Build an analog TV station
via Hack a Day by Zach Banks on 9/2/09
With the transition to digital TV, the FCC has abandoned the old analog format. Luckily, you can take advantage of this and set up your own analog TV station. The FCC has a tool on their site to see what channels are open in your area to broadcast in. To broadcast, you need a TV transmitter, but cheap short-range models can be found on eBay or made at home [pdf]. Once you have a transmitter, you can pump in a video source, either your own content or videos from youtube. One group, OMGimontv is showcasing popular youtube clips on channel 14 in New York. On their site, users can vote for what clips they want to see. Although this isn’t as simple as making a radio station, it still has a lot of potential.
[via BoingBoing]
One of the often heard arguments for government health care is that the U.S. spends twice as much as other rich countries on health care and gets worse results. Try this thought experiment: Right now government (federal and state) payments already account for nearly 50 percent of all health care expenditures in the U.S. So if the goal of health care reform is to cut in half what we’re currently spending, why not simply outlaw all private insurance and out of pocket expenditures? Problem solved, right?
Are you kidding me?
Note, some of this is not contained in the article, as I had to look through a few different sources. This article had some pretty diagrams to make the whole vomit-bucket look a little more desirable.
The investor in this new mortgage backed security faces only interest risk. The credit risk is absorbed by the MCGEs, who will replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The MCGEs can guarantee that they absorb the credit risk through—I kid you not—bond insurance and credit default swaps. They won’t get too big to fail because a competent regulator will make sure that never happens. What’s best is that somehow moral hazard will be avoided despite an explicit government guarantee. Also, despite the explicit government guarantee, this will somehow be accomplished “without putting taxpayer money at risk.”
Seriously, did someone put all of the keywords they could find on this economic crisis into a blender and then propose the result as the solution?
(I admit that I found it a little humorous that this article was written by a guy named McGee, given the proposed pronunciation of the agencies’ acronym)
Japanese Relocation - U.S. Gov’t Explanation 1942 (Japanese Internment Camps)
A short film distributed by the U.S. government during World War Two to explain why Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals living on the West Coast were relocated to internment camps away from the coast.
Interesting propaganda film. See any parallels today?
And BTW, another name for “Internment Camp” is “Concentration Camp”.
“Back in the seventies, C. Etzel Pearcy, a professor of geography, suggested redrawing all the borders of the American states. The country would then comprise thirty eight states, rather than fifty, with each new name representing an area’s physical or cultural distinctiveness.”
—from “Unusual and Marvelous Maps”
At this moment, let’s not bother arguing whether the Insurance Companies are really the problem with the health care industry or not. Let’s just assume it to be true for the sake of argument. Let’s just accept the goal of having the cost of health care reduced via the Insurance Companies. Let us accept the claim that there not being enough competition between the Insurance Companies is the problem. Let us accept what people have been saying, that the best way to solve this problem is by “more competition”.
In fact, Economics tells us that the more competition you have, the lower the cost to the consumer tends to be. (Which is what we are saying we want.)
So then, why oh why are people saying that the “best” way of getting “more competition” is by having a government run “option”? (Many politicians like to call the government run “option” the “public option”.) Because that’s not the best way to get more competition!
A government run “option” (or what they like to call the “public option”) is only one new competitor. Wouldn’t 10 new competitors be better? Wouldn’t 20 new competitors be amazing? Wouldn’t 50 new competitors be spectacular?
And a government run “option” (or what they like to call the “public option”) will be subsidized by taxed dollars. Which is one of the big complaints some people have against it. If we could have “more competition” without subsidization by tax dollars, wouldn’t that be better?
If our goal is really to reduce cost via the Insurance Companies, then wouldn’t having more competitors be a better way of accomplishing that goal? And if we could get more competition while not having any subsidizing by tax dollars, wouldn’t that be best?
So if that’s the case, then why not get rid of the laws the government has in place that has created this government enforced oligopoly of Insurance Companies, which is retarding competition. Why not get rid of the laws the government has in place that discourages new Insurance Companies from being created and competing? (They like to call these government laws “regulation”. A euphemism. Actually most people today don’t know what “regulation” actually means, and don’t realize that calling these things “regulation” was euphemism for what it really was. Was a euphemism because it was considered offensive to call it: rigging.)
Would that not be better? You’d get the competition that people want. While not having subsidizing by tax dollars.
Wow…
[…] a 10 year old New York girl has been fined $50 for operating a lemonade stand without a license.
Clementine Lee set up a lemonade stand in Riverside Park, New York Saturday as a way to raise some pocket money, but that was before not one, but three city officials pounced on her illegal operation.
[…]
For the record, Clementine had managed to sell $19 worth of lemonade before being slapped with the $50 fine.
(Link)
Some of the things in the Cap-and-Trade bill, in the US, calls for looks like it will create a food shortage. Look at this….
WASHINGTON — New forests would spread across the American landscape, replacing both pasture and farm fields, under a congressional plan to confront climate change, an Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows.
About 18 million acres of new trees — roughly the size of West Virginia — would be planted by 2020, according to an EPA analysis of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June.
That’s because the House bill gives financial incentives to farmers and ranchers to plant trees, which suck in large amounts of the key global-warming gas: carbon dioxide.
[…]
The plan would, however, be hard on ranchers and farmers and potentially food prices, says American Farm Bureau chief economist Bob Young.
In the Senate, which is likely to consider a similar bill this fall, there are some who worry the loss of farmland would lead to increases in food prices worse than those seen in mid-2007, when costs spiked 7% to 8% above 2006 levels.
(Emphasis mine.)
(Link)
I can’t help but notice that if there was (even a government engineered) food shortage (whether intentional or not) via the Cap-and-Trade bill, that it would help those with an agenda of (forced) population control. (Perhaps letting them conflate being “Green” with (forced) Population Control in people’s minds.)
Microsoft filed a patent two years ago for widely used methods for determining evolutionary relatedness, causing disbelief and apprehension among researchers.
Here’s a quote…
Andrew Gelman has a post up, Who are the liberal Democrats and the conservative Republicans?, which shows that conservative Republicans tend toward higher incomes, while conservative Democrats tend toward lower incomes. I decided to see if something similar was discernible in the General Social Survey. I used the PARTYID, POLVIEWS and SEI variables to explore the question, and limited the sample to whites and the years 1998-2008 (so as to have contemporary relevance and control for ethnic confounds). I clustered all Republicans & lean Republicans into one category, and did the same for Democrats. I also clustered all who were liberal and conservative into one category (extremely to slightly). Finally, socioeconomic status ranges from 17 to 98, and I broke it into three categories of “low,” “middle” and “high,” 17-47, 48-77 and 78-98. The percentages in the population for these three categories were 54%, 36% and 11%, so “low” is really lower to lower middle class. In any case, the charts below….
Follow the link for graphs and results.
(From Razib Khan)
