Jim’s Random Notes

In a thinly reported move the other day, House and Senate Democratic leaders decided to “fast track” coming up with a compromise health care bill.  Rather than forming the usual conference committee that includes members from both parties, the fast track approach will be held behind closed doors and include only the Democratic leadership from both houses, along with representatives from the Obama administration.  The plan is for the House to amend the Senate’s health care bill and then pass the result to the Senate for ratification.

The President, who a year ago said that his approach would involve “bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are,”  is now meeting in secret to force through unpopular legislation?  So much for campaign promises, bipartisanship, and open government.

I believe that the proposed health care finance legislation being considered is a bad idea, in large part due to the reasons I pointed out in my January 2003 blog entry, The Fallacy of Affordable Health Insurance.  The Administration and its Democratic lackies pay lip service to those arguments, but there’s little in the way of effective cost containment in the proposed legislation.  There are, however, plenty of instances of filling dissenters’ mouths with gold, the most egregious being the part that has the Federal government pay for the expansion of Medicaid in Nebraska.  Forever.  Funny how Sen. Nelson of Nebraska changed his vote after that bit was added.

The Democratic Congressional leadership and the Obama administration should not be taking this behind closed doors approach to the health care legislation.  Or any legislation, come to think of it.  They promised us open government, only to revert to business as usual whenever it looks like things aren’t going their way.  I know that the President wants health care legislation passed before his State of the Union speech, but doing it this way goes against everything he said he holds dear.

I said that I’d give President Obama a chance to see if he really does live up to the standards that he set forth.  If he continues on this course, I’ll know that he’s no better than any other politician who puts his and his party’s agenda ahead of the good of the nation.  I’m not terribly surprised, and I suppose I shouldn’t be disappointed.

I guess it was to be expected.  It’s nearly impossible to find reasoned discussion of the “Climategate” issue.  For example, Curtis Brainard’s Hacked E-mails and “Journalistic Tribalism” in Columbia Journalism Review is a pretty even handed look at the major issues that are being discussed in the online debate.  It strikes me as particularly amusing that most of the comments to that article are about as tribal as you can imagine.  We have rabid conspiracy theorists on both sides, an ongoing “Yeah?  Sez who?” shouting match, an argument over a fairly minor matter that the two parties involved are using in order to prove their “green” creds, and a few other sideshows that have little or nothing to do with the actual content of the article.  Picking the signal from the noise in the comments is almost impossible.

In short, it’s business as usual.

I’ll admit to being a skeptic when it comes to anthropogenic global warming (AGW).    There is enough dissent among people who I regard as credible sources that I doubt that the science is as settled as some would have me believe.  There are enough questions about historical reconstructions and the use of current data to project long term trends that I remain unconvinced.  That may make me a “denier” in some people’s eyes.  So be it.  But I’m willing to look at the data and re-evaluate my position.  All too many people on either side of the controversy are unwilling to entertain any view that might conflict with their preconceived notions.

I mentioned the other day that it’d be nice to see the raw data.  Perhaps I should have kept my big mouth shut, because at least some of the raw data is available.  RealClimate.org has started a Data Sources page that has links to more data than I’ll be able to digest any time soon. I don’t know enough yet to say how complete or reliable this list of sources is, and it’s only part of the equation.  Unless there are notes about how the data are gathered and whether the “raw” data is preprocessed before being presented, it’s almost as useless as no data.  But it’s a good start.  Now what we need is for those who have used the data to be fully open and honest about the methods they used to reach any conclusions.

I regret that I failed to include RealClimate.org in my list of sources in my previous post.  The other sources I posted links to would all fall into the “skeptic” camp.  Some would call them deniers.  RealClimate was started by a group of climate researchers with the intent of spreading the word about climate change.  The postings there seem invariably to support the notion of global warming, but there is good information to be gleaned from them.

Another resource, this time decidedly not supportive of the AGW hypothesis, is Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit.

I’m thinking I need to post a Dramatis personæ so I can keep track of all the players in this bit of politico-science.  I worry, though, that it will get out of hand.  There are lots of players.

Eric Raymond, a well respected figure in the open source community, has commented on a particularly egregious bit of code revealed, in which a “fudge factor” is applied to some data used in the production of a temperature graph.  If you have trouble appreciating the seriousness of this, it’s summed up pretty well below in one of the comments:

Wait just a second. Explain this to me like I’m 12. They didn’t even bother to fudge the data? They hard-coded a hockey stick carrier right into the program?!!

ESR says: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what they did.

I haven’t seen that particular transgression addressed in any of the apologists explanations.  To be fair, it’s talking about computer code, which has an eye-roll index of about 9.998 among the general populace.

And another quote, just because I found it very amusing whether or not it turns out to be true:

They didn’t just cook the data; they marinated it for a week, put on a rub, laid it in the smoker for a day and a half, sliced it up, wrapped it in bacon, dipped it in batter, rolled it around in flour, and deep fried it.

It turns out that the code referencing the fudged value is commented out.  That makes one wonder, though, if it was ever used.  In my experience as a programmer, code that’s commented out was used at some point and is left there either to be used again, or for documentation to show what was tried.

Of course, we could answer the question if we could get the actual raw data that the program was intended to process.  Then we could run the program with and without the artificial adjustment and see the results.  It’d also help to compare the two outputs with whatever graph or report the resulting data was used for.

There’s quite a bit of discussion in that thread about the validity of the data in question, and the appropriateness of “adjusting” tree ring data to fit the observed temperature data.  This is all in an attempt to address a well known and widely studied (by climate researchers) divergence problem.  The basic issue is that tree ring data seems to correspond pretty well with observed temperature from the late 1800s (the start of reliable temperature data), but then diverge.  Where thermometers show warming, the tree ring data do not.  As yet, there is no widely accepted explanation for the divergence problem.  What we don’t know, since we don’t have reliable temperature data before 1880 or so, is whether the tree ring data diverges from actual temperature at points in the past.  It seems to me that, until we can explain the divergence, any information based on tree ring data is less than reliable.

The more I read, the more convinced I am that each side is overstating its case.  Those who firmly believe in AGW are misrepresenting their conclusions as definitive proof when there does appear to be significant doubt, and the deniers wouldn’t be convinced by a boiling Baltic.  It’s tribalism at its best.

The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle, and there are plenty of people calling for some sanity in the discussion.  Unfortunately, the firm believers have the upper hand at the moment, and any calls for more reasoned discussion are met with accusations of “denier!”  The truth is out there, but it’s lost in the unthinking religious zealotry.

A few more comments about “Climategate”:

• The released files in question were not “hacked” from the CRU’s computers. Somebody (still anonymous) who worked there collected that information and posted it on a public bulletin board site where it was picked up. Interestingly, it appears that he first sent it to news organizations who just sat on it. Could it be that the media have a vested interest in keeping the global warming hoax alive?
• The global temperature data that the CRU was supposedly maintaining is a work of fiction, with perhaps some fact thrown in when it happens to fit the desired outcome. Examinations of the computer code that collates temperature data from multiple sources is rife with adjustments that the programmers describe in comments as “arbitrary,” “artificial,” and in at least one case, “fudge factor.” The data that comes out bears very little relationship to the data that goes in.
• One of the fundamental principles of collaborative science is that when you publish a result you also publish the raw data and the methods that you used to arrive at your result. That typically includes computer code. CRU went to great lengths to avoid releasing their raw data and their programs. We now know why: their methods weren’t scientific at all, but rather constructed to arrive at a predetermined result.
• For a very good, if somewhat heavy-handed, discussion of the information revealed by the released emails and other documents, you should definitely read Climategate: Caught Green-Handed. A link on that page will take you to the PDF.
• The Climate Research Unit website is being served from the CUR Emergency Webserver. I don’t know why. I am unable to find anything on the site regarding the leaked emails and documents. The IPCC site doesn’t appear to have anything about it, either.
• Phil Jones, director of the CRU, will step down until the completion of an independent review. If he had any integrity left, he’d resign completely. Of course, if there was any integrity in that system, his ass would have been fired a week ago.
• Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at Pennsylvania State University who is prominently featured in the released emails, maintains that he did nothing wrong and that nothing untoward went on. Mann, if you recall, is the primary person behind the controversial hockey stick graph that, among other things, tries to remove the Medieval Warm Period from the historical record.
• Did I mention that the global temperature data provided by the CRU, and upon which governments worldwide base important policy decisions is essentially made up? Any decision based on data provided by the CRU is now suspect.
• The malefactors at the CRU and their accomplices in government, academia, and industry have done a grave disservice to the field of climate science in particular, and all science in general. Anybody reading about what went on here is bound to wonder if all scientific research is carried out in a similar manner. In one sense, this is probably a good thing in that it should force an independent review of all government funded scientific research.
• If you realize now that you got sucked in by the global warming hype and you want to get a more balanced view of the real science, a good place to start is Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That?. Also take a look at JunkScience.com, and the Science & Public Policy Institute.

You’ve probably heard by now about what the press is calling “Climategate”:  the release of internal emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University that reveal some questionable practices on the part of climate researchers.  Those questionable practices are bad enough in any case, but particularly unforgivable when the reports and data are being used by governments throughout the world to make important decisions.

I’ve long been skeptical of the entire “global warming” debate, and especially skeptical of those so-called scientists who claim that the science behind the dire warnings is solid and irrefutable.  The information revealed recently shows that I was right to be skeptical.

When I first read reports of the released documents, I thought that the press was taking things out of context and making things look much worse than they actually are.  But then I came across the raw data.  The quotes in the media are not at all out of context.  The researchers really did say that they can’t account for the recent decrease in global temperatures, that they intentionally altered data, deleted emails, and actively suppressed information that did not fit the pre-determined outcome.  They also attempted to suppress dissenting views by manipulating the peer review process.  In short, they weren’t doing science, but rather corrupting science to further their own agendas.

It’s difficult to say what those agendas are.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that money is high on the list.  The amount of money distributed in grants for climate research is staggering, and that gravy train will continue as long as there’s a perceived threat.  The more dire the warnings, the more money pours in for research into determining the extent of the problem and finding possible solutions.  A researcher who concludes that there is no problem will find that his funding is not renewed.

This case is a very good example, too, of what happens all too often when government funds scientific research.  In this case, the government agencies funding the research existed in large part because of the perceived problem.  As long as the research they were funding continued to support the existence of the problem, the government agency would receive more funding.

The fundamental problem with the whole global warming debate is that nobody really knows whether or not the temperature is rising.  I’ve seen data that indicates a decrease in global temperatures, some that shows essentially no increase, and some that shows a marked increase.  And that’s just from readings of supposedly accurate instruments since 1885 or so.  Prior to that we only have reconstructions that use various methods like dendrochronology (tree ring dating), ice core sampling, lake sediment core sampling, and many others.  Each of those methods has a certain margin of error and some of them (dendrochronology in particular) might not even be appropriate for the purpose of estimating historical temperatures.

There are very large disagreements among the many global temperature reconstructions I’ve seen, to the point that I can’t imagine how any researcher can say that his method is correct.  Most of them don’t even come close to agreeing with the observed values for the last 130 years, meaning that either the reconstruction method is unreliable or the observed values are in error.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the Contemporary Time Series and Historical Proxies charts at JunkScience.com.  Understand, JunkScience doesn’t make those charts:  they get the charts from reports published by other researchers.

Any honest researcher looking at the data has to say, “I don’t know.”  There just isn’t any credible data to show a significant (if any) long-term warming trend.  There might be one, but the data doesn’t show it.  Certainly not to my satisfaction, and anybody trying to convince me otherwise better be prepared to support their interpretation with hard data, and explain why conflicting data is irrelevant.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not out-of-hand dismissals and ad hominem arguments.

It’ll be interesting if the recent revelations of questionable practices at the CRU result in similar revelations at other climate research facilities.  I’ll also be interested in what effect these revelations have on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week.

I sometimes wonder if newspaper reporters and editors actually think about their use of language.  I’m not talking about obscure grammar or punctuation rules, but larger issues like what words actually mean.  Nowhere is this more evident than in newspaper articles that mention “risk of death” when reporting on health studies.

A good example is a two year old Seattle Times article titled, Getting in Shape Reduces Death Risk.  The headline itself sets off a big warning bell in my brain.  After all, it’s a given (Ray Kurzweil’s predictions notwithstanding) that the risk of death is 100%.  You are going to die.  So I immediately look with suspicion upon any report that talks about reducing my risk of death.  I give newspaper headlines the benefit of the doubt, though, because they have limited space and need to make a bold statement to attract eyeballs.  But I expect the article to be more explicit.

A newspaper article that has such a bold statement in the headline should make it clear in the first paragraph exactly from what.  That is, if the headline says, “Vitamin C Reduces Risk of Death,” then the first paragraph better say, “…from scurvy.”  Otherwise I’m going to think that I’ll live forever if I take enough Vitamin C.  Wouldn’t the snake oil nutritional supplement industry love that?

Not only does the Seattle Times article fail to point out from what in the first paragraph, it fails almost entirely to qualify the statement about reducing the “risk of death.”  The risk being mitigated by being “in shape” is never explicitly identified.  But there are plenty of statements implying that being “in shape” means that you’ll live forever.  Here’s the first paragraph:

The more fit you are, the longer you’re likely to live, according to a large study of veterans that applies to black men as well as white men. The Veterans Affairs researchers found that the “highly fit” men in the study had half the risk of death as those who were the least fit. Being “very highly fit” cut the risk even more, by 70 percent.

[This is sounding good.  If I'm 'very highly fit,' my risk of dying is 70% less.]

Third paragraph:

“A little bit of exercise goes a long way,” said Peter Kokkinos, lead author of the study. “Thirty minutes a day, five days a week of brisk walking is likely to reduce the risk of mortality by 50 percent if not more.”

[Oh, wow.  I just have to take a walk every day and there's a 50% chance that I'll live forever?]

Halfway through the article, there is this paragraph:

A treadmill test was used to determine the fitness level of the veterans at facilities in Washington, D.C., and Palo Alto, Calif. The men _ who had an average age of 60 _ were then put into four categories ranging from “low fit” to “very highly fit.” Researchers followed up for an average of eight years to see who was still alive.

Aha!  So the risk being mitigated is … what, exactly?  That if you’re “in shape” at 60, you have a higher probability of living to 68 than if you’re not “in shape” at 60.  What a let down.  That’s the only paragraph in the entire article that even comes close to identifying what risk is mitigated by physical fitness.

The rest of the article is full of statements that, taken literally, are totally misleading.

The study also sets itself apart by looking at how exercise affects blacks, whose death rates are higher than whites. 

The study showed that as fitness levels went up, the risk of death dropped for both blacks and whites.

The researchers themselves didn’t even know the cause of death of those who died.  Nor did they know how physically active any of the participants were.  All they knew is how well the person scored (”low fit”, “moderately fit”, “highly fit”, or “very highly fit”) on the treadmill test, and whether that person was still alive eight years later.  In other words, it shows a correlation between fitness and lifespan.  But hardly conclusive evidence.

Normally I’d call an article like this shoddy reporting and an indication of laziness on the part of the reporter and the editor.  But with the “risk of death” silliness, I’m forced to conclude that the reporter and/or editor decided to sensationalize the report, forgetting entirely that words have meaning.

In a speech before a joint session of Congress in September, the President said that his “preferred” package for health care finance reform legislation would carry a price tag of around $900 billion. He also said that he will not sign a bill that raises deficits.

On October 29, the Congressional Budget Office released a preliminary analisys of the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962). According to the summary in that analysis, “enacting H.R. 3962 would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” Sounds good, right? Let’s take a look.

On page 2, under Estimated Bugetary Impact of H.R. 3962:

According to CBO and JCT’s assessment, enacting H.R. 3962 would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion over the 2010-2019 period (see Table 1). In the subsequent decade, the collective effect of its provisions would probably be slight reductions in federal budget deficits. Those estimates are all subject to substantial uncertainty.
(Italics are mine)

That section goes on to summarize the costs and benefits of the bill. Total costs are estimated at $1,055 billion, partially offset “by $167 billion in collections of penalties paid by individuals and employers.” (Penalties for not maintaining the mandated health insurance coverage.) The projected net cost is $894 billion. So how do we get from a net cost of $894 billion to a surplus of $104 billion? “[S]pending changes, which the CBO estimates would save $426 billion, and receipts resulting from the income tax surcharge on high-income individuals and other provisions, which JCT and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $572 billion over that period.”

So the President and Congress weren’t entirely truthful when they said that they’re going to pay for this program by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. They’re going to do what politicians always do: raise taxes and hope for the best. Oh, and they’re going to force employers to either offer health insurance coverage or pay a penalty equal to eight percent of their payroll. What used to be an incentive–an added benefit of employment–has now become a federal mandate. If employers were smart they’d just pay the 8% penalty. That has to be less expensive than the health insurance plans most of them provide.

What the press, the White House, and members of Congress won’t tell you about is what else the CBO report says. For example, under Effect of H.R. 3962 on Discretionary Costs, the report says:

CBO has not completed a comprehensive estimate of the discretionary costs that would be associated with H.R. 3962. Total costs would include those arising from the effects of H.R. 3962 on a variety of federal programs and agencies as well as from a number of new and existing programs subject to future appropriations.

In other words, there are hidden costs. What are they? The report doesn’t say in detail, but it gives a few examples:

• $5 to $10 billion to the Internal Revenue Service for “implementing the eligibility determination, documentation, and verification processes for subsidies.
• $5 to $10 billion to Health and Human Services for “implementing the changes in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP as well as certain reforms to the private insurance market.
• “Costs of a number of grant programs and other changes in Divisions C and D of the legislation. CBO has not completed a review of those provisions.”
• And the big one:
  As noted in the previous section and in Table 1, funding for the proposed Public Health Investment Fund and Prevention and Wellness Trust would also be subject to future appropriation action. The bill would authorize appropriations totaling about $34 billion for those purposes (of which approximately $33 billion would be spent over the next 10 years). The Committee on the Budget has directed CBO to count such spending as direct spending for purposes of budget scorekeeping in the House of Representatives.

I like that last sentence. The Committee on the Budget told CBO not to count $34 billion of costs associated with this legislation. At least the CBO is up front about it. It’d be interesting to ask the Committee members about that one, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, if you add up those costs, which the CBO identified as “major”, but not all inclusive, you end up with an additional $44 to $54 billion, plus whatever those grant programs would cost. That $104 billion “savings” is now $50 billion. Even less when you include the grant programs and other costs that this preliminary report doesn’t specifically mention.

Oh, and then there are Important Caveats Regarding This Preliminary Analysis. The first item is particularly interesting. The report is based on preliminary legislation rather than the bill as actually introduced. Also, “the analysis does not reflect all of the provisions of the bill.”

In other words, there are MORE hidden costs.

The final section, estimating effects of the legislation beyond the first ten years, says that it will decrease deficits slightly. But it also has a few caveats of its own:

These longer-term projections assume that the provisions of H.R. 3962 are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation. For example, the SGR mechanism governing Medicare’s payments to physicians has frequently been modified to avoid reductions in those payments, and legislation to do so again is currently under consideration in the Congress. The bill would put into effect (or leave in effect) a number of procedures that might be difficult to maintain over a long period of time. It would leave in place the 21 percent reduction in the payment rates for physicians currently scheduled for 2010. At the same time, the bill includes a number of provisions that would constrain payment rates for other providers of Medicare services. In particular, increases in payment rates for many providers would be held below the rate of inflation (in expectation of ongoing productivity improvements in the delivery of health care). Based on the extrapolation described above, CBO expects that Medicare spending under the bill would increase at an average annual rate of roughly 6 percent during the next two decades-well below the roughly 8 percent annual growth rate of the past two decades, despite a growing number of Medicare beneficiaries as the baby-boom generation retires.

The long-term budgetary impact of H.R. 3962 could be quite different if those provisions generating savings were ultimately changed or not fully implemented. If those changes arose from future legislation, CBO would estimate their costs when that legislation was being considered by the Congress.

In other words, any projected savings is wishful thinking.

Honestly, you should read the report. It’s only 27 pages long, and about half of those are tables of numbers. Just reading the report without the numbers should be enough to convince you that this bill, like all the others, is a budget buster.

And, of course, that analysis was based on the bill as introduced on October 29. It was hailed as an “894 billion dollar” package. Today, the press is saying a “1.2 trillion dollar” package. I’m unable today to find any information about the additional $330 billion or how it’ll be offset by revenue so that the legislation remains budget neutral.

Not to be outdone, the Republicans published their own plan for health care finance reform. It has no chance of being passed, which is a good thing. The CBO estimate says that it will cover fewer people and will save $68 billion over 10 years. In other words, it’s just a way for Republicans to say, “See? We have a plan!”

Nobody in Congress has the courage to stand up and say, “Stop!” Where’s the voice of moderation here? Congress will mandate billion dollar multi-year environmental impact studies before doing something trivial, but now wants to push through, without sufficient study, legislation that will have a huge impact on every citizen in the country. Why? Because they can and because they think it will get them votes. For all their pronouncements about it being “good for the country” and “the right thing to do,” that’s all they’re really interested in: re-election. Otherwise they’d be much more concerned about the real costs of what they’re so eager to support.

The President has said publicly that he will not sign (or did he say that he would veto it?) a bill that “adds one penny” to the budget deficit.  It’s probably too much to expect the President to subject any legislation to extensive real world analysis, so I’ll have to be content with the CBO’s final report.  But if, as I suspect, the bill that will be presented for a vote in the House on Saturday turns out to require deficit spending, I will expect the President to keep his word.

A few weeks ago I said that Cash for Clunkers is a wreck.  Now that the program has ended, let’s see the results.

The people responsible for Cash for Clunkers are hailing its success.  I’m still having trouble understanding what the goals of the program were beyond a “feel good” measure designed to make people think they’re getting something for nothing from the Obama administration.  By that metric, the program was certainly a success:  people will remember that Uncle Sam helped them buy a car.  Although they might be a little less enthusiastic when they realize that the $4,500 rebate is taxable.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that U.S. consumers and workers were “the clear winners” under the program:

Manufacturing plants have added shifts and recalled workers. Moribund showrooms were brought back to life and consumers bought fuel-efficient cars that will save them money and improve the environment.

Let’s take a look at those three “successes”:

“Manufacturing plants have added shifts and recalled workers.”  Surprisingly true.  But with car sales almost certainly going back to below pre-handout levels, I can’t imagine that those workers will be fully employed for very long.  Manufacturers will rebuild their inventories, find that people still aren’t buying cars, and then lay off the workers again.

“Moribund showrooms were brought back to life.”  Well, yeah.  But with no more giveaways, those showrooms are going to be empty of customers yet again.

“…consumers bought fuel-efficient cars that will save them money and improve the environment.”  This one is full of specious reasoning.  According to press reports, the most popular new vehicle purchased under the program was the Toyota Corolla.  So let’s use it for a little thought experiment.  But first, let’s construct our “average” purchaser under the program.

We’ll assume that the “average” person drives 40 miles to work and back each day, plus cruising around here and there.  Give him 300 miles per week.  Also assume that his clunker was paid off and it got 10 miles per gallon.  So he’s burning 30 gallons of gas a week.  At $2.50 a gallon (current price in the Austin area), that’s $75 per week in gas.

A new 2010 Toyota Corolla lists for between $15,350 and $20,000.  I’m going to assume that the cars were bought from dealers’ inventories and that there was a relatively even mix of feature packages, so the average price for a car was $17,500.  With the $4,500 rebate, the price of the car is $13,000.  I’m going to ignore other incentives  and tax, title, and license, figuring that they’d likely cancel each other out.  And since the car will be destroyed, there is no trade in value.  By the time everything’s said and done, the buyer owes the dealer $13,000 for the car.

The new Corolla gets an estimated 35 MPG on the highway and 27 MPG in the city.  Let’s be generous and assume that the guy will average 30 MPG in all of his driving.  So at 300 miles per week, he’s burning 10 gallons of gas a week at a cost of $25.  Quite a savings over the $75 per week he was burning in the other car.  So his monthly outlay for gas is now $100 rather than $300.  Such a deal!

Except we forgot to pay for the car.  If he pays that $13,000 balance in cash, it’ll take him 65 months (almost five and a half years) to make up the difference with his $200 per month savings in gas.  If he gets a loan for that $13,000 (figure 5 years at 5.25%), his monthly payment is $250.  So he’s saving $200 per month but it’s costing him $250.  That new car that was supposed to save him money is costing him $50 per month.  Oh, and don’t forget the $1,000 that rebate is going to cost on next year’s tax return.  That’s another five months of “savings”.

Granted, there’s some savings for maintenance because the new car is under warranty.  But that savings will be easily offset by the increased cost of insurance on the new car.  I’ll call it a wash.

I purposely was very generous with the numbers here in an attempt to make it look like a good deal.  I just couldn’t make it work out.  In general, you will not come out ahead by buying a new car in the hope that it will “pay for itself” by saving on gas.  Unless you drive a lot more than 500 miles per week.

The claim that the new cars will “improve the environment” is wishful thinking.  At best, driving the new car will cause less harm to the environment than will continuing to drive the new car.  And that statement is based only on the differences in fuel efficiency between the two cars.  It does not take into account the environmental costs of manufacturing the new car or disposing of the old car.

There’s no doubt that the Cash for Clunkers program stimulated some economic activity.  Whether that was good is another matter entirely.  They say that $2.8 billion in incentives were passed out.  We’ll round that up to $3 billion to include the cost of administration and other expenses that were incurred but they’re not telling us about.  Reports say that almost 700,000 new cars were purchased.  If we figure an average price of $20,000 (lots of Camrys were purchased under the program), that $3 billion resulted in $14 billion in direct economic activity.  But if we assume that the average loan on those cars was $15,000, then there is $10.5 billion in new consumer debt out there.  Not a good thing, in my opinion.

Certainly there are people who benefited from the program:  car dealers and manufacturers got a boost, as did those workers who got recalled to the manufacturing plants.  Companies making auto loans couldn’t be complaining.  But it’s not all roses.  Car salvage yards are grumbling a bit because their margins have been slashed:  apparently dealers are paying less per car to have them hauled off.  And used car sales have plummeted.  Only 700,000 cars using one-third the gas probably won’t affect gasoline retailers much.  But if it was seven million, I can imagine that convenience stores that depend on gasoline purchases for a large part of their profit would feel the squeeze.

Those who supported Cash for Clunkers can go ahead blindly believing that it was unquestionably a good thing.  I’m skeptical.  As I showed above, the “deal” almost certainly didn’t result in a savings for most buyers.  More importantly, I disagree with the idea that it’s government’s responsibility to prop up a sagging industry.  I also don’t believe that the immediately visible positive effects of this program will in the long term offset the negatives that I’ve outlined.

I am currently engaged in a week-long struggle with Yahoo! Mail’s “customer care” about an email that they’re blocking.  Since the beginning of the year, my server has been sending a daily report about crawler performance to me and to my coworkers.  The email consists of a single HTML file, inside of which are some internal links and hundreds of text URLs, but no actual links to those URLs.  Our company’s email is hosted by Yahoo.

Until 10 days ago, that report was delivered daily, without fail.  But since we changed our colocation setup and got new IP addresses, the mail has been sporadic:  bouncing eight of the last ten times I’ve tried to send it.  The error message I get back from Yahoo’s server says that the message is rejected “for policy reasons.”  Digging deeper, I find that Yahoo’s filter seems to think that there are “links to potentially objectionable material or malicious software.”

When contacting Yahoo, I gave them considerable detail, including the text of the message, a full description of the problem, and the reason why I thought that their filter was being over zealous.  Their responses have been canned boilerplate paragraphs, first asking for information that is not relevant or that I’ve already supplied, then explaining the policy:  the same policy that’s on their Web site and that I told them I already understood.  I have yet to receive a response from Yahoo to indicate that they’ve actually read and understood any of the information that I’ve sent to them.  I’m convinced that if I sent a message requesting a ham and swiss on rye, they’d reply by asking me to forward the full headers from the email in question.

I would strongly discourage anybody from using Yahoo for their business email.  Their response to this simple request has convinced me that Yahoo’s incompetence is not limited to search (which they’ve finally agreed to farm out to Microsoft), but permeates the entire organization.  If you want reliable email and intelligent, helpful support, find somebody other than Yahoo to host it.

President Obama and those members of Congress who approved the cash for clunkers program as part of the most recent war funding bill are celebrating today and telling us how they knew that it “would work.”  What’s their definition of “working?”  Why, that people actually took advantage of it.

Imagine that.  You’re going to give somebody up to $4,500 for their old worthless gas guzzler if they trade it in on a new, fuel efficient car.  And people take advantage of it?  Shocking!  In one week, the $1 billion allocated for the program is gone.  Congress today is expected to approve an additional $2 billion.

The clunkers collected through this program are supposed to be sent to a facility where they can be crushed and recycled.  However, there’s some wiggle room in the language, allowing transmissions and other parts to be salvaged.  And I doubt that there are sufficient controls in place to prevent the cars themselves from being resold and showing up on the roads again, either here in the U.S. or in other parts of the world.

Proponents of the program say that it is good for consumers, good for the auto industry, and good for the environment.  One would also expect that salvage yards and such would get a boost from the junked cars.

The truth is that this is a blatant handout to the auto industry and auto workers unions, paid for with money the government doesn’t have and will have to extort from financially responsible citizens in the future, and taken advantage of in large part by people who probably shouldn’t be buying new cars anyway.  It has the curious effect of artifically lowering new car prices to the point where it’s cheaper to buy a new car than to buy one that’s a year or two old.  I’ll bet used car dealers aren’t too happy about this one.

Congress and the President, of course, are falling all over themselves trying to scrape up more deficit spending so they can continue the program.  Damn the long term consequences, (some of) the people love this program!  Ain’t nothing like buying votes, is there.

Don’t you just love the way our political system works?

We’ve all experienced it, the anger and frustration that ensues when we try to open one of those clamshell packages that contain whatever new geegaw we picked up.  You can’t open it with your bare hands.  Normal office scissors are ineffective.  If you’re lucky you can puncture that plastic armor with your pocketknife, and if you’re lucky you won’t cut yourself with the blade or with the packaging itself.

The term for these feelings is wrap rage.  Consumer Reports officially recognized the phenomenon in 2006 when it created the Oyster Awards for products that are particularly hard to open.

It’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone.  A YouTube search for “wrap rage” results in almost 100 hits, including local television news stories, product demonstrations, and parodies of all sorts.  It’s the product demonstrations that amuse me more than anything else.  Some resourceful entrepreneurs who experienced wrap rage themselves decided to make a buck.  There are dozens of different devices designed to simplify the process of opening the clamshells.  Millions of units have been sold.

Amusingly, some of those devices are themselves distributed in clamshell packages, resulting in something of a chicken-and-egg problem.

The reason for this type of packaging is apparently theft deterrence.  If things are that hard to open, it’s unlikely that a thief will be able to remove small items from oversized packages and slip them into a purse or pocket.  I suppose it works, but at what cost?  Large retailers like Target and Wal-Mart are willing to annoy and inconvenience their customers with these packages rather than come up with a less intrusive way to deter shoplifting.

I have to admit that I’m surprised by the almost complete lack of outcry by the environmental movement regarding these packages.  Small items, especially, are often surrounded by many times their weight in protective plastic–plastic that more often than not ends up in landfills because even dedicated recyclers often don’t know whether the clamshell packaging is recyclable.  Environmentalist groups boycotted Big Macs back when they came in Styrofoam containers.  But clamshell packages?  I hear crickets.

I’m also surprised that, as much as people complain about these packages (and I don’t know anybody who extols their virtues), there hasn’t been a huge revolt by consumers.  Why aren’t there more people (or more vocal people) agitating for the abolition of this unfriendly, environmentally harmful, and dangerous to open packaging?  Again with the crickets.

After fighting one time too many with opening an armor plastic package to get at something that I found wasn’t worth all the effort, I will now make a concerted effort to avoid those packages whenever possible.  I’m done risking life and limb to open things.  If retailers want to sell me stuff, they’ll have to make it convenient for me to buy and to open.

I use Horde for my web-based email here at mischel.com.  Not because I particularly like it, but because it’s the best of the three options I’m given by my ISP.  The other two options are Squirrel Mail (aptly tagged “Webmail for Nuts!” because you’d have to be nuts to use it), and the interestingly named RoundCube Webmail, which is two oxymorons in one.  Not that Horde is so much better.  It’s just the best of three bad options.  To date, it hasn’t aggravated me enough to make me want to go to the trouble of switching.

Tonight I went searching in my Trash folder for a message.  Since their search function is, to be kind, somewhat lacking, I figured I could more easily find the message by sorting the folder by the From field.  Then just scroll down to the ‘M’s, (the message in question was from my sister Marie) and locate it.  So I sorted, scrolled down, and … there were no messages from Marie!  Where are they?  Why, they’re sorted further down with the ‘O’s, of course, because her email address starts with ‘O’.

That’s just stupid.  I could maybe understand it if the program showed me the email addresses in the From field, but it doesn’t.  It shows me the name.  So what I have is a list that’s sorted by email address, but shown in what appears to be random order.  You want a sample?  How about the following?  The first column shows the names as they appear in the list when I sort by the From field.  The second column shows the email addresses, which aren’t shown in the user interface.

I think you get the idea.  If you’re searching for that email from Amazon, are you going to look for it with the rest of the ‘A’s, or with the ‘M’s?

(Spammers and email harvester bots, please pick up those email addresses and spam the hell out of them.  They do it to me.)

Is there any wonder that people think computers are confusing?  What moron decided that sorting by email address and displaying the name would be a reasonable user interface?  Whoever designed and implemented that should be sentenced to three months working with Microsoft’s Business Desk, as well as a boot camp like refresher course in user interface design.

The really odd part is that sorting things the way they did it is more work than doing it the way that makes sense.  The From field in an email address appears in one of two ways:  either it’s a naked email address (jim@mischel.com), or it’s a name followed by an email address in brackets (Jim Mischel <jim@mischel.com>).  A simple sort by the From field would have placed things in the proper order:  by name if there is one, otherwise by email address.  To sort the wrong way, they had to parse the From field, extract the email addresses, and then sort.

More work to produce less useful output.  Yeah, that’s a good idea.

Idiots.

I’ve had enough.  I’m looking for a better email solution.  It has to be web-based, and it has to let me keep my current email address.  Oh, and the interface has to be at least as good as Yahoo’s.  (And I’d rather not use Yahoo for my email because it does stupid things.)  Preferably, I can keep my current ISP and either change the DNS entry for mail, or I can have the other mail provider reach to my ISP and get the mail.  Either way, I have to free my email from the Hordes.  Suggestions?

Our amateur radio club is in the process of starting another class for people interested in getting their ham radio license.  One of the more difficult tasks is finding a place to hold the classes.  We need a room that’ll hold 25 or 30 people, available after hours or on weekends, and free.  We don’t charge for the classes, so we can’t afford to pay for a room.

In Round Rock, a local hospital has generously donated use of a conference room on Saturday mornings.  That’s great for people in north Austin, Round Rock, and Georgetown, but people who live in central or south Austin are understandably reluctant to drive all that way.  We finally found a place in central Austin, but telling people where it is has become something of a comedy.

The Combined Transportation, Emergency, and Communications Center (CTECC) in Austin brings several state, county, and municipal government agencies together under one roof so they can share command-and-control resources in the area.  It houses traffic management and emergency communications for public safety.  The agencies involved include:

• City of Austin (911 dispatch, police, fire, EMS)
• Travis County (911 dispatch, sheriff, constable)
• Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the local bus system)
• Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for the freeway

That’s all well and good, but where is it?  Searching the Web for “CTECC Austin” leads to any number of articles about what it is and what it does, but the only location I could find amounts to “on Old Manor Road at the old Mueller Airport.”

So I thought I’d ask for the address on my club’s mailing list.  All I got was a bunch of confusing directions with questionable landmarks and that ended in “look for the building with all the antennas on top.”  No published street address because, as one person said, “they have a real Homeland Security concern in advertising their presence.”

That’s just silly.  I can’t imagine that hiding their street address will inconvenience anybody who has evil intentions.  “I was going to attack the Austin emergency communications facility, but I couldn’t find their street address.”

If “Homeland Security” is the real reason that I can’t find an address for this facility, then they probably shouldn’t advertise its existence at all and they certainly shouldn’t allow a bunch of amateur radio operators and students to use their facility.  Or will they make us submit to a detailed Homeland Security background check before they allow us on premises?

Sorry, but I don’t buy the “Homeland Security” excuse for not posting an address.  Anybody have a real reason?

By the way, a little fiddling with Google Maps reveals an approximate address of 5020 Old Manor Road.  Am I going to get a visit from Homeland Security for posting that?

In a very thinly reported move last week, the Federal Reserve announced that it will spend up to $600 billion buying up obligations of government-sponsored enterprises, and mortgage backed securities, many of which were the original targets of the $700 billion “bailout” plan back in October.

To me, the most interesting thing about this move is that it won’t cost the Federal Reserve anything. Well, whatever it costs for paper, ink, and the electricity to run the presses while they print up $600 billion in crisp new bills. That’s right, they’re going to “pay” for those assets by increasing the amount of money. Not a bad racket if you can get it. All of a sudden the Fed has $600 billion to spend that it didn’t have to get by running, hat in hand, to Congress. Nope. Just print up the bills and nobody’s the wiser. Never mind that the dollars you’re holding today are worth slightly less than they were yesterday.

Something similar is happening when the Treasury injects money into the banks. In exchange for their $25 billion, a bank gives the government shares of stock. They’re special non-voting shares, which is a good thing, but they’re new shares that dilute the value of existing shares. Stockholders end up paying for it in two ways: the value of their shares is diluted, and they have to pay increased taxes to offset the government expense (or, if new money is printed, pay the hidden tax of inflation).

How about a simple example to illustrate the concept. Imagine that your neighborhood creates a lawnmower co-op. For $10, you get one of 10 shares in the co-op. But the co-op falls on hard times–needs to upgrade the mower, maybe. The co-op issues 10 new shares, bringing the total number of shares to 20, and sells those shares to new members at $5 each. All of a sudden, your share of the co-op is worth 50% less. That’s bad enough, but you also get hit with an assessment from the co-op for increased maintenance costs. That’s pretty much what’s happening to stockholders when the banks take the bailout money.

I thought, back in September, that Bernanke, Paulson, and company had a real plan, backed up with solid reasoning, and some idea of what effects their proposed policies would have on the financial system and the economy. I didn’t agree with their ideas, but I thought I could at least respect their reasoning. But three months later, I’m not so sure. I think that they, just like Congress and the Bush Administration in general, are trying anything in an attempt to get a short-term boost, regardless of the long-term consequences.

The best bet for everybody would be for governments to step back and take an honest critical look at the situation, study possible responses and their likely outcomes, announce a plan, and then stick with it. The current whac-a-mole approach is worse than doing nothing (which, come to think of it, still doesn’t sound like a bad idea). Changing approaches every few weeks does nothing but add uncertainty, causing people to overreact and creating chaos when the thing we need most right now is stability.

Warning:  copying very large files (larger than available memory) on Windows will bring your computer to a screeching halt.

Let’s say you have a 60 gigabyte file on Computer A that you wish to copy to Computer B.  Both Computer A and Computer B have 16 gigabytes of memory.  Assuming that you have the network and file sharing permissions set correctly, you can issue this command on ComputerB:

copy /v \\ComputerA\Data\Filename.bin C:\Data\Filename.bin

As you would expect, that command reaches across the network and begins copying the file from Computer A to the local drive on Computer B.

What you don’t expect is for the command to bring Computer A and possibly Computer B to a screeching halt.  It takes a while, but after 20 or 30 gigabytes of the file is copied, Computer A stops responding.  It doesn’t gradually get slower.  No, at some point it just stops responding to keyboard and mouse input.  Every program starts running as though you’re emulating a Pentium on a 2 MHz 6502, using a cassette tape as virtual memory.

Why does this happen?  I’m so glad you asked.  It happens because Windows is caching the reads.  It’s reading ahead, copying data from the disk into memory as fast as it can, and then dribbling it out across the network as needed.  When the cache has consumed all unused memory, it starts chewing on memory that’s used by other programs, somehow forcing the operating system to page executing code and active data out to virtual memory in favor of the cache.  Then, the system starts thrashing:  swapping things in and out of virtual memory.

It’s a well known problem with Windows.  As I understand it, it comes from the way that the COPY and XCOPY commands (as well as the copy operation in Windows Explorer) are implemented.  Those commands use the CopyFile or CopyFileEx API functions, which “take advantage” of disk caching.  The suggested workaround is to use a program that creates an empty file and then calls the ReadFile and WriteFile functions to read and write smaller-sized blocks of the file.

That’s idiotic.  There may be very good reasons to use CopyFileEx in favor of ReadFile/WriteFile, but whatever advantages that function has are completely negated if using it causes Windows to cache stupidly and prevent other programs from running. It seems to me that either CopyFileEx should be made a little smarter about caching, or COPY, XCOPY and whatever other parts of Windows use it should be rewritten. There is no excuse for a file copy to consume all memory in the system.

I find it interesting that the TechNet article I linked above recommends using a different program (ESEUTIL, which apparently is part of Exchange) to copy large files.

This problem has been known for a very long time. Can anybody give me a good reason why it hasn’t been addressed? Is there some benefit to have the system commands implemented in this way?

Update, October 16
It might be that Microsoft doesn’t consider this a high priority.  In my opinion it should be given the highest possible priority because it enables what is in effect a denial of service attack.  Copying a large file across the network will cause the source machine to become unresponsive.  As bad as that is for desktop machines, it’s much worse for servers.  Imagine finding that your Web site is unresponsive because you decided to copy a large transaction file from the server.

Have you read the text of the Bush Administration’s proposed 700 billion dollar bailout of financial institutions?  If you don’t want to wade through the three-page proposal (although it is written in reasonably clear English), this summary will tell you all you need to know.  (Thanks to David Stafford for the link.)

When that proposal was presented, Congress was given the opportunity to exercise its most important obligation under the Constitution:  to serve as a check on the Executive branch.  Were Congress seriously interested in doing what’s best for the economy, for the taxpayers, and for the country, they would have just said, “No.”  Instead, they view the proposal as a starting position and are taking this opportunity to ingratiate themselves with their constituents and extend government’s control over private lending.  You doubt that?  Consider:

• Democrats are pushing for legislation that allows bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages to “ease the burden” on homeowners who are facing foreclosure.  This contentious issue probably will be dropped in favor of getting a bill passed.
• Democrats want any proceeds of the bailout to go into a fund designed to pay for housing for poor families.  This is the old shell game.  On one hand, they’re telling us that we’ll “get back” much of that $700 billion when the assets are sold.  The reality is that any proceeds will go into the general fund, which Congress can squander at their whim.
• Lawmakers on both sides have agreed in principal to limit pay packages for executives whose companies benefit.  This is largely a symbolic move, as executive pay is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money we’re discussing.  But it looks good to the voters.  “I voted to limit executive pay!”
• Absent the “No” that they should give, Congress is right in insisting that it be given more control over the bailout than what the proposal allows.  But I doubt that they’ll exercise restraint.  I fear that they’ll make a serious power grab.  For example, Representative Barney Frank has said: “we’re now the biggest mortgate holder in town, and we can do serious foreclosure avoidance.”  That frightens me, as I think it should frighten anybody.

I’m not convinced that this bailout is at all required.  Were Congress to do the right thing—nothing—markets would take an immediate tumble, rebound a bit, and then financial institutions and others affected would get back to business.  Sure, it’d be a struggle.  But the relatively short-term pain involved will be much less than the long-term pain that this bailout legislation will undoubtedly cause.

Needed or not, I’m certain that it doesn’t have to happen within the next week, as Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chariman Bernanke insist.  I’m always nervous when Congress acts at all, and I get very, very scared whenever Congress rushes through legislation to “address a serious problem.”  Eight years of an administration and a Congress that have both lost all concept of the term “fiscal restraint” has taught me that much.

Join me in a little thought experiment.

Seal a 100 dollar bill in an envelope, affix a price tag to the envelope, and write $110 on it.  Then put it up for sale, telling potential buyers that if they spend $110 on this envelope, they can turn around and sell it for more.  Don’t worry about what’s in it.

Somebody buys it, affixes a new price tag that says $125, and sells it to somebody else who also increases the price and turns it over.

This goes on for some time, with each new buyer swapping out the price tag.  Somewhere along the way, somebody gets the bright idea of putting 10 envelopes into a larger, fancier-looking envelope.  Why not make 10 times the profit in a single transaction, right?

And the party goes on.  The fancy envelopes beget pretty printed shoeboxes and the prices go up again.  Nevermind the party poopers screaming, “But what’s in the box?”  Nobody cares what’s in the boxes.  They must be valuable, right?  People keep paying more for them.

One day, the holder of a refrigerator-sized package wrapped in gold paper and sporting all manner of ribbons and bows tries to sell it for $100,000,000, and fails.  The lender who floated him the loan to buy the thing takes it back and decides to sell it at a loss just to get it off the books.

But the lender finds out that he can’t sell it at any price.  A lot of people have been having trouble selling their pretty boxes and envelopes.  Not only that, but lenders have a lot of money tied up in those pretty boxes, meaning they don’t have any money to lend for other purposes.

Desperate, the lenders start trying to sell their assets at ever-lower prices, trying to get something out of them.  But nobody’s buying.  Nobody wants a pretty box that he can’t resell at a higher price.

Finally, the lender finds a buyer who says that he’ll be happy to buy the box, provided he can open it beforehand to see what’s inside.  The lender reluctantly agrees and looks on as the potential buyer opens the box and pulls out 100 pretty shoeboxes.  Inside each shoebox there are 10 fancy envelopes, each of which contains 10 plain white envelopes holding a single hundred dollar bill each.  The lender’s $100,000,000 “asset” is worth $1,000,000.

My dad used that little parable (also known as the last sucker theory or, more commonly, the greater fool theory) to explain the events leading up to the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s.  It’s equally apt in explaining much of the current financial meltdown, what with the mortgage backed securities that were “backed” by worthless mortgages, investment firms that were leveraging their investments 35-to-1, and all the while knowing that they were just riding the wave—hoping they weren’t the ones holding the box when somebody demanded that it be opened.

Almost every year during monsoon season in the Phoenix area, some idiot will drive around a barricade and attempt to cross a flooded low water crossing. In most cases, search and rescue workers are successful in plucking the occupants from the stranded car. Invariably, the driver will claim ignorance, despite signs warning of the danger, barricades across the road, and many years’ experience living in the area. It’s impossible to live in the Phoenix area for any length of time and not know of the dangers inherent in driving through flood waters.

Things got so bad in Arizona that they finally passed what is termed the Stupid Motorist Law which, when translated to simple English, says that a motorist who drives around barricades to enter a flooded stretch of roadway may be charged for the cost of his rescue. I don’t know if the law has actually prevented anybody from trying to drive through a flooded area. It seems to me that if the threat of being swept downriver and drowned doesn’t deter somebody, the prospect of having to pay for rescue won’t raise a red flag either. In any event, I support the law simply because I believe that people should have to pay for their own stupidity–especially when said stupidity puts others’ lives at stake.

As hurricane Ike approached last week, officials in Galveston and other coastal areas urged citizens to evacuate, warning of a possible 25-foot storm surge and “certain death” if they stayed behind. By all reports, most people heeded the warnings and got out before Friday at noon. But somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people decided that they knew better, and stayed behind.

I was in the Williamson County Emergency Operations Center from midnight until 6:00 AM on Saturday. The eye of Ike made landfall at about 2:00 AM. The entire time I was at the EOC, I heard reports of 911 calls from people who had elected to stay behind, begging for somebody to come help them. Of course, nobody was going to send rescue workers out in the middle of a hurricane. Those people who elected to stay truly were on their own–just as officials had said they would be.

Today, 48 hours after Ike came roaring through, we’re still in the middle of what Governor Rick Perry is calling the largest search and rescue operation in Texas history. Over 1,500 rescue workers are searching Galveston and surrounding areas for people who are stranded in their houses, still surrounded by floodwaters. So far, every person I’ve seen interviewed after being rescued said pretty much the same thing: “I never thought it would be so bad. I was wrong to stay.” I’ve yet to hear anybody say they didn’t know that the storm was coming, or they didn’t hear the warnings to evacuate.

Those who stayed and survived were very fortunate that the projected 25-foot storm surge never materialized. The estimated 13-foot surge did a very good job of devastating the area. I imagine that nothing would be left had there been twice as much water, and it’s doubtful that any of the holdouts would have survived.

Those who did survive (and we may never know how many got swept away by the storm) are now stranded in the attic or on the roof, with no services, no food or water, and no way to get out except being rescued. It’s unfortunate that Texas doesn’t have a Stupid Homeowner Law that allows us to bill those people for the cost of their rescue. Whereas I fully support a citizen’s right to stay even in the face of “mandatory” evacuations, I also believe that they should bear the consequences, including paying the cost of pulling them out of an area they were advised to evacuate three or four days ago.

Here in the Austin area, Ike had almost no effect. We got a little bit of wind Saturday morning. Some parts of the area might have received some rain. We didn’t get a drop at our place.

The best thing about our government is that it never ceases to amuse me. It’s also continuously annoying, but I guess you have to take the bad with the good. It’s not the government itself that amuses me so much, but rather the absurd things that our illustrious Congresscritters do and say in an attempt to garner votes. The most amusing (and also the most frustrating) thing is that constituents continue to be taken in. Rather than making an effort to come up with a solution ourselves, we argue over which totally unworkable plan our elected representatives should vote on. This gives the leeches in Washington Congress incredible leeway to do anything, and then spin their positions to best advantage.

Examples abound. Let’s look at some of the more recent.

Dependence on foreign oil

Our country’s dependence on foreign oil has been a major problem since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. In the 35 ensuing years, Congress has put forth all manner of proposals to “fix” the problem. We’ve funded research into solar, geothermal, tidal, and other natural energy sources, provided incentives and subsidies for domestic oil exploration, coal, ethanol, and all manner of questionable energy saving technologies. Today our government has much more control over energy policy than it did in 1973 and yet we’re more dependent on foreign oil than we were back then.

Seven administrations and countless members of Congress have been “doing something about the problem” for 35 years, and the problem has gotten worse. And yet the vast majority of Americans look to Congress and the President for a solution to high gas prices, all the while cheering for or ridiculing the laughably simple minded, short term proposals that are put forth. Our representatives, of course, couldn’t care less. All they have to do is make themselves look good to their own constituents. As long as they can keep the voting public believing that government is the solution, their jobs are secure.

Every thinking American (and, sadly, I’m beginning to believe that the number is falling fast) knows that the solution to our energy problems requires conservation, domestic oil and gas production, development of nuclear plants, exploitation of wind, thermal, solar, and other natural sources, and research into more energy efficient transportation and buildings. We won’t solve anything unless we address all of those areas. And it’s going to take time. Government has proven that it’s incapable of formulating and implementing a workable energy policy. It’s time to get government out of the picture. No more subsidies, incentives, or preferential treatment. Let the market decide.

Tax Rebates

This is one of the dumber things I’ve seen Congress do. And, yes, I realize that both the 2001 and the 2008 rebates were initially proposed by President Bush. That doesn’t relieve Congress of their complicity and their ultimate responsibility. The 2001 rebate was “justified” by a “budget surplus”–a surplus that anybody with a fifth grade education knew was an illusion. This year’s rebate was “justified” by the current economic situation. Congress would have you believe that a windfall of a few hundred dollars (up to $1,200, as I recall) would “stimulate the economy” and soften the recession. Any thinking person could have told you that the result would be a short term spike in consumer spending, followed by a quick return to normal. I can’t prove this yet, but I suspect that it also resulted in people putting down payments on things they can’t afford, figuring they’d find a way to make the monthly payments.

Congress, of course, knew that the tax rebates wouldn’t have an effect on the economy other than to increase the size of the federal debt. But that’s okay. What’s a few billion more dollars compared to the time honored tradition of buying votes? It is an election year, after all. Besides, it made for good press coverage and retail store managers drooled over the prospect of Christmas in July. The rebates seem so popular that Senator Obama proposed a $1,000 rebate to fight energy costs.

The reaction of those receiving the rebates was predictable. Most squandered it like drunken sailors on leave. Those few who know the names of their Congressmen or Senators might have lifted a glass in salute, but most just thanked the government for the handout. That’s what surprises me the most. It’s like having somebody cut your arm off at the shoulder and then thanking him when he returns the forearm and hand. Idiots.

The “mortgage crisis”

This one is fun because there are so many levels of idiocy. Lenders made high-risk loans to people who were demonstrably incapable of paying them back, then sold those loans to a government sponsored enterprise, which ultimately will be bailed out by taxpayers when the original borrowers default.

When borrowing money in good faith, both the lender and the borrower are responsible for ensuring that the money can be paid back. But when the lender is just a middleman who gets paid for making the loan and selling it to somebody else, there is little incentive for him to vigorously check the borrower’s documentation. On the contrary, there is ample incentive for him to be very creative in putting together a loan package, both by making the terms of the loan appear attractive to the borrower and by making the borrower look attractive to the third party who’s buying the loan. Sure, the middleman will eventually be found out, but the short term rewards are incredible.

And when the ultimate buyer is a government sponsored enterprise like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, there is almost no oversight. When you have, with government’s blessing, a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market, you know that you’ll get bailed out if things go bad. So where’s the incentive to insist on real documentation for the loans that you buy?

I’m not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not even a financial analyst. But I’m not an idiot, either. I and many others saw this coming three years ago. Congress ignored the problem at the time, or discounted it as scare mongering. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that most of them probably knew what was coming. But they also knew that there wasn’t anything they could do about it and that bringing it up would be very unpopular. Our elected representitives are many things, but stupid is not one of them.

Now that the real extent of the problem has become apparent, Congress is all over it with one proposal after another. They’re “doing something about the problem.” They know that there are only two possible solutions: either pump money into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep them afloat, or cut them loose and let people finally endure the consequences of their actions. We know, just by the the nature of elected officials, what their solution will be: another hundred billion dollars or more shelled out to fix a problem that Congress created in the first place. And We the Sheeple just nod our heads and thank Congress for taking care of us once again.

More is better?

All three of the above examples demonstrate extreme incompetence on the part of government. The Congress-proposed solution to those problems, as with all others, is more government regulation. As if making even more and larger bureaus, agencies, and departments will somehow transform government into an intelligent and effective organization. And we let them do it! When will people learn that the cure for a headache is to stop beating your head against the wall?

I used to get upset when I’d think about this stuff. I used to rant and carry on about the proper function of government, and how intrusive government is in our daily lives. But nobody listens. Nobody seems to care. I learned a while back to stop bashing my head against that particular pile of bricks. Now I just laugh and hope that the coming violent overthrow (which will almost certainly happen if government continues on its current path) doesn’t occur until after I’m gone.

We got a rather strongly worded message the other day from a Webmaster who was threatening legal action because our crawler deleted a bunch of files from his site.  The news that our crawler is capable of deleting files was quite a surprise to us.  Like other crawlers, ours just downloads HTML files, extracts links, and then visits those links.  There is no “delete a file” logic in there.  But if the crawler stumbles upon a link whose action is to delete a file, then visiting that link will indeed delete the file.

Further investigation in this particular case revealed a file management page that includes, among other things, links that have the form:  www.example.com/files/?delete=filename.txt.  Surprisingly enough, clicking on that link deletes the file.  The file management page is not protected by a password, nor is there any kind of confirmation displayed before the file is permanently deleted.

Examining the logs, we saw accesses from other search engine crawlers.  We also learned from the Webmaster that some time back, a kid had “hacked in” to the site and deleted a bunch of files.

I’m a little surprised that anybody would create such a page and not provide any protection.  I’m very surprised to find out that a supposedly professional Web developer would do such a thing and not learn the lesson when a random surfer came in and deleted files.  And I’m shocked that, even after we explained this to the Webmaster, he insists that we can take this as an opportunity to learn from our “mistake” and “fix” the crawler so that it doesn’t happen again.

It’s unfortunate that our crawler visited those links, causing the files to be deleted.  But the mistake was on the part of the person who posted those destructive links.  The crawler was operating exactly as it should.  Exactly, in fact, as every major search engine crawler acts.  It’d be nice if we could imbue the crawler with enough intelligence to “understand” Web pages and know in advance what the effects of clicking a link will be.  But that kind of machine intelligence is far, far in the future.

If you post something on the Web, it will be found, unless you take active measures to protect it.  Posting a destructive link on an unprotected page and then blaming somebody else when the link is clicked by an “unauthorized” person is akin to running out into a busy street and then blaming your injuries on the driver of the bus that hits you.

This morning I copied a URL from the browser to the clipboard and then tried to paste it into the email message I was writing in another browser window. Internet Explorer popped up this confirmation box:

I wouldn’t mind so much if it showed this box one time. But it shows the box for every new email I try to paste stuff to.

There are two things that annoy me about this confirmation box. The first is that the default button is “Don’t allow”. Obviously, somebody has a much higher opinion of the threat posed by indiscriminate clipboard pasting than I do. I just don’t agree that IE should be holding my hand here and trying to dissuade me from pasting data into an email. The default should be “Allow access”. For dang sure, I should be able to change the default. Better yet, I’d like to just turn the silly notification off. Does Windows have a, “Yes, I know what I’m doing” mode?

Worse, this confirmation box is broken for keyboard users. I’m pretty keyboard-centric, especially when I’m writing. I don’t need to remove my fingers from the keyboard in order to copy a URL from one browser window (or tab) to another. Alt+Tab, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+C, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V. Done. When this confirmation box pops up, it changes “Done” into:

1. “What the heck?”
2. Press Enter before fully realizing that I just prevented myself from pasting into the email.
3. Copy the draft email to the clipboard.
4. Open Notepad.
5. Paste the draft into Notepad.
6. Close the draft email.
7. Open a new email message or reply.
8. Paste the draft back into the new email.
9. Go find the URL I wanted to paste, and copy it to the clipboard.
10. Attempt to paste the URL into the email.
11. Read confirmation box and press the left arrow button to highlight the “Allow access” button.
12. Nothing happens.
13. Press the right arrow.
14. Press Enter.

Whoever coded up this particular confirmation box got his arrow keys backwards.

I guess I am more secure with this new setup. It’s so painful that I’ll stop trying to paste things into my emails.

I understand that security is an issue, and to some extent IE has to protect users from themselves. But this is broken. Horribly. At minimum, the confirmation should have a link or checkbox that lets me turn the message off for pages that I identify. Like the “new email” page that I use dozens of times a day.