I am off to taking two HP printers and one television to the “free electronic recycling” place at Home Depot this afternoon.
These two printers work perfectly, but we have a wireless one that all our devices are connected to. There are also no drivers for Trisha’s Mac or my Windows 7 PC for these anymore. So they have been boat anchors for over ten years.
This reminds me of my old HP letter quality daisy wheel printer that I bought for $900 or so in 1985. I used that to print from my DEC PDP 11/23, a minicomputer the size of a small refrigerator. When I started using IBM PCs in 1987, I had to make a special cable to connect to it, but it worked great with WordPerfect and then with Microsoft Word. It didn’t have graphics, but it was a great “automatic typewriter.” Its housing and shell was steel. Controltec was started on that printer. Eventually I bought an HP LaserJet 4L for less than $500 that replaced the letter quality printer.
I remember it hurt in the heart when I took that printer sometime in 1995 and threw it into the office dumpster. It worked perfectly. I would still be working now, 20 years later. That’s how it was built.
Functional obsolescence is one of the most wasteful byproducts of our modern tech society. I am contributing to it like everyone else. I don’t have a good answer. I recycle my old gear. But where does it go?
Deep in rural Texas, Joe Ransom (Nicolas Cage) leads a crew of men whose job it is to kill off weak trees in the woods by chipping them with poisoned hatches that inject herbicide. Once the trees die they will be replaced with stronger stock. When Gary Jones, a 15-year-old boy (Tye Sheridan of Mud), asks him for a job, Joe senses that the boy not only needs money, but a role-model, he takes a chance with him that ultimately leads to a role of fatherly protector.
Based on the novel by Larry Brown, directed by David Gordon, this is a gripping tale of deep, destitute poverty and hopelessness in an America that seems to have been left behind in the woods. Gary’s father is a worthless wreck of a man who thinks nothing of beating up his son to get to his few hard-earned dollars so he can buy another bottle of cheap booze. Everyone seems to be living in a daze of alcohol and cigarettes, interspersed with brutal violence, and surrounded by snarling dogs on chains.
In this movie, Nicolas Cage gets back to his indie roots in a gripping performance as a hard-drinking and hot-tempered man who is desperately looking for something worthwhile to live for while he is surrounded by nothing but endless despair everywhere he looks. He occupies his time with mechanical sex with prostitutes, stupefied sessions at a hole-in-the-wall bar and blank-stared gazes from his couch at the TV. Gary seems to give him the purpose he needs.
Rating: ***
Relevant Edit: My friends BW and JB commented collectively: The guy who plays the kid’s alcoholic father was actually a homeless man from the Austin area. He died right after the movie came out but he did an excellent job in the movie as well. He may have been an even more compelling character than Cage’s.
Steve Stockman was born in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, outside Detroit. He graduated from Dondero High School in Royal Oak, Michigan. From 1985 to 1986, he attended San Jacinto College but dropped out because he suffered from what he called “partying syndrome”. In 1977 when he was a teenager police officers found valium in his possession after a girlfriend allegedly hid the substance in his clothes. He was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, but the charge was later dropped. He was homeless for a time. He later turned around his life and became a born-again Christian. In 1990, he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Houston–Clear Lake. He worked as a computer salesman in Friendswood, Texas.
This is how the Wikipedia entry for Steve Stockman starts.
A teacher in Santa Cruz took a class of 40 high school students on a walking field trip. The plan was to take them to the local bookstore, then visit the Community Center, and if there was time left hang out in the park.
Shortly after getting underway, he became light-headed and eventually he realized that somebody had slipped him some drug. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to identify the one student who would be stupid enough to do that and confronted him. The student admitted putting LSD into his coffee.
The teacher had to make a quick decision while he still could. There was one teaching assistant with him. He could explain, hand the students over to him, and go home. But he didn’t want to ruin the trip for everyone.
He made the decision, for better or for worse, to ride it out.
Here is his report in all the flashing, melting and pulsing detail: Field Trippin’.
The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be built on a mountaintop in Chile.
[artist’s impression – click for picture credit]It will be the largest telescope in the world by far. Its size will allow us to see further into the distant past of the universe than ever before. There will be enough resolution to see planets around distant stars in our own galactic neighborhood. We will even be able to distinguish surface features, like changing of ice caps over seasons as well as changes of coloration on the surface. We will have a way to “see” life on different planets. And it will all happen within the next 15 years. Here is a good The Guardian article with lots of detailed information.
The total cost of the E-ELT is 1083 million euros, spread over ten years, in 2012 euros. The funding of the E-ELT project is in three parts. About one third comes from the normal ESO budget. Another third comes from the accession of Brazil and its future payments. A final 435 million euros comes from additional commitments from the other 14 Member States.
In my research I could not find any American involvement or American money, and I experienced a peculiar sense of bitter-sweetness.
First, bitter, because I am used to America being on the very forefront of technological advances, and I am used to being proud of being an American for that reason, among others. This time, America is noticeably absent, and it gave me a twinge.
Second, sweet, because I am glad American money and power is not involved. Our government and its funding have proven fickle when considering decade-long projects. We’re good at blowing money at alarming rates to fill the coffers of defense contractors and fossil-fuel companies. But when it comes to science and technology, I don’t trust our Congress, and its Committee on Science, Space and Technology, I don’t think they have the best interest of the country and the advance of science in mind.
Just look at some of the ranking members of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology:
This picture is right off the site of Rep. Broun. Check out the gun! In case you don’t know, Rep. Broun is a medical doctor, therefore a scientist, I’d think, but he calls evolution “lies straight from the pit of hell.” He also believes that the earth was created in six days. I’d say he might not be very interested about what happened before the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago.
Here is Rep. Neugebauer. This is right from his congressional site. This is the congressman who berated a female park ranger on national TV last fall when she was doing her job keeping people out of a closed National Park during the government shutdown. The image right next to his face is a derrick, one of those most scientific of objects. You might take a wild guess about where Neugebauer’s priorities lie.
So, I think it’s sweet that American money is not involved in the construction and operation of the E-ELT. That way it’s safely kept away from the purse strings of our people, congress and the dumbed-down Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Yes, I didn’t say I missed an IRS deadline – which always comes to mind when reading the two words IRS and Deadline together.
According to this article in the Dailydot.com, the IRS has 110,000 computers running Windows, and only 52,000 of those have been upgraded to Windows 7. The other ones are still running Windows XP.
The problem is that Windows XP is now retired and no longer supported by Microsoft. The IRS, as well as the rest of the tech community, has known about this deadline since 2008. They blame budget cuts for the delays in upgrading.
Now they will have to pay Microsoft for very expensive “custom support” to eventually upgrade those machines, or buy new ones altogether.
It must be nice to be a company that can push the IRS around. It took Microsoft almost 40 years to get to that position, but apparently, they have arrived.
Today I had a late afternoon flight out of New York and nothing on my agenda for the morning. So I decided to drive the half hour from the Kennedy Airport area to Oyster Bay to visit President Theodore Roosevelt’s grave.
I must admit that I hardly ever visit graves. To me, this was more a visit of historical education.
The grave is nicely fenced in so there is no direct access. Of course, I was able to stick my camera through the bars and get a good view of the gravestone.
Looking into the other direction to the right, Oyster Bay is visible behind the April-bare trees.
While I was there in a contemplative mood, two separate and distinct feelings hit me:
Roosevelt was only 61 years old when he died. That’s only four years older than I am right now. I have a tendency to compare myself and my stages in life with famous people, and the outcome is usually awe of what they accomplished, and motivation for me.
Then it struck me that while I was there, there wasn’t another soul around. In fact, I venture to say that I was the only person in that entire cemetery this Good Friday morning. Roosevelt, powerful and popular as he was when he was living, his grave is now solitary, and anyone can walk up to it, sit at the bench, and most likely be there all alone for hours in reflection, with no interruption from anyone.
This place, that must have been the center of the American stage when Roosevelt was buried in 1919, is now an empty place of solitary reflection.
Today I visited an agency in New York. We had a meeting in the 19th floor penthouse of their building. I looked out the window and saw this view.
On the left side is the newly completed “Freedom Tower” or One World Trade Center. With 1776 feet tall to the top of the antenna, it is now the highest building in the United States (and the 4th highest in the world).
To the right, in the same photograph, is the famous Woolworth building, which was the world’s tallest building just 100 years ago in 1913 at 792 feet tall.
The top 30 floors of the Woolworth Building are currently being converted to luxury apartments. They will sell for an estimated $3000 per square foot when they are completed in 2015.
Here is an old picture showing an entirely different background.
Obama nominated Dr. Vivek Murthy, a physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School with a stellar reputation. The surgeon general has no influence at all over the regulation of guns. The job of the surgeon general is to educate the public about health issues by providing insightful information and to guide the federal government in its public health efforts. The regulation of guns falls exclusively under the already anemic and underfunded Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is in no way related to the surgeon general.
So why would the National Rifle Association be so opposed to a star physician’s nomination? Because Dr. Murthy supports stricter gun regulations. The gun lobby makes broad claims about gun ownership and how it helps the public health. Those claims don’t even hold up to the most trivial studies which clearly demonstrate that gun ownership leads to increased rates of injury and death by suicide and homicide, and has little impact on self-defense in general. In short, the NRA’s claims are bogus at best, and I personally would interpret them as fraudulent, deceptive and possibly even irresponsible. But that, of course, is only my opinion.
I have a general problem if a special interest group actively needs to block information from the public to uphold its argument or case. This is reminiscent of the 1970s, when big tobacco lobbied that smoking was not dangerous or addictive. They blocked or discredited valid studies by disinformation and a general campaign of dumbing down the public to keep their racket going as long as they could. Of course, eventually, the public figured it out and they had to concede.
The gun lobby has the same problem right now and they know it. This is the only reason I can think of why they would try to block Dr. Murthy’s nomination. They are afraid of a prominent physician doing his job and disseminating proper scientific and data-driven information to the public that would, of course, expose the gun lobby’s claims as bogus.
The NRA is blocking Dr. Murthy’s nomination because it is scared.
Recently there have been many headlines about problems with meat in China. While China has food safety rules, they are often not followed or companies don’t even know them. Wal-Mart buys a lot of meat products from China and has therefore suffered from some of these violations, both in China and the US. Some major restaurant chains have also been caught in the crossfire.
Examples cited are that DNA tests have shown that meat passed off as lamb contained fox or rat meat. Meat labeled as mutton was actually 95% duck. Wal-Mart in China had to recall donkey meat because it contained large quantities of fox and other animals. This is a frightening thought to me. And what’s up with donkey meat?
I have not eaten any red meat, venison, sausage, cold cuts, or processed meat of any type for over 30 years. The exceptions in my diet are: I eat chicken and turkey, usually in the native form where I recognize the actual animal. However, I have made exceptions when eating chicken strips or nuggets, or chicken in Chinese food. My only “processed meat” exception is pepperoni on pizza.
So, overall, this news about tainted meat from China does not affect me too much – but just writing this has made me think hard about chicken in Chinese food. How do I know that Chinese food chicken isn’t actually rat, fox, cat or dog?
It’s tax day. Most Americans do not think of April 15 as a happy day.
nationalpriorities.org
The chart above shows where our tax dollars actually go. Note that Social Security and Medicare taxes are not included here. This just deals with the federal income taxes.
I am surprised how big a chunk the military and veterans benefits together make up. I am also surprised how large the healthcare slice is. Healthcare should be paid by the individuals and their insurance companies and funded by premiums. Why are we spending tax dollars on this?
I am also surprised how small the portions for science and education are. Really?
This chart shows in stark figures where our nation’s priorities lie – pun intended – I got this from nationalpriorities.org.
A nation’s values come alive when you examine what a nation spends its money on. Ours spends it on military, healthcare and interest on debt.
We are NOT spending it on education and science.
This will catch up with us, it’s just a matter of time.
