Jul. 13th, 2009 03:51 pm:
How To Advocate For Legislative Action

A fellow LJ'er and I have a difference of opinion about civil rights for homosexuals. Specifically, Proposition 8 vs. legal recognition for same-sex couples. Short summary: I'm for equal legal recognition, he's against it. And we've been having a surprisingly civil discussion about it, all things considered. We've already discussed whether Prop 8 supporters deserve the names they're sometimes called, whether a string of legal victories indicates bias or tyranny, and even whether the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent, intercessionary God who doesn't want us to recognize same-sex unions can be empirically demonstrated, but we haven't yet had the chance to discuss the central issue of the problem: Is the legal recognition or actual practice of same-sex marriage actually harmful to society? Is this actually an issue that society needs protection from, and is Prop 8 effective protection?

I'm not a fundamentalist libertarian but I do think that individual liberty is a good default. People should generally be able to do what they want and government should start taking away liberties or start treating populations unequally only if there's a very strong reason backed by compelling evidence. And I think that CA Prop 8 was stupid evil. I think it's not just a discriminatory and unnecessary infringement of a minority's civil rights, which is evil, but that it also doesn't even actually accomplish anything. It's like racists trying to limit the spread of leprosy in America by passing a law prohibiting black people from hugging each other. It's not just an apparently mean-spirited persecution of a minority group; it's not even an effective solution to an insignificant problem.

But I'm willing to give the other side a fair shake. Perhaps they know something I don't, and I ought to keep an open enough mind that I will be able to accept their perspective if it is valid. In many ways it would actually please me to discover that there was a rational reason to oppose same-sex marriage, because then I'd be able to stop thinking of Prop 8 opponents as confused or delusional and start thinking of them at least as people with a different solution to a problem that everyone can at least agree exists and needs fixing.

If I'm going to be persuaded that same-sex couples ought to have their civil rights and personal freedoms and liberties limited or that someone else could reasonably believe this, the justification has to fit what I hope we can agree is a reasonable five point rhetorical standard.

A) There must be a significant empirically demonstrable public health or safety issue.
- There must be a significant cost or risk to society or individuals. For example drunk driving, improperly maintained brakes, unsafe buildings. On the other hand many behaviors and choices are only marginally harmful and should not be legally restricted. The natural consequences of choosing unwisely are punishment enough. Casual sex, moderate drinking, the consumption of unsulfured wine or unpasteurized cheese, flying experimental homebuilt aircraft: all OK. Legal recognition of same-sex marriage must rise beyond the level of commonly accepted risks and be more or less equivalent to something else that you and I agree ought also to be forbidden by law. There's a difference between something being legal and something being a good idea.
- The risk must be demonstrable. "You will get lung cancer" is demonstrable. "Your chi will become unfocused" is not. Claims about God are not (as far as I know) unambiguously empirically demonstrable. If your God doesn't want you to do something because it's going to be bad for us, let's talk about the consequences that we can demonstrate will befall us rather than his personal opinion about it.

B) The risk or harm in question must be mitigated by and in proportion to the proposed solution. Symbolic stances and get-tough gestures that don't actually accomplish anything are empty and dumb. Pissing off your enemy is not the same decreasing harm. Middle eastern terrorists might hate you for banning all falafel but it will not decrease the frequency or effectiveness of their attacks

C) No fallacious reasoning:
- No inconsistency or special pleading. Rules must be consistently applied to relevant groups. (Childlessness counts equally for childfree hetero and homo couples.)
- Do not float questionable causes such as confusing correlation and causation or cause and effect. It's possible to demonstrate causality, but you have to show that coincident events are more than coincidence.
- No begging the question or circular reasoning. Don't just restate the point you've not yet demonstrated.
- Stories with evidence we can't examine or corroborate are anecdotes. I have no way of knowing whether the horrible same-sex couple that you know is as horrible as you say, or whether they are representative of all same-sex couples.
- No slippery slopes. If same-sex marriage is fine but other points along the line eventually lead to something bad we should ban the bad thing and leave harmless actions alone.
- No naturalistic fallacies. Space flight, Moon Pies, polyester, or inhaling helium from balloons to make funny voices are without natural precedent. Disasters, parasites, and rape exist throughout the natural world.

D) It ought to go without saying, but reasons must actually be true. You can't just make stuff up.

Here are some examples of reasons which would be disqualified.

"We must protect traditional marriage because it is threatened by gay marriage" fails C (circular reasoning: "we protect TM from threats because SSM is a threat"), C (what 'harm' actually results?), and D (not actually true)

"Homosexuality, by definition, cannot create children" fails A (childfree couples do not significantly harm public health), B (same-sex couples will not be encouraged to have children by banning their marriages), C (inconsistency: some hetero couples are also sterile or childfree), and D (not actually true).

"So-called committed homosexual couples had an average of eight extra-sexual partners per year" fails A (so what?), C (marriage-banned single people will have even fewer reasons to be monogamous), and D (special pleading: should hetero swingers also be forbidden from marrying?)

"Without Prop 8 children will be taught gay marriage in school" fails A (so what?), B (Prop 8 did not effect educational standards), and D (not actually true: previously married SS couples are still married and can still be talked about in schools after parental permission is given)

"We must discourage unhealthy lifestyles" fails B (nobody's going to say "I'll have to take a rain check on that gangbang, looks like I can't get married"), and C (inconsistency: should we also ban marriage for IV drug users?).

"No culture has survived once it ceased to support marriage and monogamy" fails C (correlation is not causation: no culture has survived once it used marble as structural building material), D (lots of cultures currently recognize same-sex marriage and are currently surviving), and B (Prop 8 decreased support for "marriage and monogamy").

"Churches would be forced to recognize and accept same-sex marriages" fails D (not actually true; Prop 8 limited civil marriages, not religious ceremonies. Churches are always free to sanction or condemn anything they want).


To be clear, I'm not saying that the above justifications are automatically invalid. I'm just saying that they're not sufficient as I wrote them but you're welcome to put a finer point on it. You can still say "children will be taught gay marriage in school", but you have to also show how doing so would be a problem and how Prop 8 might stop it.

And also to be clear, these are broad rules that we all should follow, not just in this discussion but in all future discussions about civil liberties or reasonable government action. If I'm arguing in favor of laws banning torture or in favor of enforcement against torturers I have to show that the harm they cause is significant, that the proposed solution will mitigate the problem, etc. You should bookmark these rules and hold me to them if I slip up in the future.
 

Jun. 30th, 2009 03:01 pm:
The Slippery Slope

A few years ago I was talking with a friend in California about some difficult moral issue. I mentioned that what made it difficult was the slippery slope - if we accept the problem to a small degree who knows where the madness will end? She cut me off short. "That's just the slippery slope argument, and it's lame." It's taken me a while to accept, but she's right. The slippery slope is a totally lame argument.

Here's why. The 'top' of the slippery slope is a point that reasonable persons agree is more or less reasonably acceptable. And the first few steps down the slope also seem somewhat reasonable to reasonable people. And the 'bottom' of the slope is where people agree that things have gone too far. And the argument asks "Where does the madness end? How do we stop ourselves, or know when to stop?

We know when to stop because, as the slippery slope presumes, we are reasonable people who recognize that the top is OK and the bottom is bad and this means we ought to stop somewhere in the middle. Reasonable people who are capable of discussing the pros and cons of where that point ought to be. Reasonable people who are not bound to "follow the argument to its logical conclusion" because we recognize that its conclusion isn't reasonable and that happiness is found in moderation. The slippery slope bothers me because it abandons common sense or reasonable moderation and turns complex issues into oversimplified, black-and-white, all-or-nothing propositions. It pretends that there can be no line if none exists rather than inviting us to discuss where to draw that line. It pretends that moral value judgments are some sort of death pact that must be followed to the grisly end rather than ethical guidelines that inform a series of open choices.

And it fails because of itself. If we allow slippery slopes to dictate our morality and actions where does the madness end? Will I be not allowed to marry a twenty year old because I might want to marry a ten year old? Will I not be allowed to drive 50mph because then I might want to drive 150mph? Should I not be allowed to eat veal because then I might want to eat human children? Of course not. Because we are reasonable people, and we shouldn't use the lack of an exact answer to set the limit at an unreasonable extreme.

Of course there are some people who genuinely don't seem to understand that there's a difference between a zygote and a four year old child, or a rifle and a nuclear bomb, or an adult human partner and a duck. It's fair to ask how to explain the difference to one of those people, especially if you are one of those people. And of course some people will not agree on where exactly the line ought to be drawn - reasonable people can disagree. And of course some people aren't reasonable, and will try to get away with things they know they shouldn't. And of course what some slippery slope arguers are really trying to say between the lines is that some issues can be complex with vague, arbitrary, and subjective edge conditions. And that's true. People are complicated. Life is complex and pragmatic moral choices are difficult. It's important to approach problem-solving and compromise-brokering with that understanding - so that you don't turn the result into a black and white issue. And that's why you shouldn't take the slippery slope cop-out seriously.

Caveat: A "slippery slope" is where things are OK at the top of the slope but get slippery on the way down. Trying to say that everything in a category is bad because some of the things in that category are bad is conflation, which is a lame argument for different reasons.
 

Jun. 17th, 2009 09:04 am:
Supreme Leader is a Great Gig If You Can Get It.

There have been many jokes about the irrelevance of Twitter – or at least about the irrelevance of much of the content on Twitter. Some of them have been amazingly creative and funny, like the Tonight Show’s "Twitter Tracker," and some of them not funny at all, like any of the jokes I've made.

But the events of the past few days have killed Twitter irony. In a country where "subversive" blogging is punishable by death, Twitter (along with YouTube) has been the go-to to get information about the happenings in the tightly-controlled Iran.

Furthermore, the relevance of the newest of the new media highlights some of the irrelevance of the "traditional" media. The Revolution, it seems, will not be televised – CNN.com didn’t mention the unrest for days. As ReadWriteWeb.com put it:

"Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals."

Jun. 16th, 2009 07:45 pm:
A Patient‘s Psalm

Found this and busted up laughing, had to share it with you all.

A Patient‘s Psalm

The Lord is my Genetics Counselor, I shall not want for risks.
He maketh me to lie down in genealogies; he nondirects me beside karyotypes.
He restoreth my inborn errors; he leads me in the paths of reproduction for my name‘s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of amniocentesis or under the shadow of fetoscopy,
I will fear no evil: for thou, the Greatest Good of the Greatest Number, art with me;
thy chromosome counts and thy enzyme assays they comfort me.
Thou preparest multiphasic screening before me in the presence of my illnesses:
thou anointest my head with check-ups;
my profile runneth over.
Surely mutations and heterozygosity shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of computerized biomedical information forever.

-Paul Ramsey, JAMA, March 13, 1972.

Jun. 11th, 2009 10:56 am:
Cisco on the Dow

Last week, General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

That same day, GM was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It’s replacement – a company I'm all too familiar with – Cisco.

"Cisco makes the paving bricks for the information superhighway and it's affecting the culture in kind of the same way that automobiles affected the culture in the 20th century," John A. Prestbo, editor and executive director of Dow Jones Indexes, told The Associated Press. "We thought it was a fitting replacement for General Motors."

Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist for ConvergEx Group, in New York said Cisco was a logical choice not only because the company's business is an important one but because its shares aren't as high as some companies analysts speculated might have been added, like Apple Inc. or Google Inc.

The Dow is weighted by price so adding Apple and Google, which each have triple digit share prices, could have been more disruptive. Cisco at $19 won't have as much weight as IBM Corp. at $106. Google, at $417, would have vaulted to the most influential Dow stock. By comparison, Cisco will have roughly a 2 percent weighting.

Jun. 8th, 2009 03:13 pm:
Patch Tuesday

Tomorrow Microsoft plans to unleash a large patch – the largest "Patch Tuesday" in eight months.

In many ways, the smaller size of patches seemed, at the very least, to imply that the codebase behind the Windows OS and Office might have been stabilizing, or at the very least, that the XP and Vista codebases were wrapping up in anticipation of the Next Big Thing, Windows 7. Apparently, that's not the case.

When I was a younger, brasher, more hot-headed geek in high school, the very name Microsoft would conjure up images of hatred. When Windows XP came out, I had heard rumors of something called "Palladium" and draconian DRM measures – and, let's be fair here – this was around the time Microsoft's competitors were starting to get good. Despite competition from MacOSX and Linux – very good competition, I might add, - Windows is still the OS of the masses, Office has not been displaced as office king-of-the-hill since it displaced WordPerfect, despite attempts by Sun, OpenOffice.org, Zoho, and Google. (That may change in the future, but not likely, according to Forrester.)

But it’s been an interesting road for Microsoft; XP SP2 wasn’t released with a whole lot of fanfare, but its basic competence (well, it compared favorably to previous versions of Microsoft OSes in the stability area, and similarly to contemporary MacOSX 10.2.)

Then Vista came out, and suddenly the old hatred for Microsoft is horrible again. To be fair, I ripped on Vista when it first came out, as it seemed like nothing worked; most of these problems were fixed with the service pack, but it was still more problematic than Windows XP while still doing the same basic job; this is one of the reasons that business adoption for Vista remains – well, let’s just say that most businesses will probably skip Vista and head straight to Windows 7.

Which brings us back to Patch Tuesday. If it wasn’t apparent before, it seems that no operating system is "done" anymore, like the Windows 95 and 98 days; (Even 98 had "98 second edition") and that even the most basic part of the computer – the operating system – requires the internet. But it also implies that patching is not something we're ever going to grow out of – that operating systems are never done. The open-source model, of course, relies on "release early, release often" but it seems that through Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 9, and Windows 10 (and Mac 10.6, 10.7, & 10.8) we'll be waiting for that big glob of data to download every week, to keep our systems up to date. On the other hand, Patch Tuesday is repeatable, predictable – hell, it’s so predictable, we call it "Patch Tuesday."

Jun. 4th, 2009 11:13 am:
Here's One of My Pet-Peeves

When people repeat the last word of an acronym, like PIN Number, NIC Card, NOC Center, etc.

May. 8th, 2009 04:37 pm:
Amazing!

Apr. 29th, 2009 09:29 am:
The George Bush Tax Hike of 2009

In 2001, George Bush had a problem. He wanted to give tax cuts to the rich, but he didn't want it to be obvious how much this would cost the middle class taxpayer or the national debt, and budget proposals come with 10 year cost projections. So the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 gave the rich a variety of tax cuts that would expire well before 2011. George Bush passed his tax cuts by claiming that they were temporary and short-term, because that's the only way that the numbers didn't start looking ludicrous.

Of course that was never the plan. The 2003 Congress didn't watch these temporary, short-term tax cuts expire; they voted to extend them a few more years with the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. But just for a few more years to preserve the illusion that the cost would be minor and temporary. A few conservative groups tried to do the honest thing by pushing to make the tax cuts permanent which would have at least clarified what they actually wanted to do and how much it would actually cost us, but it never happened because the reality was too bitter a pill for even Congress to swallow.

And that's what bugs me about calling Obama's recent tax hike on the rich both "Obama's" and "a tax hike". He's allowing Bush's intentionally short-term tax plan to expire on schedule. He's letting Bush's plan play out exactly as Bush designed it to play out. If Republicans want to blame anyone they should blame the 2001 and 2003 Congress and their "temporary tax cut" charade. I thought I remembered one of Obama's campaign pledges being ending this practice and honesty about cost projections, but I can't find a citation and it doesn't seem to be in the promise tracker.

If you want to see an even more egregious example of 10 year budget impact malfeasance check out how in 2001 Bush eliminated the estate tax starting in 2010. No better way to disguise the ten-year impact than to make sure it starts ten years from now.

To be clear, I'm not saying that Obama's only modification to the tax code is sitting back passively while Bush's tax cuts expire, just that this is a major and often overlooked and mischaracterized component.

Apr. 21st, 2009 08:55 am:
Tea Party Day

Last April 15th was Tea Party Day. And while I understand the anger over being "fed up with a Congress and a president who" ... I've got one glib and one not-so-glib item to say about this.

First, the glib. The original tea party was successful because raiders stole bales of the King's tea and dumped it into public waterways thus depriving him of his taxes. Dumping your own legally purchased and taxed tea into public waterways contributes to the king's tax base, and misses the whole point of both "tea" and "party". Not to mention that the original tea party was a protest of lower taxes that their representatives didn't get to vote on, which is the exact opposite of our supposedly higher taxes that they did. And I don't even know what to begin to say about faxing pictures of tea.

Second, the not-so-glib. A "$500 billion tax bill", "spending trillions of borrowed dollars", or "giving special interest groups billions of dollars in earmarks" is nothing to sniff at but don't miss the forest for the trees. Of the $1182bn Federal discretionary budget, the Department of Defense gets $515bn, or about half. That doesn't count the separately itemized $189bn Global War On Terror, the $44.7bn Department of Veterans Affairs, the $37.6bn Department of Homeland Security, or the $16bn military portion of the Department of Energy's budget. The total for defense spending comes to $803bn, or 68% of federal discretionary expenses.

The two biggest non-military, non-defense piece of the discretionary pie are the $63bn Department of Transportation - roads, bridges, and highways mostly - and the $68bn Department of Health and Human Services which supports the NIH and CDC. Do you like to drive, fly, or purchase products which are transported to you? Do you like not getting smallpox or polio? I thought so. The other big socialist heavy hitters that "take your wealth and redistribute it to others" are the $59bn Department of Education, $38bn Department of Housing and Urban Development, the $10.5bn Department of Labor, and the $9.6bn Army Corps of Engineers all of whom may, at some point, provide a socialist service to someone in America who is not directly billed for that service. The total for "socialist" spending comes to $250bn, or 21% of federal discretionary spending.

In short: For every dollar the Pentagon gets, the "socialists" get 31 cents, with another 16 cents for "overhead" to run everything from the State Department and Congress to the Post Office. Want to reduce your tax burden? Want to reduce federal discretionary spending? Blame the war hawks first. (Numbers here.)

Of course that's just discretionary spending. The $1182bn that we get to choose how to spend this year, not the total $3.2tn that we've previously committed. And the biggest single piece of that (35.8%) is - again - national "defense". Second biggest is social security (20%), medicare (12.6%), and medicaid (6.6%) which sum to a little over a third (39%) of the total federal budget. If you'd like to run your party on the platform of shutting down medicare and social security you are welcome to do so, but please do so openly and honestly. Don't pretend that it's the fault of earmarks, pork, Democrats, Obama, illegal immigration, or any of your conventional bogeymen. And don't pretend that federal spending is "skyrocketing", either. Federal spending has remained around 25% of GDP regardless of party since the 1970s, with the increasing cost and percentage of health care being the most significantly changing variable.

Or blame George Bush. Just four expenditures which can be directly attributed to him - Global War on Terror, Department of Homeland Security, No Child Left Behind, and medical care at the Department of Veterans Affairs total to $293bn. That's $40bn more than all 'socialist' programs put together, not even counting the $534bn non-discretionary prescription drug entitlement.

See also: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Apr. 20th, 2009 09:08 am:
Everyone loves lists!

And here's mine:

• shop for new car insurance
• get oil change
• wash car
• change buzztime icon
• put buzztime location code in phone
• school re-entry paperwork
• bestman speech
• dress shopping with Alicia
• wedding gift
• return old stereo to parents
• return Easter baskets to parents
• return tupperware to parents
• put up shelf for speaker
• buy mirror hanging brackets, put up mirror
• organize box of electronics and cables
• find a place for spare monitor and UPS
• make a list for IKEA
• (done, will be posted soon!)
• make a list of movies I want to see
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine (1 May 09)
  • Star Trek (8 May 2009)
  • Angels and Demons (15 May 09)
  • Terminator Salvation (21 May 09)
  • Public Enemies (1 July 09)
• go to Bed, Bath & Beyond with Alicia
• use massage gift card
• buy ground beef and chicken
• buy PS2 memory card
• buy SATA to USB harddrive encasement
• buy broom, sweep patio
• hose down folding chairs
• file papers & organize filing cabinet
• get Alicia to buy tennis shorts / skirt / skort
• finish LJ layout
• mop / vaccuum floors
• launder towels & duvet cover
• give Melissa CS4
• keep my sanity

Apr. 16th, 2009 07:45 pm:
Up And Coming

Take a good look at my layout because it's changing soon! I know, I'm excited too! I've sketched it out, calculated my pixel widths and hights, choosen the color scheme(s), and began the HTML coding.

Now I'm making the background images and banners, gotta love CS4! Also, I'm playing with facetypes (fonts) and creating icons/sprites/little GIFs for things like bullet points and whatnot. AND I'm starting to code the CSS as I figure out how big and and what color things are going to be.

The very last step will be to convert the HTML and CSS and write the LJ S2 code for it. It's been quite a few years since I've worked in S2 so I'll need to go back and relearn all of it, fun! Oh, and I'll need to upload all my images but that won't take long.

All in all I think you'll like. It's completely different than the "vintage" look that I have now and the red/white "ragged" look I've done in the past. This one is tech suave and more professional.

Apr. 14th, 2009 09:27 am:
Tornado Warning for the greater Tampa Bay area

TAMPA - The weather service has issued a tornado warning for central Pasco and northern Hillsborough counties after radar spotted a tornado near Lutz.

Radar indicated the tornado moving east at 25 mph. The tornado is expected to be near Lutz, Land O' Lakes and Wesley Chapel.

The tornado warning is in effect until 9:15 a.m. Rain, hail and wind gusts of 60 mph were reported in the area.

All of West Central Florida is under a tornado watch until 2 p.m.

Also, a severe thunderstorm warning is issued for the region stretching from Hernando through Pinellas counties and western Hillsborough County as a line of storms moves onshore.

The storms are capable of producing winds topping 60 mph and run from about 13 miles west of Hernando Beach to 10 miles southwest of Indian Rocks Beach, or a line extending from 16 miles northwest of Hudson to 12 miles west of Seminole.

The storms are moving east at 45 mph. They will be near Indian Rocks Beach, Tarpon Springs, Treasure Island, Weeki Wachee and Town N' Country.

The weather service expects winds in these storms to reach 60 mph or higher.

There is also a severe thunderstorm warning for north Hernando and south Citrus and stretching into Sumter County as a line of storms heads toward the north end of the Nature Coast.

The storms have the potential of producing wind gusts of more than 60 mph.

The storms stretch from 14 miles west of Lebanon Station in Levy County to 12 miles west of Crystal River and 22 miles southwest of Chassahowitzka.

The storms are moving east at 45 mph.

The rest of West Central Florida could be in for a rainy, windy morning as a squall line moves southeast off the Gulf of Mexico, possibly bringing strong thunderstorms.

The squall line is arriving ahead of a cold front.

Mar. 31st, 2009 02:15 pm:
America (is/is not) falling behind in broadband. [Circle one.]

Network World recently published an article, "U.S. isn’t falling behind in broadband," in its news section of its LANs & WANs page. The article is written by James Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative public policy think tank based in Chicago.

In it, Lakely argues that spending on improving the nation’s telecommunication infrastructure – specifically the spending in Obama’s stimulus package – isn’t necessary because, contrary to popular belief, America is not falling behind in broadband.

Lakely attacks the methodology used in the OECD’s [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] broadband penetration numbers, and in this he has a point. The U.S. ranked 15th in the world in "broadband penetration" measured by a per capita rate of people who subscribe to broadband services. I too have a problem with using that measurement; broadband subscription rates are not the same as broadband availability rates, and other countries’ cultures might place more emphasis on the value of being online.

My grandmother still refuses to use the Internet for anything other than basic e-mail, and even then it’s pulling teeth.

Lakely, however, criticizes the OECD study due to the old argument that the countries with better broadband have higher population densities. That is the only argument he brings forward which speaks to his thesis rather than tangential information.

And it’s faulty logic – while the U.S. population density (31/km2) compares unfavorably to France’s (113/km2), the population of certain states, like, for example, California, comes closer to France. If the population density theory is true, California’s broadband should rival France, and the technology in New York City should rival that of Tokyo or Seoul. Or perhaps most telling, Finland, at #3 on the list, has a population density of only 16/km2.

As for that tangential information, he points out that the United States has the most consumers of high-speed Internet when talking raw numbers. (We also have a population eight times that of South Korea, six times that of France, and twice that of Japan – in fact, the only countries that have more people are China and India.)

He also mentions new technologies, such as Verizon’s FIOS:

A new study by consulting firm RVA Market Research pegs the annual growth rate of "fiber to the home" networks — the latest, fastest and most competitive broadband technology — at 76% on this side of the pond.

If worry-warts want to get their hard drives heated up over comparisons between the United States and other countries, they can try this one on for size: A survey released this month by the German broadband association Bitkom found 84% of respondents there between the ages of 19 and 29 would rather ditch their spouses than their broadband connections.

Now that's a troubling study. "Catching up" with the rest of the world isn't always such a good idea.

Mar. 9th, 2009 04:03 pm

Being attacked by spam bots from multiple networks, turning off all notification services for AIM, twitter, facebook, LJ, and others

Feb. 27th, 2009 05:48 pm:
Alicia Watch '09

I'm in class taking a final so you get to do your own research, yippee!

"lunch at subway" -Alicia, 4:03PM CST

N34 17.438" W99 44.962"

Feb. 27th, 2009 03:12 pm:
Alicia Watch '09

Quick update, 2:01PM CST



I know I described Texas' weather for today pretty well, but who doesn't love a pretty picture? So now let's go to our sister company's cousin's father's second wife's hair stylist's domestic partner's red-headed stepchild, Weather.com**



So Alicia, what do you think of the lovely state you're in?

"Texas = zzz  flat and so boring. At least i found a good radio station and cheap gas" -Alicia, 2:15PM CST

"Only 400 left for today!" -Alicia, 2:18PM CST

We're assuming she's talking about miles.

...But she could be counting the number of pickup trucks she's expecting to pass.



** No actual affiliation with Weather.com

Feb. 27th, 2009 02:00 pm:
Alicia Watch '09

This just** in!

Straight from the source: (11:31AM MST, 12:31AM CST)
"Greetings from the Texas state line!"

Now, depending on the point of entry, any one of these lovely notices may have been encountered.





... or ...



Undoubtly this was also probably seen






** "Just" and in "I just got back to the office from lunch."

Feb. 27th, 2009 12:22 pm:
Alicia Watch '09

Alright, second day of Alicia Watch! After an overnight stop in Albuquerque, NM, Alicia is continuing east. Let's head on over to the trusty B. Love Doppler 33,000 to check out her progress thus far (as of 9:14AM MST).



We have (not so) secret satellite imagery of the location, conveniently marked with her location. With an A. For Alicia.



And we've even snagged a photo from a free-lancer who happened to be in the area (not) at the time.



What's Alicia have to say about this place?
"Tasty beverage stop" -Alicia, 9:14AM MST

And now...

Straight from the source: (8:24AM MST)
"On the road again! Talk about a late start!off towards texas"

Texes better prepare because there's an awesomeness front moving in in the next couple of hours. Don't worry though because it looks to be good weather across Texas highways with no rain and only spotty clouds on the east side of the state.

Feb. 26th, 2009 05:05 pm:
Alicia Watch '09

Because we weren't able to land last time, we had our Eye In The Sky follow her. Here's her location at 2:46PM MST.



Holbrook, AZ looks like a nice place to drive through. Just don't blink otherwise you'll miss it.