get naturalized. After living under him as four years as Governor (I moved to Austin in 1996) I couldn't understand how anyone could vote for him for president. So I became an American (entirely legally, I had had a Green card since 1977) explicitly to vote for his opponent in this election. It worked -- PA went for Kerry.

I still don't understand, however, what the possible appeal of this man can be. I lived in Texas, and I knew a number of people like him. Most of them were ruuning marginal businesses, verging on the edge of bankruptcy, and not entirely understanding why. How did this man manage to convince people to let him dirve a major country to the edge of bankruptcy and not understand why?

Too many understands in the last paragraph, but I'll let it go. Otherwise, Pittsburgh is still a financial mess, but a great city to live near.

Blogging-wise, I think I'll step away from politics from now on and stick to racing and family issues. I can't say way, but somehow the blogs I read in my new time-constrained state have a lot more personal content, even if I don't know the authors, and a lot less political content.

Oh, and on a final note, I really hope that the "Seed of Chucky" isn't called Olivia, because that would scare me. Really scare me. Perhaps a couple of people who read this (and I assume that such people would have an RSS aggregator) would understand why. I remember the postcards at the wedding...

Mad Irish Priests

2004-09-04T21:45:00.000-04:00

Are there any other kind? Well, in this case, I was interested to see that the idiot who decided to run onto the Hangar Straight at Silverstone last year during the British Grand Prix chose to mug a marathoner at the Olympics this year.

At least he seems to have figured out the basic physics of insane protester vs. X and decided that 10 mph human is a safer value of X than 200 MPH car.

That said, his presence at the Olympics, reprising his performance of last year certainly suggests that key elements of the welfare state in Britain (hospitalization for the insane, anyone...???) are as fouled up as similar institutions in the US. Perhaps this explains Blair's adulation of Bush the Younger.

Resurfacing

2004-09-02T22:48:00.000-04:00

Between starting a new job, 2 weeks of televised sports (yeah TiVo & digital cable), and a very short vacation, I have apparently abandoned this forum for over a month.

Now our family schedule has settled out, and I thought I'd dip my toes back into the blog with a few random observations. Since I am listening to Bush's convention speech right now, they may be angry observations, but he seems mostly laughable and confused. I mean, really, should you diss somebody for touting Hollywood when one of your leadoff speakers was Arnold Whatsisname?

Hmmm. It looks like security just dragged one of the Bush twins out, but it might have been someone else. The dark haired one -- NotJenna -- but I digress.

They said on the radio the other day that the last time Pittsburgh saw 90 degrees was before in September 2002, before I moved here. This has a lot to do with why we left Texas.

I was driving home this evening, on a reasonably fast road, and was behind a car with a distinct "W" sticker on it. It was only just before I turned off that I got close enough to see that the W had a red circle and slash. You gotta be careful about the messages you can send.

Call it the yard sign poll. So far, in my verrry Republican part of the North Hills, I have seen two houses with Kerry/Edwards signs and no houses with Bush/Cheney signs. I don't know what this means, but I'll try to keep my count current. I did see a few Mike Turzai signs -- our state house rep who is running unopposed on the GOP ticket.

There is apparently one HOV lane in Pennsylvania. It runs from my house (well, near enough) to downtown Pittsburgh. But it's usage has dropped 20% since it was opened a decade ago, while traffic on that road has increased 20%. That can't be good.

I watched the Daily Show Bush Video last night and the RNC one tonight. I think the RNC may have been funnier, albeit unintentionally.

More to come...

Life Update

2004-07-30T10:18:00.000-04:00

It took a while -- almost eleven months to the day -- but I will once again be gainfully employed as of Monday. Woohooo!, as my children are wont to say. I got the job offer last Monday, and after accepting it immediately found that my to-do list of little jobs around the house had become extremely long. Replacing taps (and, it turned out, drainpipes), hanging towel rails, putting up closet doors, mowing the lawn, all sorts of things. OK, I haven't mowed the lawn yet...

I think the hardest hit family members will be the dogs. I've been staying home all day since October 2002, and they are kind of used to it. They'll work it out somehow, though. Anyway, my extremely intermittent blogging will probably become even more so over the next few weeks as I adjust to spending most of my waking hours outside the house.

All-Star Dreaming

2004-07-20T10:46:00.000-04:00

According to the Post-Gazette, major league baseball will be announcing today that the 2006 All-Star game will be held here in the 'Burgh. Pittsblog points out some of the oddities in the announcement. I was more interested in seeing, however, that Houston is thought to have made some $85.6 million from it's game. I know that Chuck will be glad for the update on the last estimate, since he dcubted he'd ever see one.

On a personal note, we will probably be on vacation July 11, 2006 since Valerie works across the street from the ball park and doesn't want to deal with the hassle.

Vulgaria

2004-07-19T10:09:00.000-04:00

One of the curious pleasures of parenting is the opportunity to revisit childhood classics and discover that they bear almost no resemblance to one's memory of them. Last week we rented Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the boys, and watched it over the course of four nights.

Now I may be wrong about this, but I suspect that the Neocon boys over at the Pentagon may have been watching it as well. Towards the end small force (Caractacus Potts, Truly Scrumptious[1], two generic children) with superior technology (CCBB) invade a country ruled by a despotic leader who has enslaved or driven underground a significant portion of the population (the children). With the help of a knowledgable insider (the toymaker) they succeed in overthrowing the baron and releasing the prisoners. Despite the ensuing chaos, they are able to immediately leave, while an announcer calmly reveals that with the overthrow of the ruler democracy is able to take root and flourish.

Eery, isn't it? Unfortunately, it turns out (and this is one of the things I had forgotten) that all of the bits involving cars that float and fly are merely a story told to the children and have no basis in reality even in the world of the film. This is a key detail that I suspsect the Perle-ites missed.

[1] Apparently Ian Flemings ridiculous female character names weren't limited to Bond movies!

Purple People

2004-07-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

Slate's Red/Blue quiz is working today. After my initial try on it, I ended up well into the pinks, which I like to think is just an indication that trivia is a questionable way of determining political associations. Kevin Drum seems to think the same.

It seems that a great deal of my redness came from living in Chicago for 5 years (Door County, WS; Quad-cities; etc.) and a bit more from living in Texas for 7 years (or 11 depending how you count). It's probably a reflection of Slate's audience, but the choice of questions seems to me to be more aimed at convincing blue people of their redness than vice-versa.

On a purely technical note, however, the format of the quiz is one of the better ones I've seen online. I give them kudoes for that, and hope that the format is sufficiently public that the continuous stream of "personality" quizzes (which Asimovian Robot Are you? -- Tyrone Power[1]) will be able to adopt it.

[1] If you have to ask, don't bother.

Layers Upon Layers

2004-07-08T15:39:00.000-04:00

The fiscal excitement here in Pittsburgh just continues to grow. As I noted a few days ago, the Mayor and the Act 47 board managed to come to an agreement on a five-year plan (how soviet!) to balance the city budget. In the process they proposed some $33E6 next year in spending reductions. Unfortunately, for reasons I still don't understand, they are apparently not the final word on the matter. Instead, the Fiscal Oversight Board has said that they won't forward the proposed changes in tax structure to the legislature for approval unless a way is found to save $50E6 next year.

This is getting truly silly. It seems that, thanks to the distressed city status, there are at least five layers of approval needed to get a budget passed (Mayor, Council, Act 47, FOB, Legislature), and at least two of them aren't accountable to anyone in particular. I am starting to eagerly await the next roadblock once this obstacle has been negotiated.

On a related note, I heartily second Michael Madison comments on Pittsburgh and its self-image issues. The city's history as an industrial center is a very good thing. It has left the city well-endowed with charitable trusts and the associated cultural opportunities. It really is time, however, to accept that Big Iron has gone away and isn't likely to return. The regional economy has changed, and the political structure of the region (that is suburbs as well as the city) needs to change to reflect that. Until it does so, any fixes that are made are likely to be nothing more than bandaids.

The Way We Were

2004-07-07T10:53:00.000-04:00

I've got a technical phone screening this afternoon for a job here in town. I've gone through a few of these before, and I'm starting to realize that I really don't like them. In this case, the only information I have about the job is what the company does, and a four line job description on their website. Given that, the interviewer could pretty much ask me anything from Computational Fluid Dynamics to Fortran programming practices.

Now my Fortran is a little rusty, but it is my computational mother tongue, so to speak. My CFD experience goes back to graduate school and is more limited, so I've been reviewing (among other things) my dissertation.

I've come to the conclusion that I was pretty damn clever ten years ago and, by extension, I am now apparently a blithering idiot.

Civic Management

2004-07-06T15:52:00.000-04:00

Pittsburgh could probably take some lessons from other cities (most notably New York) on improving its image among its residents. Certainly one gets the impression that Giuliani's efforts in New York to make the place seem friendlier and safer worked amaingly well, although that may have just been PR.

I was thinking about this after the downtown fireworks display on Sunday night. Pittsburgh fires off the display from the Confluence, so there are basically three main areas to watch the show -- north of, south of, and between the rivers. Since there is abundant parking and large grassy spaces on the north side (not to mention it being closest to our house) we were settled there with our picnic. After the show we made our way back to the car, strapped the boys in, and prepared to leave the parking lot. Forty-five minutes later we had moved about 4 feet. After another half hour or so, we managed to get onto roads were traffic was moving, and after that getting home was a doddle.

While I expect a certain amount of congestion leaving a major civic event, what really amazed me was the complete lack of police officers in all this. The congestionw was being strongly driven by complete gridlock in a few key intersections, and it seemed that the correct placement of even a dozen uniforms directing traffic would have done wonders for keeping things moving.

For all that, at least the boys were asleep in their car seats. Two years ago we went to Austin's fireworks with our then-two year old, and Karin's post on this year's event sounds all too similar.

Intermittent NASCAR Qualifying Blogging

2004-06-25T23:41:00.000-04:00

So, I'm slightly intoxicated, and watching road course NASCAR qualifying from Sonoma, CA(via Tivo, so it ain't live). I enjoy this for the pure spectacle of seeing established (and skilled) oval racers trying to turn right as well as left...

So far, they have claimed that Jeff Gordon was in fifth place the entire way round the track. But at the finish line, he was in first...

Oops. Brian Vickers spun right after he took the green flag..

Hmm. Kevin Harvick boasts about his charity work and slams another driver for being insufficiently charitable.

Rusty Wallace takes provisional 2nd -- at NASCAR road courses, age definitely beats youth. Why isn't the same true in F1? (OK, I have an opinion on that, but Wallace is in his late 40s, and Panis, the oldest current F1 driver is in his mid-30's...)

Mark Martin -- late 40's again -- just took provisional third. I like road courses in NASCAR, because it really seems to require more than the sheer courage requried in putting the accelerator to the firewall. Right now, the leaderboard is Gordon (middish), Wallace (oldish), and Martin (oldish). Meanwhile the young guys are kicking up dirt and going rather slowly...

Robby Gordon just overbraked, or something, and buggered up his lap royally. Currently 13/18 or so...

Kurt Busch takes 3rd. Puts Rousch 3,4,5 on provisonal grid, which is pretty impressive, really...

In a sad sign of my increasing age, I am looking at cars and coming up with the wrong driver. I feel like my parents, pointing at movies and saying "Isn't that whatisname? Doesn't he look young?"

Darrell Waltip (announcer) thinks Michael Waltrip (driver) should do well, based on his experience driving moonshine in Kentucky, or something. Oops, Michael just started spewing smoke, and won't finish the lap. Oh well...

Jimmy Johnson has just done a beautiful job of demonstrating why if mess up the first of the "esses" you ain't going to be on pole, or even in the first 15 rows...

Kenseth just put another Roush car in the top 10

Ryan Newman just demonstrated quite impressively that if you foul up turn 10, you just can't fix the damage in turn 11...

When the Fox tracker is working it is a really cool little toy. It shows you not only where the current car is losing or gaining time, but where the leader lost time as well. I bet that the race bosses love that...

And just in time, everyone is finshed. Results linked in the next paragraph. But Roush looks good, sort of a surprising result since Roush is known for power, and this is defintely a handling track -- that whole turning right thing just messes up the cars...

final results are at
here

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh

2004-06-24T09:30:00.000-04:00

I've not blogged much about Pittsburgh's ongoing financial woes for a while because, well, I just don't understand them at all. A few months ago I thought I was getting a handle on them, but then everything seemed to go pear-shaped. At some point there seemed to be at least four, and possibly as many as sixty-one different groups proposing city budgets. At a minimum, the mayor had one, the city council either had one or just didn't like the mayor's, the Act 47 team had one, and there seemed to be one other group that had standing to create a plan. At least they were referred to by a different name.

Now it looks like the Act 47 plan is close to being adopted, although after adoption by the city it still has to be approved by the legislature. One of the key features of the plan is that the Occupational Privilege Tax will be raised from $10 to $145 a year. This is a good thing for the city, and kind of ironic. A great deal of this crisis arose because the suburban county leaders didn't want to let the city raise the OPT to $52/year.

I Am Shocked, Shocked

2004-06-24T09:19:00.000-04:00

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, in a head-to-head matchup Kerry is leading Bush 49% to 43% -- well above the 3.5% margin of error in the sample.

But if you add Nader into the mix, the results become Kerry 44%, Bush 43%, Nader 7%. Despite this, I'm sure I heard on NPR last night that Nader claims he draws equally from both parties. These and similar results seem to suggest he is completely delusional.

Beta mail

2004-06-17T17:04:00.000-04:00

Mike over at Coffee Corner is trying out a Gmail account. So am I (the e-mail link in the sidebar actually points there now, just for the hell of it). He seems to think that it is going up and down like a yo-yo. I find that I am more concerned about how long e-mail is taking to get through. So far of three messages I have sent to myself (two short test messages, and one copy to myself of an e-mail I want to keep) two have taken well over half an hour to get delivered and show up in my inbox. I guess that they will have to resolve some throughput issues before they open it up to all and sundry.

New York Times on F1

2004-06-17T15:49:00.000-04:00

The US Grand Prix in Indianapolis is this weekend (lots of coverage on Speed, starting tomorrow, Yeah!) In advance of this, the US press is starting to take note, including this rather interesting look at technology in F1 from the New York Times (free registration required, of course).

Mid-Season Update

2004-06-14T14:43:00.000-04:00

I've not felt much urge to blog about Formula One over the first half of the season. Perhaps it is a reasult of Michael Schumacher's winning seven of eight races so far, and almost having locked up the championship for himself and Ferrari already. The new rules were meant to try and reduce the chances of such a runaway result, but the astonishing way in which Ferrari have gelled as a team is making a mockery of all of the attempts by the FIA to put the brakes on.

It also seems depressing that both the four-(and-a-half!)-year-old and the two-year-old have turned into Schumacher fans. It is at moments like this that I wonder how I have failed as a parent. The challenge of pretending to be happy at another Ferrari victory is stretching my acting ability to the limit!

NASCAR are still racing a lot. The effects of their rule change to tighten up the championship won't be felt for a couple of months yet, but it already looks like Earnhardt Jr and Johnson won't be happy with the result. In the meantime, the confusion that NASCAR are generating with their latest poorly-thought-out rules change doesn't bode well for the end of the season.

CART. I dunno what's going on. I've tried to watch a couple of races, but the SpikeTV coverage is so awful I've pretty much given up. I was going to try and make the race at Mid-Ohio this year in person, but they apparently decided not to have a race there this year. The other close race is Cleveland, but airport races are rather flat and interesting. Also, a night-time race is really not very child-friendly, and I got the strong impression that Mid-Ohio would have been an extremely good venue for entertaining children. Oh, and I guess the IRL has a race season too, this year. Open wheel racing in the US really needs to sort itself out soon, or it is just going to follow the NHL into oblivion.

The Undiscovered Country

2004-06-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Belated congratulations to Chuck and Tiffany, on the arrival of Olivia Rose. Best wishes to all three of them as they get to know each other.

Not Quite Getting It

2004-06-14T12:48:00.000-04:00

My bank, like many nowadays, offers its customers the opportunity to perform certain basic functions online -- checking balances and recent activity, transferring money between accounts, etc.

Ever since we opened the account, they have committed a basic security flaw by using our social security number as the authenticator for these services (combined with our ATM card PIN). Now this isn't really a good thing, but I've got used to it.

Today I logged on and was invited to select a new User ID & password combination. Ah-ha, thought I to myself, this seems to be a step forward in security. Unfortunately, despite exhortations to Enter a user ID that is easy to remember the first requirement is that the ID be numeric, 8 to 20 digits. Despite a mathematical background, there is a limited selection of 8-20 digit numbers that I have committed to memory. I only keep pi & e to about 6 places in memory. Assuming that other basic ids like 01234567 have been taken, that pretty much leaves me needing to use either my SSN or my telephone number as an ID. Unfortunately, if I use the telephone number then it is easy to figure out (being published and all) and I have blocked other users of this number (like Valerie, or in time our sons) from using it for their own access. Thus they will be more likely to use their SSNs and we are back in the same boat.

I had an alphanumeric account name on the PDP-11 that I learned FORTRAN on back in 1979. Why in the 21st century is a commercial organization inisting on a numeric access code? (I haven't got far enough yet to find out if the password is also numeric, but I'm betting that it is...)

Texas and the Suburbs

2004-05-20T12:59:00.000-04:00

There seem to be a couple of fantastically trivial arguments flaring up around the part of the blogosphere I inhabit at the moment, and I almost feel like I have a dog in each of the hunts.

First, the ever popular question of whether Texas should be allowed to remain in the US or not. Chuck and Ginger certainly think so, even though Ginger left the state. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is less sure. As a relatively recent transplant from Texas to the Rust Belt, I've got to say that Texas just ain't all it's cracked down to be. Now, granted, I lived in Austin (all suburb, but that's the next paragraph or so) which is the "liberal" part of Texas, but in my travels around the state I really never noticed any serious problems with getting along with nearly everyone. By contrast, I said "Hi" to my new neighbour here in Pittsburgh yesterday and he looked at me like I'd crawled out from under a rock &mdash which was hardly likely since I was twenty feet up in the air at the time. Texans may have some odd views but I found them to be almost universally pleasant, something which I really can't say for the NorthEast.

In the end we left Austin for a number of reasons. We didn't have stable jobs there, it was too damn hot in the summer, and really in the winter as well, and Austin, while a great town in which to be footloose and fancy-free, really lacks a number of amenities that help in raising young children.

Speaking of young children, when we moved from Austin, which is pretty much all suburb (at least the parts where people live) we only looked at places in the Pittsburgh suburbs to settle down. We live in a somewhat older suburb of the city that puts us about a 20 minute drive from downtown and its attractions and about the same from the Universities and associated museums. In the meantime we have a large flat yard where our children can run around, and a quiet street that I feel comfortable letting them play near. Laura at Apt 11D has apparently set off a debate about the best place to raise children. While theoretical discussions about the joys of city living for children are wonderful, I find that if young boys (at least) don't have enough space to run around and burn off their excess energy life rapidly becomes too fraught for enjoyment. So when we started looking for a house here, I was glad to find one with a lawn that takes me 45 minutes to cut, and on which my children and my dogs can comport themselves with gay abandon.

Short Update

2004-05-19T09:24:00.000-04:00

We have moved into the new house, actually we moved nearly two weeks ago. Despite my best efforts, I find that I am still busy painting rooms &mdash in this case at least it is a very small room. We also have had all of the floors finished, so we can walk everywhere in the house, the huge pine trees too close to the house have been removed, 80% of the boxes are unpacked, the new kitchen island has been installed (although the counter top hasn't) and things seem to be moving toward completion.

This whole process has been remarkably different from the last time we bought a house. Then we bought direct from the builder and moved in. This time I found myself astonished at how much time and expense are involved in addressing minor issues of deferred maintenance. But I think we are on track for our planned housewarming party on May 29. Now if the rain would just stop long enough for me to get up a ladder and clean out the gutters...

Update: The rain held off, and I took 1 1/2 black garbage bags full of pseudo-compost out of the gutters. Perhaps now water will actually reach the downspouts!

Air Force of Terror

2004-05-04T10:05:00.000-04:00

South Knox Bubba asks

But what exactly is the "War on Terror"? Who exactly is the enemy? What uniform do they wear? What flag do they fly? Where are they? What is our plan of attack? What is our strategy to defeat them? How will we know when we've won?

Based on this recent Bush/Cheney ad "Weapons" (which I heard on NPR this morning &mdash we don't do commercials any more) F18 Fighter Jets are a key weapon system in the War on Terror. Now, I kind of thought that the main use of fighter jets was to defend oneself against other fighter jets. So I ask

Where is the Air Force of Terror?

Second Test

2004-04-28T09:34:00.000-04:00

Now I just need to see if this works on multi-post days, although those seem to be few and far between for me these days.

Short Test

2004-04-28T09:17:00.000-04:00

I'm doing a quick test of some changes in my Atom feed & blog item format. As I have switched to monitoring the blogs I read using a news aggregator rather than direct access, I have found that I really prefer feeds that include the full text of the article. It saves program switching and reloading of the same information. I understand that advertising-supported blogs need to get eyeballs and I don't begrudge them that need. But if you don't make money from ads, why would you insist on people getting the full story only from your site? Are you that fond of your formatting? (OK, that's a petty point, but I want to make this post long enough to smash through the blogger atom short feed length)

I also want another paragraph to see how that comes out, and I have added a formal title field in the hope that that will also help make my feed articles more legible.

Update

2004-04-27T14:30:00.000-04:00

I've mostly got a day off from moving preparations today. The floor refinishers are in the house sanding away, and I don't really want to be there at the same time.

In the last three weeks, I've painted 8 rooms (primer & two coats of color), disassembled a bathroom, ripped up carpet, tracked down (but not fixed) a leaky shower, taken a bunch of stuff off the walls, and hosted many contractors & vendors. And this is on a house that would be considered in "move-in" condition! Perhaps we shouldn't have allowed a couple of months between closing and moving &emdash we could have done less. But there was no way I could sleep in a fuchsia bedroom.

Today I am meant to be moving boxes and small pieces of furniture over, but it is ~~raining~~snowing(!) (well, maybe sleeting) and I don't want to go out in it.

I did get out and vote in today's primary, however. By lunchtme I was the 34th Democrat to vote, and 105 Republicans had voted by then. This is partly because I live in the Republican heart of Allegheny county, but I suspect it is also because the only interesting race on the ballot this year is the Toomey/Specter contest over on the GOP side. Now, I might be like Atrios and support Toomey as more beatable, except that that theory didn't work with Bush or, more locally, with Santorum. And it looks like Toomey would be a disaster if he actually got to the Senate.

Perhaps I'll bundle a few weeks of racing news in a different post...

2004-03-24T10:01:00.000-05:00

Pittsburgh Finances

Others have been all over recent developments regarding the city's fiscal oversight board &mdash including the Post-Gazette's court victory forcing them to open the meetings in accordance with state law. So I won't recap that.[1]

Today, however, the P-G reports that the board is close to making its first recommendation. Sticking close to what he knows,

James Smith III, chairman of the five-member Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority and a bond underwriter, said yesterday that he has been studying the city's staggering debt load and has determined that some of it could be refinanced, saving some money in the short term.
Smith said the savings would be rather small compared to the city's estimated $40 million cash problem looming this fall, but should be considered anyway.
"It is small relief, but a viable opportunity exists," said Smith, who works for Merrill Lynch. "It doesn't solve the problem, it doesn't even make a dent, but it needs to be looked at."

The arcticle does go on to note that Merrill Lynch won't get the business due to conflict-of-interest laws. This is, however, the basic problem with creating a board that is so invested in the status quo. Faced with a $40M annual hole in the budget, they are finding ways to save a few hundred thousand dollars a year. In the meantime, they suggest that this year the problems might be resolved by sellng off assets to raise cash. There doesn't seem to be any mention of how next years problems might be resolved.

[1] OK, there should be links in there, but I've mostly switched to blog reading via RSS feed and I am no longer positive where I read these things. That said, I am quite sure that Fester and Praktike have both been all over this.

2004-03-22T14:29:00.000-05:00

Huh, What?

I haven't disappeared. I'm not ignoring the turmoil in CART or the status quo in F1. I'm not even missing much NASCAR. I've noticed Pitt is doing well in the NCAA tournament. I have, however, attempted to avoid nearly all other news since life seems to have intervened lately, and time is evaporating. In short order:

We bought a house, and are therefore in the midst of preparing to move
We had houseguests, and a busy schedule entertaining children
I have been preparing for and going to a very promising job interview in a situation that seems fantastic

Now I have to go and talk to a bunch of utilities to make sure that we have power and heat and stuff by next week.

2004-03-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

Election Coverage

Yesterday I was too busy to even take the newspaper out of its bag, and look what I missed (via Salon's War Room). Major right wing groups are gearing up to Hillarize Teresa Heinz Kerry, following the lead of Pittsburgh's own Ruth Ann Dailey.

Incidentally, Dailey today acknowledged that writing a substantive weekly column is harder than writing a weekly suburban column about life, so after only a few tries, she is resorting to writing about her correspondents. Apparently a number of them found her attack on Heinz Kerry as biased and foolish as I did.

2004-03-08T10:26:00.000-05:00

Locally

The Financial Recovery board is getting into full swing. After a grueling first meeting, in which they managed to appoint legal counsel and then adjourn for a well-deserved rest, they are now conducting secret meetings, and getting sued for violating the state's open meetings law.

2004-03-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

NASCAR raced, too

Last season's champion, Matt Kenseth, won. Since he was noted more for reliability than for stellar finishes last season, this was a nice change! Now the question is whether or not he can keep it up.

As I watched both this race and the F1 race this weekend, I thought some more about why I am willing tolerate moving chicanes like Minardi in F1, but find them a foolish annoyance in Nextel cup racing. As I watched Dale Earnhardt Jr struggle around the track while having an uncharacteristically bad day, and then retire early, my thoughts on the subject began to gel somewhat. Minardi may struggle to keep their cars running on the track, but they rarely affect the race for the title. Since F1 doesn't score championship points for all the cars, the order of the backmarkers is largely irrelevant, they are only there to provide launching platforms for some drivers careers, and to provide signage for their advertisers. However, the non-competitive cars actually gave DE Jr a points advantage by racing and dropping out as soon as they had earned their appearance money. The extra 24 championship points that he got could easily affect the end of the season standings, particularly since the top ten teams after 26 races get put an equal footing to duke it out.

I applaud the no-hopers with a dream, I just don't think they should be allowed to affect the standings as much as they can in NASCAR.

2004-03-08T10:12:00.000-05:00

Ah, Rats!

We woke up this morning to snow. Not a lot &mdash it didn't even settle on the driveway &mdash but enough to remind us that Spring doesn't start until March 20. That seems early, but perhaps the leap year shifted the date up. In the meantime after a week in the 60s and 70s, we are back to the cold for a few weeks.

Still, I'd rather have this than the oppressive heat of late Summer in Austin!

2004-03-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

A Good Day for Tifosi

The promise of the early sessions of the Australian Grand Prix was fulfilled for Ferrari. Not only did Michael Schumacher win the pole and the race, he also set the fastest lap and led every lap. Achieving all four of those things is something he has only done four times in his career, and it is a notable accomplishment.

Renault also had a good day, getting Fernando Alonso onto the podium, and putting Jarno Trulli in the points. As for the other teams...

McLaren:Ghastly day. They have the honor of being the first team to lose an engine to the new one engine/race meeting rule. Since Mercedes supply their engines, this is not a good thing!
Williams: It wasn't an awful day for Williams with both of their drivers in the points, but they definitely didn't rise to their level of expectations. Montoya had a ghastly start, but he has very little experience with unassisted standing starts[1].
Jaguar: Showed some promise. Their lead driver retired with gearbox problems, but the rookie in the second car finished the race only a couple of laps down.
BAR: Actually looked promising. Perhaps this will be the year when they live up to the massive amounts of tobacco funding they have squandered since 1999. Au revoir, Jacques...
The rest: Jordan, Minardi, and Toyota just didn't shine. While that is expected for the first two, Toyota need to step up their game a little bit, since Honda is looking to have a good year with BAR.

Now on to Malaysia in two weeks. The anticipated hot weather should help the Michelin tires, and perhaps someone will threaten the Ferraris. With a series of flyaway races in a row, however, there won't be any significant changes in the equipment for a couple of months, however.

[1] CART (his previous series) does rolling starts, and F1 had allowed computer-assisted launch control for the last few years. Taking it away this year is going to hurt someone with Montoya's history more than the other drivers.

2004-03-05T10:04:00.000-05:00

NASCAR notes

After a week off NASCAR is going to be back in action in Las Vegas this weekend. At the moment they are listing 44 cars entered in the race. Since the whole field is 43 cars, that only leaves one driver who might go home. In the last few days, however, the entry list has dropped from 48 to 44, so it is quite possible that there will be one more drop out before qualifying starts. In the meantime, it looks as if there are perhaps four or five cars on the entry list that are unlikely to make it past the 20 lap mark -- either they will drop out early and just collect the last place money, or they will fail to maintain sufficient speed on the track and be black-flagged.

I think that the TV contract requires a full field for each race, but it doesn't seem to me that NASCAR is doing itself many favors padding the field with these no-hopers. On the other hand, Formula One has Minardi, so I guess the moving chicane is a racing tradition!

2004-03-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

Salad Days

Apropos of nothing at all I notice that the top two headlines on the Salon wire report right now are

That strikes me as odd, so I thought I'd share.

2004-03-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

Aaaaahhhhhhhh!

Finally, the Formula One season has started again. All of the speculation can be put to rest, or at least quieted down a little. Yesterday in Australia (well, actually it was today in Australia, but last night in Pittsburgh, 'cos right now it's tomorrow in Australia, or something...) the first free practice sessions of the new season were held. Unfortunately, Ferrari pretty much kicked everyone else off the track. Still, we can't read too much into practice times since each team is pursuing its own agenda -- if Ferrari were preparing for qualifying while Renault (say) were preparing for the race then Ferrari should be faster. A second a lap is a lot, however.

2004-03-01T15:58:00.000-05:00

Advertising Irony

There was a commercial for a major insurance company that ran a couple of times during the Oscars last night. (It is probably running a lot more often, but we generally don't watch TV live, and consequently rarely see commercials any more.) Anyway, while I can't quote it exactly, the commercial started something like

Someone once said everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes...

I can only assume that Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes are up, if he is no longer considered more recognizable than "Someone"!

2004-02-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

I am Shocked, Jocked!

Clear Channel, everybody's favorite radio network, has decided to respond to the horror of seeing Janet Jackson's breast on live TV by isssuing new guidelines for their shows. The "Zero Tolerance" policy apparently went into effect on Wednesday. By today they had listened to Howard Stern's show and decided it was inappropriate and suspended him. They also fired "Bubba the Love Sponge" (?). Their reaction seems a little contrived, however. I assume that after some 20 years on the air, they knew what Stern's show consisted of, but they still felt the need to listen to him once before they could announce that they felt he didn't meet their decency standards?

2004-02-26T09:52:00.000-05:00

More on the Board

Fester adds some more details to the makeup of the Financial Oversight Board here in Pittsburgh. In particular, he notes that the majority of the board has a strong vested interest in maintaining the city's current (under-)funding structure.

... two of the five members are leaders of companies which are under mercantile tax exemptions. ... Another member, the Duquesne University President is head of a tax free non-profit. ...

2004-02-26T09:37:00.000-05:00

Perle of Great Price

Apparently Richard Perle was starting to cost the administration too much goodwill. Having called in recent weeks for the resignation of George Tenet, Colin Powell and DIA head Admiral Lowell Jacoby, he quietly turned in his resignation letter from the Defense Policy Board a week ago. The letter apparently indicates that he doesn't want to become an issue during the President's reelection campaign.

"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the president at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."

The implications of this for Iraq policy in the next few months are fascinating. In particular, dumping one of the architects of the "New American Century" may indicate a softening on the US stance regarding multi-lateralism and the United Nations.

2004-02-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

Fixing Pittsburgh

The Act 47 authorized city oversight board has been named, and I am shocked, shocked! to see that the board consists entirely of white men over 50. This is probably a result of the structure of the board. Each of a series of stakeholders got to make a single decision &mdash each party in the state house, each party in the state senate, and the governor. With only one choice to make, each had old paybacks and a desire to be risk-averse, which made this makeup of the board pretty much inevitable &mdash nobody ever got fired for buying IBM! (Hmm, does that reference date me?)

While the Post-Gazette thinks we should wait until the board does its job before criticizing it, statements by the Mayor suggest that that may be too long. In the meantime by choosing such a monocultural board, the stakeholders have guaranteed that any decision that is made will be the subject of arguments, fights, and quite possibly lawsuits.

The other fundamental problem with the board is that it is extremely representative of the thinking that got Pittsburgh into this mess in the first place. People wedded either to the idea that Big Steel will come back to save the 'burgh or so thoroughly in bed with the existing Victorian politicial structure, that they seem unlikely to recognize the need for some sort of radical changes. The board's first action has hardly been innovative &mdash they want the city to stop spending money while they look at the problem. While that may be necessary, one would hope that they would already have an idea what the problems are. After all, they are supposed to be insiders and veterans of the smoke-filled rooms.

Without some sort of serious city/suburban compromise on infrastructure funding and support, the heart of the region will start to collapse, and it will take the suburbs down with it. This board seem very unlikely to come up with the sort of significant proposals that will be needed to effect such a change, however. And I fear that even if they do defy the odds and make such suggestions, there will be significant delays before any plan can be implemented. As a consequence, come the fall I expect to see emergency cutbacks that will start to cause serious damage.

2004-02-23T09:24:00.000-05:00

Pot Calls Kettle Black

Marc Racicot has accused the Democrats of negative campaigning. As far as I can tell, if you point out that the Repbulicans are running a negative campaign, you are being negative and lowering the tone of the campaign.

The GOP seem to be spending a great deal of time this campaign season asking the Democrats to unilaterally disarm &mdash campaign spending limits, negative campaigning, and other issues. I hope this means that they are starting to feel the pressure, and getting worried. After all, even Fox has Bush's approval numbers down at 48%. Perhaps they are starting to worry that only an October Surprise will save him now.

2004-02-23T09:17:00.000-05:00

Notes on Rockingham

NASCAR went to Rockingham, North Carolina, this weekend. As expected, they had to struggle mightily to fill out the field. In the end, the two cars who started last dropped out on laps 1 and 19 for being uncompetitive, but were paid about $54,000 each for showing up. Nice work if you can get it!

Once again, we saw a car flipping down the backstretch, this time on a much lower speed race track. Although it makes for multiply-viewed highlight reels and lots of exposure on the eleven o'clock news, it really isn't good for the sport to lose cars like that. In this case it was one of the field-fillers who wrecked his only car. I guess he won't be showing up to more races any time soon. If this happens again soon, I expect that NASCAR will probably have to take some kind of action in the interests of driver safety.

The TV coverage was amateurishly bad. I can only suppose that Fox has changed directors since their last race in July, or are a little rusty, or something. They managed to cut to commercials during green flag pit stops and seemed to be reveling in pointless information on the grahics that did nothing but fill up the screen and obscure the race. More about useful information and information presentation once I've worked up a good head of steam on the matter.

2004-02-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

Meta-Blogging

Apparently it was a year ago today that I started blogging. Which reminds me, I need to file my taxes today &mdash a partial working year has left the IRS owing me some money. In that time, I have apparently had some 8,500 or so visitors (or, to be more accurate, some 15 visitors who have come by 570 times each, or twice a day!)

I have also lost my job, sold my house, bought a new house (save the closing) and lost some 25 lbs. Since I really didn't like my job any more, it's been a pretty good year. Now if I can only persuade someone in Pittsburgh to hire me...

2004-02-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

Slow Week

Well, actually it's a slow week for blogging, but it's been a surprisingly busy week for other reasons. Still, I wanted to comment briefly on something odd that I've noticed. In the coverage of the San Francisco Wed-A-Thon, nearly every picture that I've seen in the major media outlets of happy couples has featured two women. I guess it just shows that most photo editors in newspapers are male, or something like that.

Like I said, just something I noticed...

2004-02-16T15:41:00.002-05:00

Abstinence

The administration's abstinence program is being promoted at full bore. Now I'm all for reducing teen pregnancy, the spread of STD's and so on, and for the most part I agree with critics who suggest that abstinence-only programs don't work for everyone, or even for most people.

One thing I haven't seen is any study of the effect of abstinence programs on divorce rates which surprises me a bit. I went to high school in rural Utah, where the dominant culture is very conservative and frowns strongly on pre-marital sex. Partially as a result of this, many of my fellow high-school students were rather sexually frustrated[1] and a lot of them were married within a couple of years of graduation, and a lot of them were divorced a few years after that.

I do, of course, have an opinion about why this happened. In the end there are a lot of reasons to get married, but wanting to get laid just doesn't seem to me to be a strong foundation for a life together. At some point you're going to wake up and realize that you've pretty much exhausted the Kama Sutra (link not work-safe), and you don't have much else in common. Unless you can find additional common ground, it seems like divorce is going to look pretty attractive at that point. So where are the studies linking dedicated abstinence-minded teenagers and subsequent divorce rates? Or are there just so few of the former that no study could be statistically significant?

[1] This shouldn't be construed as implying that I wasn't. In addition to being too interested in math by half, I was in the band and on the debate team. 'nuff said...

2004-02-16T11:11:00.000-05:00

Daytona Wrapup

As expected, the "Big One" happened. A crash on lap 72 damaged 12 cars (about 1/3 of the remaining field), including a rather spectacular tumble by Michael Waltrip. No one was seriously injured, and the race went on to the unsurprising conclusin that Waltrip's teammate Dale Earnhart Jr won the race. His team, DEI, has been dominant on large tracks for the past few years.

Looking at the photograph linked to above, you might notice that the dominant feature of the picture is not the accident, but the airplane. The race was started by none other than George Bush himself. He even managed with a straight face to claim that this was the people's business, rather than a campaign stop to capture the NASCAR Dad vote, so taxpayers funded his little jaunt down to Florida. (Un?)fortunately, a TiVo miscalculation meant that I missed the Bush portions of the event, and only turned on the race about a quarter of the way in &mdash someone had scheduled the machine to record Star Wars instead of the race. Thus I was spared the spectacle of the motorcade around the track and other key elements of the pre-race show.

One other development may come out of the Waltrip accident. After the tumble, safety crews spent about ten minutes trying to cut the car away from the driver before flipping it back on its wheels. At that point, he climbed out, waved to the crowd, and walked over to the waiting ambulance for a mandatory post-crash checkup. Afterwards, he claimed that he spent the entire 10 minutes telling the safety crew to flip the car over so he could get out, but they wouldn't listen to him and kept trying to cut through the safety cage. Last year some controversy started because NASCAR doesn't have a dedicated race safety crew, or even a single Chief Medical Officer. Instead they use local teams at each venue. These guys are experts at cleaning up after highway accidents and similar events, but don't know much about race cars since they only see them twice a year, at most. Waltrip is an outspoken guy. If he keeps complaining about this long enough, NASCAR may have to relent (as they have on a number of other issues) and finally hire a dedicated safety team to at least run the emergency operation at each track. Most other major racing series have such a group, and NASCAR is way behind the curve on this one.

2004-02-16T10:47:00.000-05:00

Release the Hounds

This just in. Ruth Ann Dailey, one of the weird neighborhood columnists for the Post-Gazette, has started attacking Teresa Heinz Kerry as someone unfit to be First Lady. Why? Well, apparently she has yet to forgive Rick Santorum (R - PA) for saying unspeakable things about her late husband, John Heinz (also R - PA). So here we go:

But her record warns us that she'll be more of a character than she will display character. Her lack of graciousness in local politics is particularly startling since it comes from someone to whom the fates have been so generous.

Oh, and for good measure Heinz-Kerry has an inflated sense of her own importance:

To see this in action again, consider Heinz Kerry's decision to change her political affiliation. When she officially became a Democrat last year, a spokesman said Heinz Kerry had "felt for a long time the Republican Party is leaving her."

The 150-year-old party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan is abandoning the dictates of an heiress's conscience?

I'm not entirely convinced that Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt would recognize today's GOP, and <CheapShot> I'm pretty sure that Ronald Reagan doesn't recognize anything at the moment </CheapShot>.

2004-02-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

Job Qualifications

Chuck notes the impending trade of Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez to the Yankees, mostly to cut their payroll. In the course of his commentary he notes:

Tom Hicks is quickly cementing a reputation as the dumbest owner in Major League Baseball, and this would finalize it.

Now I assume that Tom Hicks is the owner of the Rangers (I really don't follow baseball much &mdash a natural reaction to living in the same town as the Pirates &mdash but I digress) in which case, I would assume that being dumb is pretty much either a job requirement, or an unavoidable hazard. After all, look at the miserable failure who used to own them!

2004-02-13T14:46:00.000-05:00

The Importance of Being Perfectly Clear

Via NTK today, I found myself reading &mdash with the level of fascination normally reserved for a car wreck at the side of the road &mdash A Family Proposal. Now I spent a fair amount of time in a mountain state that is normally considered stranger than Colorado, but Bill is ... odd.

2004-02-13T13:21:00.000-05:00

Racing

The Daytona qualifying races were held yesterday, and the starting grid for the race on Sunday was set. As expected, two people of whom almost nobody has heard went home. The only interesting development is that apparently NASCAR and GoodYear have got together and spec'd a truly awful tire for this race. It is very soft so it gives good grip for the first 5-10 laps of each stint, and then no grip whatsoever for the rest of the stint (25-35 laps is the fuel window). This actually opens up the remote possibility that race tactics will have to be employed! In fact it is possible that this year's race will have some racing, instead of 3 1/2 hours of 43 cars driving very fast inches from each others bumpers (until "The Big One" reduces the field by half). But I'm not holding my breath.

2004-02-13T12:34:00.001-05:00

Friday Fiddling

Once again I have had the chance to play with Blogger's template editing features, and once again I understand why people who do this sort of thing a lot switch to another system (say, Movable Type). In an attempt to get around the teeny-tiny window that Blogger gives you to edit the template it, I cut'n'pasted to a text editor on my system, made some changes and cut'n'pasted back again. Two hours later, I think I've sorted out the mess caused by flying line breaks and mysteriously disappearing characters.

Anyway, I've recategorized my sidebar to better reflect my blogscanning. The Pittsburgh section is my attempt to start to emulate the Rocky Top Brigade of Tennessee. So far these are the 'Burgh blogs that I've found, but I'd like to hear about any others. Friends are people who I knew (or at least met) in the flesh before I started blogging. I figure that since these are sites I hit pretty regularly to find out what's up with them, I'd like to keep them distinct and accessible. The Blogroll is what's left, aimed mainly at sites I visit at least once a week. I also re-ordered it alphabetically since a number of the more prolific sites (e.g., Eschaton) don't seem to ping Weblogs.com anyway, so they never move around in the recent update order.

Hey, it's a slow day!

2004-02-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

Friday Fiddling

2004-02-13T10:29:00.000-05:00

On the Subject of Hypocrisy

There was a story on Morning Edition today about the apparently succesful cloning of a human embryo in South Korea. The story included the following comment (any transcription errors are mine):

[Senator] Brownback [R-KS] says he's disappointed by the news from South Korea, and he is sorry the South Korean scientists proceeded before the world opinion has had a chance to reach a consensus.

Brownback's insistence on a sovereign nation's need to wait for world opinion to catch up with it seems to be a new development, however.

2004-02-13T10:16:00.000-05:00

Changing the Tune

Senator Rick Santorum, in an article about the transportation bill in today's Post-Gazette (I can't find it online there, but the LA Times original is here):

Added Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): "The signal we're sending here is the throttle is still wide open. We're going to spend, spend, spend."

That was from the original article, but the local version goes on to add:

Santorum later published a statement critical of the bill's funding formula: "To me, it's an outrage that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is being treated in this fashion. It's unlikely that the proposed 19 percent increase for Pennsylvania over six years will keep pace with inflation, amounting to a cut in Pennsylvania's highway funding."

As far as I can tell, he is criitcizing the bill for both spending too much and not spending enough! But more than that. Throughout the 90's the GOP claimed that a dollar increase in funding was a funding increase, whether or not it kept up with inflation &mdash mostly in relation to medicare and other great society programs.

Now it appears that even an dollar increase of almost one fifth over six years is actually a funding decrease. Of course, according to this page, the forecast rate of inflation right now is 1.88%, so I'm not entirely sure how 19% over six years fails to keep up with that either.

2004-02-10T15:47:00.000-05:00

Satisfaction

Our driveway has a flat bit at the top outside our garage, and a sloping bit down to a road. I have been very careful all winter to keep the sloping bit clear and dry so that we don't often have to take the car down in a four-wheel skid, and so the VW (Front-wheel drive) can access the house. The Subaru doesn't have any trouble at all, but I digress.

Two warm (i.e., above freezing) days in a row prompted me to tackle the flat part of the driveway this week. I managed to remove the ice covering it, which turned out to be a slab that varied from one to two inches thick! In the middle of an apparently futile job search, it is rather satisfying to actually achieve something by main force &mdash two shovels and a lot of hard graft.

2004-02-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

Runup to Daytona

Pole qualifying for the NASCAR Daytona 500 was yesterday, and the pole sitter is a surprise, as was last year's pole winner. Greg Biffle is so little known that the Post-Gazette spelled his name "Biddle" in the back page headline for the story. Daytona qualifying is a little odd and drawn-out, so we don't know who will be where in the race outside the front row. We do know, however, that with only 45 qualifiers looking for 43 starting spots, nearly everyone who shows up will get a berth. last year there 51 cars entered for qualifying, the year before 53. Now racing is an expensive sport, but NASCAR can't be happy at the drop off in interest at the highest level just as the new series sponsor takes over. This also doesn't bode well for races in smaller markets this year &mdash tradionally there are a number of teams that only attempt the marquee events (Daytona, Talladega, Indianapolis) and can't afford to go to smaller venues.

2004-02-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

Encouraging Signs

It's probably too early to be hopeful about November, but as I listened to the election coverage on NPR over the last week, I couldnt' help but feel faint stirrings of optimism in my gut. Over and over again in the coverage of the elections the person-on-the-street interviews expressed an overwhelming desire to defeat Bush by any means necessary. Since these are, in theory, partisan Democrats speaking, that in itself wouldn't be much of a story. When it is attached to the fact that turnout in the primaries and caucuses is much heavier than expected, I can't help but hope that the President's negative ratings are strong enough to drive a heavy turnout in November for whomever the Democratic nominee is. Of course, that could all be negated by an October Surprise. (That's my pathetic attempt at pre-emptive googlebombing).

In the meantime, I have long thought that Kerry would make the President of the Democratic nominees. I have not been so sure that he would make the best candidate. However, with electability apparently being the biggest issue on primary voters' minds, and Kerry sweeping the field the way that he is, I am willing to concede on the second opinion and hold fast on the first.

2004-02-06T11:35:00.000-05:00

Local News

Fester has already pointed this out, but Pittsburgh has received some new government largesse in the form of a light rail subsidy to pull the system under the Allegheny river and onto the North Shore. While this is all fine and dandy, and I support the expansion of mass transit, I've got to wonder why this is so little. The map shows the total extension to the North shore is two stations within easy walking distance (over the Clemente Bridge) of the existing route.

The article seems to imply that this is to encourage use of new commuter garages going up on the North shore, but the hike in the parking tax should be doing that already with no problem. While the north shore garages will remain at $6-7/day, the city garages are going up to $12/day or more. That's going to bring people out of downtown whatever the transit system does. If you are going to stretch the light rail to the north (which is a good thing &mdash it will be closer to our house) then stretch it. Get a line running up the Parkway North or something and put the park'n'rides further away. According to the traffic reports on the radio, the congestion in town isn't downtown, it's on the freeways leading back to the suburbs. This "solution" doesn't address that issue at all, it just raises the possilbility that a couple of mostly empty bridges will be less used.

2004-02-06T11:16:00.001-05:00

The Week in Racing

The week started promisingly with the Rolex 24 12 hours of Daytona. It was meant to be a 24 hour race, but astoundingly heavy rain put pretty much 12 of the hours under either the yellow or the red flag &mdash no racing! That made it much easier to watch on the TiVo, however, since I skipped a solid 3 hours of morning coverage in less than 5 minutes. As a result of the lack of racing, attrition was surprisingly low, and the race was close enough that when the leading car from Howard-Boss developed suspension trouble (well, its wheel fell off) some 20 minutes from the end of the race, the next four cars on track passed them and they were bumped off the overall podium, although they still took 3rd in class. For a race that has been won by a solid 30 laps (maybe 45 minutes on the track) that's considered very close indeed.

CART has decided to follow NASCAR's lead and go for a Special Olympics-like points system &mdash everybody scores a point! Yesterday a new points system was unveiled that gives points all the way down to 20th place, up from the 12 points scorers under the old system. I am somewhat doubtful that any of the races this year will field 20 cars, so that is essentially an appearance bonus for even the slowest of drivers. But I could be surprised by the field. Officially there are 13 teams listed on the CART web site, but only 19 cars.

Meanwhile over in F1-world, silly season is continuing long past its regular use-by date. Bernie Ecclestone, normally referred to as the "F1 Supremo" has suggested that the series will be leaving Europe for good. Why? Because tobacco companies are finding it harder and harder to advertise there, and too many teams are sucking at the hind teat of big tobacco. Since all the teams are based in Europe, and most of them in England, this would lead to significant additional travel costs and stresses for them, so it is unlikely to happen soon. In the meantime, Imola is apparently hosting its last race this year. That makes sense however &mdash if the series is trying to expand its global reach, the first place that cuts should be made is in the countries that have two Grands Prix already, Germany and Italy. Imola was Italy #2, and I would expect the Nurburgring to follow it soon.

Finally (for F1,anyway) Eddie Jordan and Jos Verstappen are still playing footsie, even though it was announced that talks between the owner (Jordan) and the driver had broken down. During testing last week, the EJ-14 was displaying advertising for Jos's main sponsor, which suggests that Eddie is still trying to woo him.

Over here in NASCAR land, the season kicks off this weekend with the non-points race for last year's pole sitters, the Bud Shootout. It's at Daytona, I think it's at night, and I'll probably watch it because by this time of year any racing is good racing.

Update: Well that didn't take long. It's only a few hours after I wrote the above, and Verstappen is stating that all talks with Jordan are at an end. This leaves Jordan with only one of it's two drivers named, and just a month until the team needs to be in Melbourne qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.

I also edited for sense and a couple of typos.

2004-02-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

Playing Games with the Law

Today's paper profiled a recently developed Patriot Act Game, which is intended to help people undertand the consequences of the law. A few details:

The object of the game? Get every player to Freedom Corner before the homeland security threat level reaches "severe" and the player holding the "snitch" card turns everyone in to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The brightly colored game is a takeoff on Monopoly -- but instead of "No Visitors Allowed" on the Jail square, it's "No Lawyers or Visitors Allowed." Instead of play money, there are "freedom fries." Players who have game tokens that are colored red, white and blue are at a greater advantage than those with tokens colored black, brown or yellow. "Community Chest" and "Chance" cards have been replaced by cards named "Justice," "Surveillance," "Protest" and "History."

Elizabeth Male, a law student and member of the Federalist society, found the game to be "not particularly fair and balanced." (Can anyone actually use that expression with a straight face?)

"The reality is, we didn't have blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedes flying planes into buildings on Sept. 11th," said Male. "As much as we would like to not racially profile people, the facts are what they are.

Hmmm... Driving rental trucks full of ANFO into a building, however, is something completely different, I guess.

2004-02-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

Raising the BAR

British American Racing has revealed the BAR 006 to resounding yawns from the crowd. The car itself looks to be a workmanlike construction. They have some kind of weird circular wing-thingy above the sidepods, and fairly ordinary front and rear wings. Their biggest problem last year was reliability, which is a bit embarrassing for Honda who are pouring a lot of resources into engines that seemed to turn to shrapnel with alarming frequency.

This year the one engine per race meeting rule is going to make it that much harder for the cars to compete effectively. Despite this Dave Richards, the team principal, is claiming that this is the year that they will effectively challenge the top three teams -- McLaren, Ferrari, and Williams. Yeah right. Why not set the sights a little lower and aim to produce the first race win that you promised would happen six years ago?

2004-01-30T15:14:00.000-05:00

So Sad, but So Right

So I'm poking around TBogg's blog, reading the latest travails of America's Worst Mother™ when I decide to look down his link list — it's a slow Friday afternoon here in unemployment land! So I notice that he still has a link to Coultergeist, Ann Coulter's shortlived attempt at blogging. Morbid curiosity makes me follow the link. There really is something so satisfyingly honest about the page. The blog subhead is "Ann Coulter speaks her mind..." and the page is blank.

2004-01-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, Back on the Track

The new racing season is getting closer, and things seem to building to a fever pitch, so this is a quick post of everything I let slide over the past few days.

First, Renault launched the R24. Last year, Renault made a reasonable claim to be one of the top teams in F1, claiming all year that they had a really fast car with a mediocre engine. At the end of the year they scrapped the engine and its designer and have gone back to a more traditional design. The car body is different again, however. The aero designers seem to have done a lot of work on the back end. The vanes and winglets all over the sidepod look sort of swoopy and sensual, the fin on the back of engine cover is vaguly reminiscent of the Jaguar D-Type (OK, very vaguely) and they've changed the rear wing significantly, again. This is another car that I am looking forward to seeing race.

Sticking with open wheel racing, the bankruptcy judge rejected the IRL bid to buy some or all of CART's assets and cleared the way for the series to try and survive under the leadership of the OWRS, with its first race scheduled for Long Beach in March. At least OWRS is committed to CART as a racing series -- it has no other interests. Back in the '90s when Tony George spun off the IRL with the Indy 500 as its only draw, he opined strongly that oval races were the only ones worth having. Since then he has installed a semi-road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but his motives in trying to buy CART were always a little suspect.

Finally, Speedweeks at Daytona is underway, with the Rolex 24 Hour sports car race set to start tomorrow. Scott Pruett has taken the pole for Chip Ganassi, and it looks like Speed Channel will have about 15 hours of race coverage before some football game or other that's happening this weekend too.

2004-01-29T16:22:00.000-05:00

Toy from Time

Viia the BoiFromTroi, I found this cute tool apparently related to Time Magazine to help you confirm what you already know -- who should your candidate be.

After whipping through the questions, and leaving my party selection blank (after my answers, it was pretty moot anyway!) I came up with the following list:

Candidate	Percent Agreement
Kucinich	100%
Sharpton	97%
Kerry	90%
Clark	87%
Dean	86%
Edwards	78%
Lieberman	74%
Bush	6%

I am a little worried that I have a 6% agrement with the miserable failure, but am otherwise glad to see that all of the remaining democrats score well up there, and that Kerry is my highest placed candidate-with-a-chance. I'm a little surprised that Edwards was so low -- I strongly agree with him on the wrongheadedness of tort reform, so I must be differing with him elsewhere.

The layout in this post is odd in Blogger's preview pane. For some reason it doesn't seem to like html tables. Perhaps I'll look into reformatting it later... Fixed it. Apparently tables don't like forced page breaks in them, even if it makes them easier to create and edit.

2004-01-28T09:14:00.000-05:00

Joining the 21st Century

Just for the fun of it, and because free blogger now supports it, I have added an RSS feed. The link is somewhere over there on the right. I suppose this means I ought to look for a reader too -- last time I investigated them, I found that having a blogroll that notes updates seemed more useful. With a bit of luck times have changed and there are new readers out there that will start to fulfill the promise of being closer to a personal agent.

Update:OK, so apparently an RSS feed and an Atom feed may not be the same thing. So this is the free blogger Atom feed that I have. Whatever, it's some kind of XML.

2004-01-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

Congratulations

Chuck has just announced his impending journey into the undiscovered country. Many congratulations, the TiVo is a marvelous device. The kids are pretty fun too, most of the time!

However, getting Tiffany to agree to a TiVo is only a small step on the road to unbridled use of power. I tested my theory of Impending Parental Acquisition with a video camera and a new computer (to edit the video, dontcha know?). Once I realized the power that I held, I went for the brass ring. I got power tools, particularly a table saw, simply by justifying it as "for the baby". It is an awesome power, and with awesome power comes awesome responsibility.

Of course, one more kid and I'd've got a drill press...

2004-01-27T09:48:00.000-05:00

The Big Dog Comes Out to Play

Ferrari unveiled the F2004 yesterday. It bears a truly astonishing similarity to the F2003-GA! Truly astonishing. In fact it almost looks as if they only changed those things that were mandated by the new regulations -- engine cover height and rear wing endplate size. Oh, and the Vodaphone logo is a little different!

In the face of the siginificant changes that Williams has made, this effort by Ferrari looks a little half-hearted. On the other hand, they did win both championships last year, so perhaps they do only need to evolve the car design slightly instead of revolutionizing it. The success that the Williams has been having in preseason testing, however, suggests that Ferrari may need to re-examine the evolutionary approach by the time the series gets back to Europe, at Imola (the fifth race this year). In fact, they are already hinitng that even by Melbourne there may be some significant changes to the car, which makes the whole unveiling a little silly, really.

2004-01-22T14:34:00.000-05:00

Life in the Hills

As Pittsburgh's financial woes continue, life is apparently not much better in the suburbs either. There are (famously) three major rivers in Allegheny County, which in turn divide the county into three fairly geographically definable regions:

North which lies north of the Ohio and the Allegheny rivers
South: which lies south of the Ohio and the Monongahela rivers
East: which lies between the Allegheny and the Monongahela

For the most part the City of Pittsburgh starts at the intersection of the three rivers and travels to the East, between the rivers. (This is a simplification, but a fair one, I think).

I live in the north suburbs and after a year or so, I still haven't really figured out the difference between a town, a city, a village, and a township, but I have figured out that there are lots of them around here -- 48 different municipalities in North Allegheny County alone. Added to that are cities that just don't exist -- such as Wexford and Allison Park. They seem to be imaginary constructs of the Post Office in order to shoehorn extra ZIP codes into this area, so everyone knows where they are, but they don't have police or fire departments of their own, or any government for that matter.

This fragmented (sub)urbanscape has some unfortunate effects on its residents. In particular, while zoning is allowed, a municipality cannot zone a type of business out of its borders, only control where it can be situated. So there are no true bedroom communities in the state. Additionally emergency services can be very hard to coordinate when there are so many arbitrary bouandaries lying across the map. (When our car radio was stolen, it required a debate with the 911 operator, a store clerk, and my wife before they could figure out which police department to dispatch!) . One of the local paper's columnists has proposed a solution to this situation. Unfortunately the online article doesn't include the map that was in the paper, which showed both the current and his proposed new boundaries. The idea makes a lot of sense, and would probably also help in providing a framework to start negotiating a way for the suburbs to keep the city alive, so it ain't gonna happen. He promises and implementation plan for next week, but it seems that there are too many petty fiefdoms for this kind of change to be generated internally. Furthermore, any external change would have to come from the state legislature, who appear to be not only large-C Conservative, but also small-c conservative, and are unlikely to recognize that the situation is broke and should be fixed.

2004-01-21T10:48:00.000-05:00

NASCAR Rules

Racing is different from other sports in several ways, particularly in the means that are available to determine the best driver over the course of a season. If we look at the NFL, each week there are 16 games, and 16 winners. Over the course of a season there are 256 games and 256 winners, which allows the use of a Win/Loss record as an effective tool to determine rankings at the end of the regular season. In NASCAR, there are 36 events in a season and 36 winners, which reduces the effectiveness of a W/L record as a determining factor in the overall champion. In the NFL there are a series of tie-breaking rules that resolve the difference between two teams with identical records, but thery are rarely used. In racing, the role of the tie-breakers is replaced by the number of points awarded to each finishing position, and this is used continuously throughout the season.

Obviously, the distribution of those points is a key factor in determining what is rewarded over the course of a racing season. In Formula One, only the top 8 finishers, out of up to 24, are awarded points. This puts a premium on finishing close to the front of the pack. It also means that once a car is out of the race for some reason, there is little point in restarting and risking further damage. Up until last year NASCAR used a different system that strongly rewarded teams for showing up for the race. The largest point spread was the 40+ points from not starting the race to finishing 43rd. Then the point spread started at 3 between consecutive positions and slowly crept up to 5. This places a strong premium on coming to each race and making the field., issues that were a problem back when the system was adopted. Now the major teams can't skip a race because their sponsors require them to be there, but the old rules held sway through last year.

The new system is modeled more after a NASCAR race and consequently rewards consistency a little and end-of-the-season success a little more. If you have ever watched a race, you know that there is nearly always a yellow-flag period toward the end of the race. All of the cars are lined up nose-to-tail, and when the green flag drops again there is a sprint to the finish. Prior to this last caution period, the most important thing a driver can do is keep out of trouble and not get passed by the leader of the race. Once the final sprint starts, it's anybody's race. The new points system relfects this. If a driver is in the top ten (i.e., on the lead lap) after 26 races, he is lined up nose-to-tail with the other top ten drivers, and they engage in a 10 race sprint to the end of the season.

It seems to me that they have gone in the wrong direction. Instead of changing the points system to more closely reflect the race structure, they should have altered the race structure to (sort of) more closely resemble the points system. The whole "Lap Carefully then Sprint Madly" structure of a race is one of the chief flaws of NASCAR in my mind. It really takes strategy, car design, and engine tuning out of the picture and leaves a significant chunk of dumb luck as the deciding factor in many races. Compared to a series like F1, where there are perhaps 2 or 3 safety car periods in an entire season, the lack of emphasis on engineering and racecraft is a damn shame. In the end, however, I don't think this system will last much over a year. There are probably more than ten heavyweight cars in the series, and their sponsors are not gonig to be happy at the lack of coverage that non-top-ten cars will get in the last 10 races. And if there is one thing that you can be sure of in NASCAR, if the sponsors aren't happy, then something's gonna change.

2004-01-21T10:17:00.000-05:00

Political Predictions

I was absolutely correct, I didn't see a single minute of the SOTU address. Also, WDUQ has not yet fixed their antenna, so our reception of NPR is limited to the realaudio stream, which was unreliable this morning. So I have only the short bits in the newspaper and some online stuff to look at. I have statyed away from the Free Republic and other rabid sites, but the overall impression that I get from both sides of the aisle is that the speech was short, disjointed, and uninspiring. This is with the possible exception of the religious right who had a lot of stuff aimed at them.

I do wonder if the lack of any mention of NASA or Mars indicated that a section of the speech was pulled after the trial balloon was shot down last week. So far my favorite comment came from Red Ted (who has just earned a spot on my blogroll):

Bush is very good at proposing grandiose schemes, terrible at explaining, justifying, or funding them.

Amen!

2004-01-20T10:07:00.000-05:00

Enough Politics, Already

It may be the start of the political season, but racing starts again for most major series in the next couple of months. Towards that end, Jaguar and Toyota have unveiled their challengers for next season.

Not too surprisingly the Toyota bears a strong resemblance to last year's Ferrari. Not only was that car the winner of both the Driver's and the Constructor's championships, but Toyota are busy defending an industrional espionage case in which they are are accused of stealing plans and drawings from Ferrari. It looks like the Jaguar (That's Jag-yoo-ar, not Jag-wahr) designers had some similar ideas to Williams, but didn't want to go quite as far as they did. The fork holding the front wing is noticeably more split than that of the Toyota, however, and if the Williams is successful, we easily may see the split grow as the season progresses.

2004-01-20T09:58:00.000-05:00

State of the Union Preview

Everybody's got a State of the Union prediction. South Knox Bubba is even proposing a replacement for the traditional drinking game. But here's my prediction: I won't watch it, or listen to it, or even pay attention to it. If any really striking new proposals come out of it, I'll probably read about them, or hear them on the radio tomorrow morning (assuming that WDUQ has its antenna working again). By 9:00, however, we have generally just put the boys to bed and are ready to settle down and enjoy what's left of the evening. George W. Bush and enjoyment just don't belong in the same sentence in my book.

So despite the total lack of civic virtue that I will be demonstrating, I'm probably going to be doing a crossword puzzle, watching something off the TiVo, or playing a game with my wife come 9:00 tonight.

2004-01-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

No One EM Forster Comment Here

After all, it really is premature to start making comments about "Howard's End" after only one campaign event, which is really small-d democratic in the loosest sense of the word.

I am happy to see the Johns do well, however. Despite the lack of evidence here, I have long thought that Kerry is the best suited of the democratic contenders to be President. That doesn't mean he is the best man to beat Bush -- after he does look French (!?!?!?). In the meantime, I have already seen comments that Teresa Heinz looked disturbed on the platform with him. Is this the continuation of a new RNC spin point -- "Democratic candidates can't even get the support of their wives!"?

I'e not seen a lot of Edwards, but he has come across well on his two appearances on "The Daily Show". It's not much to base an opinion on, but he's talking a good line and apparently declining to attack his opponents. OF course, he was largely inconsequential up until yesterday, and it's much easier not to attack when you aren't being attacked yourself We'll see how he responds to the increased attention in New Hampshire, and particularly South Carolina in the next couple of weeks.

2004-01-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

Dem Pittsburgh Blues

The Mayor and the city council seem to have come to some sort of agreement on a city budget. Basically the council gets what they wanted (few new taxes but service cuts) and the Mayor gets a significant parking tax hike. This should have the desired effect of making more of the city's tax burden fall on the suburban commuters (of whom there is one in my family) rather than cranking property taxes on residents yet again. This seems to be a good thing on the whole -- and if it encourages people to ride the bus or carpool more often, it has added side-benefits.

Predictably, the local legislators and business leaders are up in arms about it. On the legislators side, the best quote in the article has to be this one:

State Rep, Nick Kotik, D-Robinson, said Allegheny County legislators from both parties "have never sat down as a delegation and had a frank discussion'' about Pittsburgh's dire fiscal situation.

"It's time for that,'' he said.

It's time for that? Really? The city has been drowning in red ink for six years, and now it's time for the representatives of the affected population to finally talk to each other? I'd have said it was time to talk to each other, oh, five years ago. But that's just me.

That part of the business community that doesn't pay any taxes to operate in the city (nonprofits, financial services, many others) seem to be curiously silent on the subject of new taxes. But then again, if the parking tax hike doesn't fly, the city's Act 47 "Recovery Plan Coordinator" might notice that the Business Privilege Tax here makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and probably ought to be revamped.

2004-01-13T09:46:00.000-05:00

Everything Old is New Again

South Knox Bubba has a lot to say, but it's well worth a read.

2004-01-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

Sauber Launches

Red-Bull Sauber-Petronas (hereafter referred to as Sauber) launched their challenger, the C23, yesterday. It certainly isn't as groundbreaking as the Williams car, but it is unlikely that anyone else will be this year. Otherwise, the biggest surprise to me is how flat the front and rear wings are. Common wisdom over the past few years has had the front wing seriously dipped in the middle, in order to get it as close to the ground as possible, while remaining within the rules that govern the altitude of the endplates. Likewise, last year a number of teams (particularly Renault) were shaping their rear wings to minimize the drag induced by vortex shedding. Sauber seem to have rejected that approach as well, and are showing a very flat surface. Despite a fairly good pair of drivers in Fisichella and Massa, I don't anticipate that Sauber will be doing much to improve its middle of the pack position this year. I will definitely be surprised if they make it to the position of "Best of the Rest" (i.e., best team who isn't Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, and maybe Renault).

2004-01-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

NASCAR stuff

Team news is fairly light at the moment, in advance of next month's Daytona 500, but back at NASCAR Headquarters weird things are starting to happen. First, a couple of things worth knowing:

After umpteen years, R.J. Reynolds had responded to pressure and pulled its Winston sponsorship from the series championship. They have been replaced by Nextel. In a strangely Orwellian development, all past champions are now referred to as Nextel Cup Champions, even though they won the Winston Cup at the time.
The Winston Cup points system was developed in 1973 to encourage consistency. In an effort to make sure that the top teams showed up every week, a driver gets a lot of points merely for qulaifying for the race, and a slowish escalation for finishing higher up the order. Nowadays, sponsor requirements mean that teams aren't going to miss a race for any reason, but the points system doesn't reflect this.
As a result of the skewed point system, last season's Cup Champion won significantly fewer races than the sixth place finisher. This has led to loud calls for change in certain corners of the community.
Football, basketball, baseball, and hockey all have playoffs.

All of these factors seem to be playing into NASCARs rumored decision to update the points system, in a strange way. Basically, they are going to take the last 10 races of the 36-race season and turn it into some kind of post-season shootout among the top ten drivers in the standings at the end of 26 races. Oh, and maybe some others too. The announcment about the details is anticipated next week, along with some indication of exactly why drivers outside the top ten would want to participate in a now meaningless race.

The oddest part of the plan is that it apparently attempts to emulate the excitement surrounding "Stick and Ball" sports at the end of the season without considering that there is a fundamental difference between racing and other team sports. In the other sports, two competitors out of (in the case of the NFL) 32 participate in each competition. At the end of the regular season, they each have W/L records, but the best may not have had head-to-head competition. So a playoff format enables the arguments to be settled. Indianapolis deserves to advance and Denver or Kansas City doesn't because the Colts beat them straight up in a head-to-head battle. In racing, however, every car is competing with every other car every week. In the case of NASCAR that means that any given week there are 43 cars on track, each one racing with all the others. The need for specialized head-to-head competition is obviated by the structure of the sport.

Instead of this false postseason, NASCAR should just tweak the points system. In particular, they should equalize all points below, say, 30th. This would take away the incentive for a battered car to come back on track and endanger everyone else just to pick up a couple of laps and gain 5 or 6 race positions (assuming that the battering occurred in a large wreck). That would also make sure that the occasional DNF doesn't hammer an otherwise strong driver, and generally allow NASCAR to benefit from the experience of nearly every other major racing series in the world.

2004-01-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

Comparing Ideas

This week in Time Magazine, Michael Kinsley points out that the "Starve the Beast" theory of government spending control is wrong both mathematically and psycholgically. He makes some good points, too, espcially that the added interest burden of increased deficits if tax aren't matched dollar-for-dollar by spending cuts more than kills any hope that cutting taxes will force spending cuts and reduce the deficit.

Shortly after that I was walking the dogs and listening to yesterday's Marketplace (I have a "Radio TiVo" for this very purpose) they mentioned that the gross underfunding of "No Child Left Behind" was causing the State of Utah, among others, to strongly consider forgoing all federal education funds rather than try to comply with the ruling. This story touches on the same issue from a more local perspective (Marketplace doesn't seem to have individual story links). Although this may look on the surface as if Starving the Beast has succeeded in possibly reducing costs to the Federal Government, it seems that the cost to society is starting to look astronomical.

2004-01-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

Items of Passing Interest

If this report is to be believed, Joe Gibbs is returning to the Washington Redskins in an attempt to see if they can be persuaded to play football again. Since the source is his NASCAR race team site, I have no reason to disbelieve it. It is possible that he no longer sees a huge challenge in racing -- his team won the Winston (now Nextel) cup twice in eleven years -- and is seeking a "new" challenge. There certainly seems to be little doubt that working for Dan "Lord Voldemort" Snyder is a major challenge for anyone. After all, it is pretty impressive to go through five head coaches in five years.

In a vaguely related story, apparently Open Wheel Racing has a challenger for the carcass of CART. A company wholly owned by ISC, who also essentially own NASCAR, is challenging them for assets of the defunct organization, which apparently include a number of race fixtures, some open wheel chassis, and the traveling safety team equipment. Of those items, the safety team equipment is something that has been lacking in NASCAR for some time, and may be the reason for the bid. On the other hand, if ISC did want to promote CART, it would probably be a good thing for the series. The PR and marketing has been abysmal since the IRL/CART split, while at the same time ISC has promoted NASCAR into some very impressive publicity figures.

2004-01-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

A New Year, A New Season

Football is nearly over, and that means that in the distance you can hear the high revving of finely tuned engines. OK, so Barcelona is a long way away, but BMW.WilliamsF1 are out of the gate with their contender for the new year.

They clearly chose the revolutionary approach over the evolutionary one. With the short split nose, nothing like this has been seen on track in, I dare say, for ever. The theory is probably sound -- Williams has a lot of money to make sure that the car will work on track, and the radical changes promise an interesting year to come.

2004-01-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

Back Home Again in Pennsylvania

So that Orange Alert thingy was no big deal in the Thousand Islands in upstate New York. Actually, it may just have been that I bore a remarkable resemblance to Chevy Chase in Vacation, but we sailed through the border with no problem. We did see cars in front of us getting at least a desultory look in the trunk, and having to chat to the border agent for a while. But apparently driving up with a station wagon containing two adults, two young children (4 and 1.5) and two large (~60 lb) dogs in the cargo area, plus a roof shell, made us look very unlike terrorists. Anyway, we only had to have our passports flicked through, and then we were waved back into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Note for future travel: young children are very hard to entertain in the back seat once it gets dark. Consequently no winter driving stint should be longer than about eight hours. Twelve hours is way too much, although the alternative (staying a dog-friendly motel on the way north) was pretty bad too.

2003-12-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Great White North

Greetings from Canada (Montreal to be specific). I apologize in advance for any oddities in this post -- I am trying to use a French keyboard, and many tag-specific bits of punctuation are in very odd places, not to mention shift and return!.

I really don't have much to say, I'm just hiding from the in-laws and watching a little football right now. Tomorrow we get to brave the border crossing back into the U.S. and see if the Orange alert will slow us down at all. As far as I can see, so far the terrorists have made California shake, introduced mad cow disease into the Northwest, and sent L.A. into a total panic. Since the focus of attention is West, I hope we will be OK in the far Northeast.

In the meantime, I have found myself in the odd position of trying to explain (in Franglais -- broken English & broken French) the US attitude towards George Bush to locals. They really don't seem to understand either him or the fact that the press don't seem to editorialize about him. But how do you say 'Whore' in French?

2003-12-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

Glimmerings of Sanity

The CEO of Highmark Inc., the local franchise/subsidiary of Blue Cross has come to the conlcusion that national health insurance is inevitable, and has said so in public.

A group of state senators are making a bid to increase the state income tax in the face of massive deficits and, among other things, failing cities. Our local NPR station reported the results of a poll that indicated almost half the population supported this, with another 42% continuing to believe that you can get something for nothing. I can't find a link to the poll, however.

William Safire is noticing that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. (NYT link -- registration required (try cpunks/cpunks) and it will be pay-only in a week or so).

That's it for now, but I hope that there'll be more to come.

2003-12-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

Movie Time

OK, I'll grant you that I have previously said that I don't really go to movies any more. But that's a relative thing. My wife and I still have a few movies we want to see each year, and a couple of those are ones that we want to see on the big screen instead of renting for TV. Last night, one of those must sees opened to much fanfare. An unusual confluence of events combined, and we found ourselves with both a baby sitter and a pair of tickets to the 7:15 show, so we actually went to see The Return of the King less than 24 hours after it debuted (in the Pittsburgh area, at least). I really can't remember the last time we saw an anticipated blockbuster on the day it opened.

Now, I know that it is fashionable to extend one's geek cred by dissing popular films, but we enjoyed it. My parents used to rent videos and give them ratings based on whether the movie could keep them both awake when they watched it after dinner. There is no doubt in my mind that this flim is a "Two No-Sleeper".

The only thing that I wonder is why intermissions have fallen by the wayside. At over three hours, the theater isn't going to get many showings a night, but a ten-minute break in the middle would help their concession sales and give the audience a chance to stretch a bit. It seems only decent...

2003-12-15T14:11:00.000-05:00

Spider Holes

No point in mentioning Hussein's capture, everyone's done that. (D'oh, now I have too).

However, this morning we took the dogs to the vet so that they could get their health certificates in preparation for a little international holiday travel. I saw more morning television news in the waiting room than I see most months. In particular, I watched one reporter climbing out of the "spider hole" and walking through some woods, showing the farm where Hussein was captured. They then cut back to the anchor desk, where the talking heads rhapsodized for several tens of seconds about how amazing it was to see their reporter getting access to the hideaway.

Perhaps it's just cynical of me, but as soon as I saw that footage, I had this image of a long line of reporters and their camera operators standing just out of shot, all waiting their turn to climb into the hole so the folks back home could see them on top of the situation. I certainly failed to find anything astounding that this footage is being pushed only 24 hours after the news broke.

Oh, and since you asked (or not) the dogs are both fine. The vet was impressed with how well Markov is walking after her little flying incident back in July, and they are certified free of "Zoonotic diseases and Rabies". Now the next challenge is going to be 10 hours in a car with children and dogs.

2003-12-11T09:51:00.000-05:00

More Local Stuff

Moving from politics to passions, I was glad to read in this morning's paper that our local motorsports facility BeaveRun has had a solid first year and looks like it will be around for a while. There is a limit to how many Sunday races I can subject my family to, but we did take a picnic out there one Sunday and watched some very good racing at a reasonable price. The one major improvement that I'd like to see them make is to extend the PA system out to all the spectating areas. Although they have some nice hills from which to view the track, you can't hear the announcer from them.

We'll probably try to take in a couple of days next summer too, but that combined with the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix pretty much maxes out my store of good will!

2003-12-11T09:38:00.000-05:00

Local Stuff

Fester beats me to this story from this morning's paper about attempts by the Pennsylvania GOP to prevent Pittsburgh from becoming the eighth and largest city in the state to declare itself "distressed" as part of an attempt to raise revenue.

As with many cities, Pittsburgh has seen significant suburban flight in the past few years, with the bedroom communities in Allegheny county filing up with daytime commuters. These municipalities collect income and property taxes, but none of it flows to the city. Instead the city has to make do with taxing its own residents, some of the businesses, and imposing a $10/year commuter tax on anyone who works in the city -- an amount that hasn't changed in some forty years. Many of the details are summarized in this column by Brian O'Neill. As he points out, fundamentally the state controls how local officials can raise money, and this attempt by the GOP to block the distressed status is primarily an effort to keep the commuter tax at $10.

In the meantime, my state senator (Jane Orie, R-McCandless -- I live in the suburbs) is leading a separate but related fight to prevent Pittsburgh from seeking any new sources of revenue until it can balance its budget. That seems to be putting the cart before the horse, but what do I know?

2003-12-10T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Word of the Lord?

At about the same time that the media ignores the conviction of Christian terrorist Clayton Waagner, South Knox Bubba and TBogg point out one of the sources of the ignorance that fuels the movement. Some might call it parody, some might call it child abuse. Others might even ponder the irony that this seems more extreme than Landover Baptist Church, but they are calling for that web site to be shut down. I'm torn in trying to identify my favorite part of the site. Is it

The comments on atheists ("Grumpy and bitter")
Hopsiah the Kanga-Jew
Professor Giraffenstein answers your science questions (with links!)
Or Ruby, the chaste lioness, who will marry our hero if only we know our old testament spouses

The competition is pretty fierce, but I gotta go with Ruby. While the scientific ravings of ol' Doc G. are amusing, the sheer irrelevance of Ruby's quest is mind boggling.

2003-12-08T09:44:00.000-05:00

BCS Follies

Let me start off by saying that I had Texas Football season tickets for the six years that I lived in Austin. Good ones too, between the 45's on the east side of the stands. This may lead to a certain bias against Oklahoma Football, although a much bigger one against the Aggies. My current perspective from the Great White (for today, anyway) North hasn't turned me into a Pitt fan, or even a Steelers fan (that's a different comment) so Texas is still my default team to follow.

That said, what on earth has the BCS wrought? While there are many bad things about the BCS system[1], this week's revelations will surely show it for the fraud that it is. Well, they won't because there is too much money at stake, but they should. Having the consensus #1 pick in both polls miss the national championship does seem a bit daft. It certainly wouldn't have happened before the institution of the BCS, since Oklahoma either would have tried to play on Saturday night instead of resting on their laurels, secure in the knowledge that they had made the big game already.

What this really drives home, however, is the incredible over reliance of the BCS on strength-of-schedule. It not only appears in directly in the average, but it is also explicitly included in each computer ranking, and implicitly included in the human polls, and even kind of shows up in the quality win column. While the computer poll algorithms are confidential, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that adding up all the strength of schedule contributions to the BCS rankings would show that it accounts for over 50% of the total ratings. Since the computer polls have to agree not to look at margin of victory, or the other things on which human pollsters rely, they are pretty much constrained to W/L record and SOS.

According to the charts over at ESPN, simply allowing strength of schedule to remain implicit (i.e. subtracting out the explicit SOS rankings) leaves OSU and USC playing for the title instead of LSU. It's still not the human poll result, but it seems a little closer to reason. At least the consensus number one would be playing for the championship. If we leave out the "quality win" kludge as well and just look at the poll averages (human and computer) then the result is finally correct.

[1] The worst thing about the BCS is that it pretty much destroys the bowl system it is trying to save. Suddenly only one college bowl game has much national interest at all, and it isn't even played on New Year's Day. I use to religiously nurse my hangover on January 1st in front of 12-14 hours of solid football -- like a squirrel stocking up for the long cold season ahead. For the past few years, I may occasionally glance at a game, but that's it. For me, the BCS has pretty much pushed the bowl games into irrelevance in a way that a playoff system just wouldn't.

2003-12-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

Missing the Bandwagon

Pete started it, and Chuck fueled it, and now everybody (well, a few people anyway) are making lists of their personal worst movies. But my problem is that by Pete's restrictive rules, I find it hard to come up with an example of a bad movie. The thing is that I lost the movie habit big time in grad school, when I was too busy and too poor to go to the movies very often[1]. If a bad movie is on TV or video, I generally walk away from it to reclaim some of my life, and under Pete's rules I can't list a movie like that. So my list is short, although perhaps as I look at other people's lists, I'll dredge up some long-suppressed memories

Eraser I saw this one at Trinity. It not only has bad science, it has bad science for no good reason -- no plot developments or anything. That bugs me.
Driven Given my proclivities, I had to see this. I even had to buy the DVD in an attempt to convince Hollywood to either make a decent racing movie or to finally release Grand Prix on DVD. Although IMDB now has an Amazon link to the DVD, they still have it listed as Not Yet Released with no anticipated release date.
Angels and Insects I think I saw this one at the same party as Chuck. However I saw it through my eyelids. But I was in front of the TV for the entire thing, so I'm going to count it.

At the moment, that's it. I'm going to keep thinking about it, however.

[1] I did go to see Schindler's List at my local movie theater in Wilmette. I wasn't motivated by high art as much as by the need to get as much air conditioned time as possible for my entertainment dollar.

2003-12-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

Shrill

Paul Krugman is on a roll today. High on the must-read list, but if you don't believe in letting the New York Times know who you are, this is my favorite paragraph so far:

In the early months of the Bush administration, one often heard that "the grown-ups are back in charge." But if being a grown-up means planning for the future — in fact, if it means anything beyond marital fidelity — then this is the least grown-up administration in American history. It governs like there's no tomorrow.

He also claims that the stalled energy bill has a special provision to help Shreveport get its first Hooters "restaurant" (I use that word advisedly, since I had always supposed the purpose of a restaurant was to serve food, which Hooters -- in my limited experience -- really doesn't do.)