Technology, the Stealthy Tattletale - New York Times

Benevolent Big Brother??

GPS technology is wonderfully (or sinisterly) powerful with so many uses to track people and things that 2007 seems eerily like Orwell's 1984. The Internet and all its peripherals is becoming an extension of our consciousness and a guardian or watchman of our lives. Many will argue this is not a good thing. History shows us that it will be a mixed blessing, but I believe the benefits will outweigh the detriments. 'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.'

The Outsourced Brain - New York Times

The Outsourced Brain - New York Times

David brooks, always the keen observer of society, scores a hit in describing the modern 'outsourced brain' of man/woman. We are deeply connected with all sorts of electronic helpmates which guide us and shape our knowledge and twirl our worldview.

I think back to the days when salesmen went door to door selling encyclopedias for your children's education and yearbooks that you could buy for twenty bucks to keep current on what happened last year. We bought the Americana because we couldn't afford Britannica and it seemed more patriotic, too. That set of thirty or so volumes anchored the two bottom shelves of our bookcase for three decades. The books are gone now, replaced by an assortment of photo albums, maps and miscellaneous other books. The Internet is my encyclopedia.

Now if I want to know anything, it's click, click to Wikipedia or any number of sites that Google or Microsoft finds for me. I remain in awe of how much information has moved to the Web in such a short time and the enormous number of useful sites. I counted up my password-protected websites and I have nearly a hundred for anything from frivolity to finances.

I stop to think about life before the Internet and how radically different it was. And as all this capability migrates to wireless devices, we are no longer tethered to the desk; we can take it all with us, ad supported of course. Must remember to keep my batteries charged!

The Western Water Dilemma

A long piece in the Sunday Times, but worth reading to understand the enormous problems facing the dry western regions of the U.S. When I read this and as I have traveled through that region, I am thankful that I live in Vermont, a place with abundant water.

Windows Home Server in depth: the Ars Technica review: Page 3

Windows Home Server in depth: the Ars Technica review

I'm capturing this link to an excellent review of the workings of Windows Home Server soon to be on store shelves. HP is one company among several that will have its own product, not yet available (10/23/07). I'll look intently at this offering. If it will make life easier for storage and manipulation of our photos and other data on my home network, I may consider it...if the price is right.

Cnet has a strongly positive review here for the HP version (HP MediaSmart Server ex475) with a terabyte of storage on two hard drives.

Ed Bott's very positive review of the HP server is here. It's well worth reading for those who are interested in buying. (That includes me).

The HP WHS is now available to order at Amazon.com.

How to build your own is here.

A very detailed review of HP's WHS is here.

WARNING: device driver updates causing Vista to deactivate | APC Magazine

WARNING: device driver updates causing Vista to deactivate APC Magazine

About three weeks ago I experienced this very painful problem of my perfectly legitimate Vista installation requiring reactivation. The process was handled efficiently by Microsoft, but the tribulation of rectifying a problem that was not of my making and had nothing to do with piracy which MS is rightly trying to prevent, was a two hour ordeal.

There has to be a better way for MS to keep legitimate users out of this ordeal. In addition, it has to be costly for MS, too, but perhaps not as costly as the piracy. I hope the upcoming Vista service pack will ameliorate this heavy inconvenience.

A Son of Immigrants Rises in a Southern State - New York Times

A Son of Immigrants Rises in a Southern State - New York Times

Why do I sense from this news report that the writer is not pleased that a conservative Catholic Indian Republican was elected governor of Louisiana? That seems to be the undertone of the article. Considering the sorry sinkhole that is Louisiana politics that elects incompetents such as Nagin and Blanco , this guy will have his work cut out for him.

He seems competent and energetic so let's hope he can help Louisiana. The best that can happen is that he will encourage others of competence and solid ethics to help move the state forward.

New York's Fight Over Drivers Licenses

Update: 10/30/07; NY Times editorial today

Spitzer has reversed course on his plan for drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Smart move, Governor. NY Times castigates him as being weak.


Spitzer's plan to provide NY drivers licenses to illegals is a bad idea and the Times justification of it is worse. Driving is a privilege. Of course we want safe drivers, but providing a license to people who live in NY, or anywhere else, illegally is bad public policy that flies in the face of the rule of law. Such privileges only encourage illegals to remain illegal. Insurance companies should not provide insurance to illegals. No-fault coverage will cover those people injured or sustaining damage by illegals.

"In this case, Mr. Spitzer is trying to make certain there is a safe driver behind the wheel of every car. That is no small matter. More than 40,000 people die in car crashes in the United States every year, more than 3,000 of them in New York State.

To help lower that toll, Mr. Spitzer recently announced that New York would join eight other states that do not require licensed drivers to prove that they are in the country legally. Instead, prospective drivers will need to prove exactly who they are, that they can drive safely, that they have car insurance, and that they live in New York State.

Critics of Mr. Spitzer’s plan are trying to paint it as a threat to national security. But as the governor outlined in a speech on Friday, there are important ways in which the opposite is true. His plan would give faces and addresses to many of the one million people who are not here legally, who live in the shadows. It would also make it vastly more difficult for someone to get more than one license. Richard Clarke, an adviser under the last four presidents, mostly on national security issues, has said that making driver’s licenses available to immigrants regardless of their legal status would promote security because “it is far preferable for the state to know who is living in it and driving on its roads.""

Failing Schools in America

The quote below from the NY Times article points to one among many of the problems that beset our schools. The problem is NOT the NCLB law. Far too many of our schools are failing and blame is plentiful, but unless teachers unions embrace the goals of the act and mend their ways rather than fighting it while talking from both sides of their mouths, little progress can be expected in the worst schools.

Where is the entertainment industry on the issue? They could, in the national interest, take on the challenge of persuading kids and parents of the value of good schools and good education, rather than the trash that passes for music and TV.

Why do so many people in Vermont oppose the NCLB law? Although Vermont students may be doing OKl compared to other states, our population is very homogeneous and we spend far too much money on K-12 education in achieving these results.

"At Woodrow Wilson High one recent morning, teachers broke into small groups over coffee studying test scores for areas of weakness. But there were limits to what they would learn.

The teachers analyzed results for the entire school, not for their own students. Roberto Martinez, the principal, said he had not given teachers the scores of their own students because their union objects, saying the scores were being used to evaluate teachers.

“And who suffers?” asked Veronica Garcia, an English teacher at Wilson. “The kids suffer, because the teacher never gets feedback.”

A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, said the union supported test score reviews provided they did not affect teachers’ jobs. Mr. Duffy said the federal law glossed over the travails of teaching students living in poverty. “Everyone agrees that urban education needs a shot in the arm, but it is not as bleak as the naysayers would have it,” he said."

Technology Review: Nuclear Energy Revs Up

A New Nuke Proposed for Texas

This is good news. Nuclear is the source of choice if we are serious about meeting America's demand for electricity.

"NRG Energy's application seeks permission to build two new reactors beside two existing reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear-power station, in Bay City, TX, adding 2,700 megawatts of capacity capable of powering about two million homes. NRG hopes to begin construction in 2010 and to be operating the reactors by 2015, assuming there are no significant regulatory or construction delays."

Compare this to Vermont's 'whistling in the wind' projects: Some experts believe that 20% of power demand, or 200 MW of utility scale wind projects, could be Vermont's potential. This Texas nuke proposal will produce 13.5 times that amount of baseload, dispatchable power.

Diet and fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

This column by by John Tierney, published October 9, 2007 in the NYTimes is a 'must read,' not so much for the facts therein about fat and its effect on diet, but the wonderful description of how the 'bandwagon effect' against excess fat in the American diet played out over several decades. Could it be that the same bandwagon effect, or what I refer to as the 'groupthink' phenomenon, is capturing us in the global warming debate?

"When a group of people agree on something, that doesn’t always mean they are right." This is the quote from the article and we should heed it. People are swayed to believe what high-profile people say, and this is reinforced by the barrage of media influence. To believe differently or to be a skeptic often becomes a difficult position to hold. Ideology can quickly overwhelm facts, particularly when science is involved because so few people have an understanding of science.

Yet his warning is as appropriate in science as in any field when the tsunami of the majority overwhelms the minority. We see it at work in the climate change debate played out in the 'energy independence' steamroller that leads to 'consensus' thinking, even fanaticism, about wind power and solar energy sources.

We should be cautious about being swept away by the global warming 'consensus' or any other whirlwind.