Why are companies so petrified of technology?

Digital TV is out there. But the people who can most profit from it, aren’t doing squat to help me get it. Why the hell not?

My aunt and uncle recently got a new HD television. Their ancient Sony finally gave up the ghost, and they decided they might as well get a digital TV to replace it. I got the task of wiring and programming the big honkin’ plasma TV that I recommended they order.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the latest generation of TVs too much before that. A few years ago, I got my first color television, a little 20″ Sony Vega. I try not to watch a lot of television, since most programming is basically a waste of time. Face it, most TV viewing is just a way to distract yourself while you await your own death.

Anyway, so I got a crash course in digital TVs: 1080i v. 720p, DVI v. HDMI, etcetcetc. (I also found out along the way that the Motorola DCT-6400 series DVR has a really, really crappy analog tuner.)

Once I got everything working, I was impressed. The difference between analog, digital and HD is quite noticeable. The thing I found most attractive are the colors. The colors in an HD broadcast manage to be richer without bleeding. (The red bleed on most CRT TVs drives me nuts.)

‘Maybe,’ I thought, ‘I should look into getting me some of this here HD-TV.’ Except, of course, that I don’t want to get cable. No, no, really. In case you had forgotten, they actually broadcast television programming for free right through the air on radio waves. My aunt is happy that her cable/ISP bill is still under $200/month even after she added on the HD package. Personally, I think $200 makes for one good trip to a strip club every thirty days, where real live women show me their breasticles and pretend they want to have sex with me.

Some digging around found me this great website, AntennaWeb.org, that not only tells you what channels are available with an OTA (Over The Air) digital feed, but how far away they are, and what direction the tower is so that you can aim a directional antenna properly. Turns out there are five digital feeds coming out of New Orleans that I might could pick up. Hell, that’s about as many fuzzy, snowy channels as I can pick up currently.

But before I went and dove head first into digital TV, I decided to see if the stuff really works. As I said, my aunt and uncle have this gnifty new plasma TV, so I decided to experiment with that. I bought them a Terk HDTVa indoor antenna, and wired it up to their new TV.

A little fiddling and aiming, and holy crap it works! And, boy dog, does it work. Not only are the digital signals clear, but some of the channels are HD, and they look just as good as the HD channels coming into the TV through digital cable.

Hot damn, the digital revolution is upon me!

Or not.

Despite the fact that as of February 17, 2009, by government fiat, all analog TV broadcasts will cease, and despite that the same fiat supposedly required all new TV equipment to include digital tuners starting back on March 1, 2007, there is ONE digital tuner on the market. One. Just one. If you want to get OTA digital TV, you must buy the Samsung DTB-H260F. Which costs $170.

Now, true, I could buy a whole new TV, but why? As I said, I try to avoid watching too much TV. And a new TV is going to cost even more.

But my real screed is this: why have OTA stations not been highlighting their digital broadcasts? I would never have known I can get digital TV for free if I hadn’t started digging around on the interweb.

Why is no one (but Samsung) selling equipment that lets people use their current TVs to get digital broadcasting? 2009 ain’t very far away, and I suspect a lot of people are going to be more than a little annoyed when their analog TVs just stop working.

And the Samsung DAC is so expensive because it has all kinds of features and menus and whatever. All I need is a DAC that can change channels. That’s it. I can’t imagine that costing more than $100. Hell, Chinese slave labor should be able to crank something out for more like $50.

Television stations should be embracing OTA digital with massive PR campaigns and converter-box give aways. They should be renting HD cameras and going out and filming high school football games and broadcasting them. Why? Because there’s only a few broadcast stations in any given U.S. market. When people sign up for cable they get 67 channels to choose from. With an antenna, I’ll get 5.

Now, true, the people that don’t have cable are not the primary market for most advertisers. We OTA watchers are either complete freaks such as myself, or, more commonly, rather poor. But you know what? Poor folks buy toilet paper. They buy air fresheners and beer. They spend way too much money on NFL gear.  They are part of the market, even if they aren’t advertising company’s darling.

TV stations have been getting their asses kicked by cable and satellite for so long they can no longer see straight. OTA digital broadcasts are their last chance. They can not only compete in terms of signal quality, but in some cases even win. They should have pushed the digital OTA standard through a lot sooner. They should have partnered with electronics companies to develop and distribute cheap DACs to their market.

Instead, they are sitting around waiting for the digital revolution to land on their head like an anvil. The way that Xerox did in the ’70s, when they squandered PARC’s insight into the future of computers. The way the record companies did when Napster and iTunes were forging a new music-market paradigm.

I was all ready to write an entry about how great OTA digital TV is and how everyone should tell the cable companies to go take a long walk on a short dock. Then I found out the truth–it’s harder to get OTA digital TV than it is to get cable. And the upfront costs are higher.

Why are so many industries apparently run by complete fucking morons? I need to move my IRA into government bonds or something, methinks.  And wait for HDTV tuners to get cheaper.

Alternative Fuels are 21st Century Alchemy

Too many “alternative fuels” are just 21st century alchemy.

Alchemy was a wide ranging subject, but it is best known for the search for how to turn lead into gold. While that may seem ridiculous today, it’s not as moronic as it at first seems. Both lead and gold are dense, malleable metals. Lead can even take on a shine. Without basic atomic theory, there’s no way to know that they are both elements and therefore immutable in non-nuclear reactions.

But the heart of the quest was, in the end, a search for the “trick.” There was some “trick” that would let you turn lead into gold, and transform your life into one of fame and riches.

This belief in the “trick” has lived on long after alchemy was dissolved by modern chemistry (and that minor branch of physical chemistry known as “physics”). It lives on in get-rich-quick schemes and easy weight-loss plans.

And in a lot of alternative fuel proposals. Recent reddit submissions that have gotten some momentum include one to use boron to fuel our cars, and another that proposes aluminum. Both proposals have the same flaw–how do you get the boron and aluminum in the first place?

But those kinds of proposals gain attention and support because they buy into the “trick” ethos. The “trick” is to use something other than oil–as long as we do that, we’ll come out ahead!

Energy comes from one place and one place only: nuclear fusion. Every energy source you can name can eventually be tracked back to nuclear fusion, either occurring inside a nuclear plant, or some star. People need to stop worrying about new “sources” of energy. There’s only one. It’s just a question of how efficiently you convert that energy from the primal source into one you can use.

And forget about freakin’ cars, people! The majority of energy you consume is not the gasoline you burn in your car. It’s all the electrical appliances, computers and various toys in your home. Don’t believe me? Go buy a gasoline-powered generator and try to run your home on it with one tank of gas. A tank of gas probably lasts you almost a week in your car. It won’t last a day running your house.

Efficient electricity with minimal environmental impact is the goal. Once you have that, the rest is simply a straight-forward problem of how to covert that into a usable form for any application you may have.

Give up on the alchemy of “alternative fuels.” Don’t be fooled by the use of exotic materials, or big words, or good-old-fashioned PR bullshit like “The hydrogen economy.”

Repeat after me: “Efficient electricity with minimal environmental impact.” If the solution someone’s trying to sell you doesn’t solve that problem, they’re wasting your time, energy and money.

Kids Bounce

Since apparently fireworks don’t kill kids, I started wondering “What does?”

Once again, I put my tax dollars to good use, and found the website ChildStats.gov, which apparently intends to “offers easy access to statistics and reports on children and families, including: population and family characteristics, economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education.”

The also offers stats on “child mortality.” Which is a rather grim thought, but since I don’t have any children of my own, I can maintain a certain distance from the issue.

Table HEALTH8.B gives the child mortality stats for kids age 5-14. This is the age range over which, in theory, parents are learning to “let go.” To let their children make mistakes and learn from them.

But some parents that I know are so paranoid about death and dismemberment, that they won’t let their ankle-biters out of the yard. Hell, anymore I wonder if some parents won’t even let their kids out of the house. The drive them to school, drive them to indoor play centers where the curtain-climbers are monitor at all times by trained professionals whilst they run around in a completely padded, rounded-corners environment.

So, to cut to the chase, what does kill kids in the U.S.?

The great irony here is that parents who shuttle their kids back and forth from one “safe” environment to another are actually putting their children at higher risk of dying than kids who stay home and climb trees. Based on the numbers it would seem that when a kid falls out of a tree, he or she bounces. But they don’t when they’re stuck in the middle of thousands of pounds of steel slamming together.

If you want to protect your children you should keep them out of cars, not the creek over in the woods.

Unfortunately, anymore for the kids to get to the woods, they have to walk down, or bicycle on, a road. Putting them in the way of cars. New housing developments don’t have sidewalks these days. The houses cost $400,000, but the developer can’t be bothered to splurge on sidewalks. Cause, Lord knows, a few yards of concrete and some wooden forms would blow their budget all to hell.

Though, presumably the real reason no one builds sidewalks anymore is because the people buying the house in the development don’t care. What do they need sidewalks for? No one walks anywhere. Including their kids.

In the U.S. I think we’ve taken the “children are precious” thing a little too far. We treat them like Fabergé Eggs, guarded at all times, and insulated from anything that might do the slightest harm. Instead of leaving them alone so they can be kids. “Self-guided study” it’s called, and it teaches all kinds of good lessons about where to find worms, how much a belly-flop hurts, and why you should never trust your older brother.

Finally, for a little perspective, here’s the same graph as above, but with the kids who didn’t die thrown in:

Relax all you parents out there. Kids bounce.

If you blow your leg off, don’t come running to me

July 4th is once again upon us, and in the U.S. that means a whole gaggle of “Fireworks are dangerous–EVERYBODY PANIC!” stories in the mainstream media.

But are they really that dangerous? The federal U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission published a report in 2006 on fireworks-related injuries in the U.S. They most recent data they used was from 2005.

And just how many people are injured by fireworks? Not many.

The total number comes straight from the report. The “Severe” number I calculated based on this statement in the report:

Although most of the fireworks-related injuries were characterized as “treat and release,” an estimated 5 percent… were treated and transferred to another hospital, admitted or held for observation. This is about the same as consumer products in general.

Which means that in 2005, about 1 person in every 500,000 was injured by fireworks severely enough to be at least held overnight in the hospital.

Also note the little tidbit “This is about the same as consumer products in general.” While fireworks are (presumably) more likely to injure you than other consumer products, the severity of the injuries is not any worse.

In other words, fireworks are more likely to give you a boo-boo than other toys.

But the ultimate irony, is that sparklers–which many parents give their kids to keep them away from the “more dangerous” fireworks–are the primary cause of injuries in small children. According to the the CPSC report, “Sparklers accounted for almost half the injuries to children under 5.”

But what about death? Don’t people die from fireworks? Yes, they do. In 2005, four people died. And two of those died when fireworks started a fire inside a vehicle, in one case causing the driver to run into a telephone pole. For comparison, every year about 900 people die in bicycle crashes.

Yes, fireworks are dangerous. But they aren’t so amazingly dangerous that everyone should PANIC come the 4th of July. You don’t need to bundle your kids up in bubble-wrap and lock them in the basement with a mister of water over the heads. Just pay attention, and teach them how not to be idiots.

A 37-year-old Colorado man was standing on his apartment balcony with a friend holding a launching tube that was loaded with an artillery shell type firework. After the fuse was lit, the firework exploded but may not have launched from the tube. After the explosion, the victim dropped to the balcony. According to police there was a bruise on the victim’s chest that matched the base on the launcher tube. The victim died from a torn aorta.

Lost in Iraq? Lost *is* Iraq!

In response to yesterday’s screed, criminyjicket commented:

[Y]eah, if you’re going to have a war it needs to resemble a made for TV miniseries, in style, presentation and length

And I think he’s right.

I think the problem with the current war is that it’s more like the TV show Lost.

It started out popular. There was a mystery about a some unknown, unseen weapon of mass destruction that could kill everyone if not stopped. Then came the Others. Their purpose was unknown. They appeared from the explored areas and kidnapped and killed people.

It’s Iraq. WMDs and insurgents in the night.

And both shows eventually lost the public’s interest. Their popularity dropped and people started saying that maybe they would tune in again, if the was an end in sight.

So, to boost ratings, or polls, an end was discussed, even promised, but a long, long way off. Lost is ending in 2010. Iraq obviously won’t end before Bush leaves office in 2009.

Yeppers, George the Younger was trying to make the next Shogun. Instead, he got Lost.

Goddam you, GeorgeHerbertWalkerBush

I was stuck in traffic behind a Hummer the other day when it occurred to me that the current quagmire in Iraq is George Bush’s fault. Not the current president, but the original release: George Herbert Walker Bush.

At the moment it seems like Bush the Elder was a genius. He was confronted with actual naked aggression–the invasion and occupation of Kuwait–by Iraq and he responded. Sent in Stormin’ Norman, perforated Saddam’s army, set up a couple of no-fly zones and got the hell out. He even somehow managed to get the Israelis to just sit there and take it as Saddam rained SCUDs down on them.

But most brilliant of all, he left Saddam in power. That’s why he was able to get the hell out.

At the time people asked, “Why not drive all the way into Baghdad and take out Hussein?” Now we know why.

But more than just getting in and out, Bush the Elder turned the whole operation into an entertainment extravaganza. We had videos of smart bombs, we had Stormin’ Norman talkin’ tough with reporters. We had heart-warming stories of saving the animals in the Kuwaiti zoo.

Bush the Elder made war in the Middle East look quick, easy and fun. How could we not go back? It’d be like a five-year-old turning down a second trip to Disneyland.

Why did a Hummer make me realize this? Because Desert Storm is what truly brought us the Hummer. The armed forces had been using the Humvee for years, and Arnold Schwarzenegger and others had been trying to sell them to civilians for a while.

But it wasn’t until Desert Storm that the Hummer became a darling of American culture. A mechanical hero, it saved lives and drove the enemy before it like so many frightened sheep.

With the advent of the commercially successful Hummer, Americans were saying that a weapon of war makes a great toy. Every family guy needs a vehicle that was designed to take bullets and still crush someone’s head under its self-inflating tires.

Unfortunately, Bush the younger is a shadow of his dad, and his fun little war in Iraq has turned on him. And on the U.S. Suddenly, we are all faced with reality. Just as Hummer owners are shocked at the cost of a fill-up these days, so is the U.S. shocked at the cost of destroying another country on a lark.

Damn you George Herbert Walker Bush, damn you all to hell. You were so good at going to war in the Middle East that you made it look easy. So easy that even your son thought he could do it.

Too bad he’s a complete fuck up, eh?

People Are Stupid

I plagiarized the mantra “People are stupid, and I hate them,” from one of my many college roommates, Steve. (Steve eventually grew to hate me, even though I never learned to hate him. I mostly just envied him. But that’s a different story.)

Folks will try to turn that mantra around on me: “If people are stupid, aren’t you part of ‘people’? Aren’t you stupid, too?”

What they fail to realize is that I meant that in the first place. People are stupid, and yes, that includes me.

I do all kinds of moronic things. I backed my car into a ditch recently. It wasn’t some kind of mystery ditch that snuck up on me. It was just your basic Louisiana deep drainage ditch beside the road, and I backed off the road and into it. I could go into the details of the assumptions, observations and thought process that led me to make the blunder, but why? It all boils down to, “I’m an idiot.”

So, when I rail on about people being idiots, like I did yesterday, I’m not doing it from a high horse. I’m not looking down at the stupidity around me. I’m just looking around at the neck-high sea of stupidity we’re all standing in, and occasionally diving down into to get the complete, total-body moron experience.

I just don’t like being an idiot, so I try to point out stupid behavior when I see it. Yes, I could blog on about my own stupid behavior, but that doesn’t seem as interesting. I’m looking for broader, more communal stupidity. I want to highlight the cases where the majority has lost its collective mind.

Sometimes, I’m part of the stupidity, sometimes not. But either way, I’m not above it.

I just wanted to point that out. I am not an asshole. I just play one for the purposes of these screeds.

And, now, back to our regular programming

You Volunteered to Pay More for Gas

Crappy news organizations like to report about “record high gas prices” in the U.S. without bothering to adjust for inflation. Better news organizations, like NPR, actually adjust for inflation. The difference is noticeable.

(Data from Energy Information Administration and Bureau of Labor Statistics)

But, as you can see, the “EVERYONE PANIC” news people haven’t really been that far off the mark. Even when adjusted for inflation, prices have managed to reach new heights of late.

But why do we buy gas? We buy it to haul our ever-expanding butts around. So, I wondered if the increase in efficiency of cars doesn’t offset some of that price increase.

In the U.S., congress mandated increases in the fuel economy of cars starting back in the late ’70s. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy act set minimum fuel efficiencies for automobile producers. And it was successful. The CAFE mileage for new cars went from 18.8 mpg in 1977 to 28.0 mpg in 1990 (table).

But they’ve stalled since then. In 2004, the CAFE for new cars was only 29.1 mpg. In the ’80s the CAFE mileage went up by 17%. Since then, it’s only gone up 2.5%

Perhaps the technology has just plateaued. There is, presumably, a maximum efficiency that can be achieved. Gasoline only has so much energy in it. Once you use it all, you will never get better efficiency.

But, coincidentally enough, the mandated CAFE minimum just happened to plateau around the same time as the increase in actual CAFE numbers. Since 1990, the standard has been 27.5 mpg. And every year the real numbers have hovered just above that.

And here’s another interesting thing. The table of CAFE numbers available online also lists the average engine horsepower for new passenger vehicles.

And here’s a graph of the CAFE minimums, the actual numbers, and the average engine horsepower.

Now, if the fuel efficiency increase tapered off because of the limits of technology, why hasn’t the horsepower also tapered off? Looking at the graph, you can see that in the early ’80s, automakers lowered horsepower in order to increase efficiency. But it’s been on a steady rise ever since then, even though efficiency has dropped off–as soon as it was allowed to by law.

Is this a conspiracy by the automakers? Perhaps they are in cahoots with the oil companies?!

Or could it just be that horsepower sells? Americans want more and more powerful cars, and therefore they ignore mileage specifications and instead focus on horsepower numbers. There’s no conspiracy. Car companies make more of the cars that people buy.

As Veruca said on Violent Acres:

“I’m sick and tired of people treating life like it’s something that just happens to them. Everyone is oh so helpless and no one has any control over their situation. They act as if they’re trapped or incapable of changing their situation.”

People want to believe that the price of gas, that the cost of hauling their butt around is completely out of their control. That outside forces conspire against them to make them pay more and more for travel costs.

Sorry, but no. Your travel costs keep going up and up because of the choices you make.

When the price of gas goes up, I don’t complain. I laugh. I love filling up my little ‘Rolla while watching fools dumping their life savings into the tank of their 300-hp rolling status symbol. You idiots–you volunteered for this!

Democracy’s a Joke

At times I want to rail against the 40% of Americans who have changed their minds on the war in Iraq. I want to collectively grab them and shake them really hard and scream, “What did you think was going to happen? Nothing but flowers and dancing and free gasoline? You idiots!”

And yes, it’s almost 40% of Americans that I’d like to smack upside the head. Assuming that Bush’s approval ratings are directly correlated to his war in Iraq, while 71% of Americans thought the war was a good idea at the start, as of June, 2007, only 32% do.

(Data from the USA Today/Gallup Poll)

But it’s not really fair to blame the general citizenship for the bloody quagmire in Iraq. Nor should I be patting myself on the back. It was basically just a lucky guess on my part that the war in Iraq was a bad idea.

Because, I am in no way an expert on Middle East politics, or foreign policy, or military strategy, or any of that. And neither is the vast majority of the U.S. population.

That is, in theory, why we have a representative democracy. We elect people to figure those things out for us. If you have a regular job you don’t have the time or energy to learn the nuances of international politics. You don’t have time to just learn the names, much less the details. (Quick: name the president of Pakistan! Nope, I can’t either, and they may not even have a “president.”)

So, we elect someone who’s full-time job it is to figure this stuff out, and make the decision that’s best for the country.

And President Bush has, apparently, utterly screwed the pooch on Iraq.

But is this really a surprise to anyone? During the 2000 presidential campaign Bush got hammered on foreign policy:”Bush gets an F in foreign affairs.” Yet, people voted for him anyway.

Why? Because we don’t do democracy right in the U.S. We don’t vote for the person who we can trust to make the right decision on important issues. We vote for the candidate that makes the decision we would make, on the unimportant issues.

Abortion? Gay rights? They really aren’t nationally important. To a certain subset of the country, they’re terribly important, but they aren’t the issues that affect everyone’s well-being. Whether or not to invade Iraq is an important issue. The Patriot Act is an important issue. The way the Fed responds to inflationary indicators is an important issue.

And most of us haven’t a clue on those issues. They’re big and complex, and they take time and energy to wade through.

But we don’t vote based on who we think can understand the effect of a growing Chinese economy on illegal immigration to the U.S. We vote on whether or not someone supports murderin’ babies! Whether they seem like someone we’d like to have over to dinner.

It doesn’t matter if you like the president. It matters if he can do the goddam job!

Democracy in the U.S. is a joke. We rarely vote, and when we do it’s typically a vote based on completely ignorance of the important issues and instead a response to whatever neurosis’ button got pushed by a 30-second TV ad.

And yet, here we are trying to export democracy to the rest of the world!

We’re brainwashed into thinking that democracy is the answer to all problems. We’re fed democracy like a religion, and never question it.

PBS has a something called “The Democracy Project,” a collection of teaching guides on democracy. According to the intro, “The online activities are designed for students in grades three to six.” (Emphasis not added.) Grades three to six? Get ‘em young.

And what are we teaching these young ‘uns about democracy?

“The teacher should explain to students that this activity emphasizes voting—a community service that all students can promise to do in the future.”

“Students will be told that they will be good and useful citizens by participating in a project to encourage voting. Their newly-acquired information will prove useful to them because they will be creating motivational bookmarks that will provide adults with basic information about local elections and reasons for voting.”

Not only are the kids being indoctrinated, but they are being used as vehicles for indoctrinating the adults around them!

The whole program doesn’t say anything about how to decide who to vote for. How to evaluate ballot initiatives. On the homework you should do before voting. Just show up and vote, and you’re a good citizen!

There’s no context given about democracy. It is never questioned, at any level of education, whether or not democracy is always the best answer. Did you have an exercise or assignment at any point in your public education that did anything other than promote democracy?

If you don’t question something, it’s not politics, it’s religion. And the U.S. is exporting democracy the way the Spanish exported Catholicism. “You will join our religion or be killed! All other religions are inferior!”

“You will support a democracy or be killed! All other governments are inferior!”

In the U.S., we have been trained to think that democracy is the answer to any impasse. Can’t achieve consensus? Just take a vote and the majority is right!

The majority supported President Bush when he invaded Iraq. The majority is always wrong. Because the majority is always ignorant of the issues. Not necessarily because they are stupid, or uneducated or don’t care. Because none of us has the time to learn about all these things.

And yet we have been so brainwashed into thinking that democracy is the answer for everything, that we also think “the majority is always right.” We think our government should make its decision based on polls. The majority support war? Then let’s have a war!

“When you listen to fools, the mob rules!”–Black Sabbath got that backwards. First comes the mob–the majority–then come the fools.

Premature Eructation

Seeing as how I only have two entries in this blog, this is way premature, but I’m going to do it anyway.

I started this blog because of two things: reddit and Violent Acres. Violent Acres is the only blog I currently read regularly. I know, that’s bad form. To blog, one should be part of the blogging community. The truth is, most blogs bore the hell out of me. Violent Acres is nearly always entertaining, and occassionally insightful, so it’s different.

I am, of course, hoping this blog will be, too. I have a personal blog on LiveJournal, but it’s mostly minutae of my life, periodic whinings and wallowings. Only people who know me really care to read that–and even then probably not all the time.

Here, I’m hoping to write more generally interesting, researched or at least contemplated pieces. I’m planning on getting my ideas on what to write about from reddit. Please feel free to tell me I’m a moron. Just try to be original when you do. I’ve had people telling I’m a moron on-line since the first Bush was president, so I look for originality in insults more than meaning. It’s highly likely I’ve been insulted by people smarter and more eloquent than you. Try to stand out.

And, lastly, my entries for Veruca’s catchphrase contest:

• You’re in the wrong place. “Warm Fuzzies” are down the hall, to the left.
• It’s tough to be honest without being bitchy. I’ve stopped trying.
• This ain’t a contest to see whose issues are bigger.