Obama's first official screw-up

I have not posted anything here in quite a long time. It seemed rather futile to rail against the previous administration - there was so much to complain about and so many people complaining, but with the new Obama administration it doesn't feel quite as much like yelling at the wind.

The thought of 6.5 million hopeless cases going without TV after Feb. 17 seems to have been just a bit more than he could stomach, and so Obama asked Congress to delay the digital TV transition and they are doing their best to comply. It is not a done deal yet, but it looks like after one more try the House will pass the bill that the Senate already passed to delay the DTV transition. (Last minute update - the bill has been passed setting the new deadline as June 12.)

Anyone who has a TV has seen countless ads explaining that the analog broadcasts are going to end, and that you either need a new TV or a converter box. Over $1.3 Billion has been spent on coupons to cover the cost of the boxes, plus who knows how much more has been spent on the ads. Anyone who hasn't figured this out by the deadline isn't going to figure it out EVER, so moving the deadline isn't going to help them. Granted, the funds for the converter box coupons have run out, but that isn't a problem that is fixed by pushing back the deadline, this issue requires either more funds or a decision that we've paid for as many boxes as we think is reasonable. (There is some sense in waiting due to the way the coupon program works - only 2/3 of the coupons have been redeemed, and after a couple of months the unused coupons will expire and we can send out more, without needing any more funding.)

People have had months to get a coupon, and the coupon plus $10 will get you a converter box, so it seems that there is really no excuse for people to not have one yet if they are going to need one. This is a deadline that has been looming for years. Delaying it will only add to the confusion and increase the cost, while still leaving millions without TV when the deadline finally arrives. We'll need a whole new round of ads to not only make folks understand how to switch to digital, but to make everyone aware of the change in schedule. We'll probably allocate more funds to pay for more converter boxes. To complicate things further, most broadcasters will be allowed to make the DTV transition early if they want, and so some folks will still lose their signal before they are ready, so really all that is accomplished by moving the date is an expansion of the confusion.

Nobody's perfect, and while I think that our new president will be about as good as can be, like anyone he is bound to slip up every now and then. At least this first one isn't really that big a deal (but it still bugs me).

Trying to understand the other point of view

Jeffy here again (finally)-

I have not posted anything here in a very long time. I just haven't had much of interest to say lately. I've been very interested in the politicking in this never-ending Presidential campaign, but my views really don't seem all that interesting. What I've really been hoping to find is some well-reasoned summary of why a person might actually vote for the Republican ticket this year. I don't think that this blog is a place where I am likely to hear much feedback from intelligent McCain supporters.

I know that there is a large chunk of his support base who are there because of their religious beliefs. I think that they are wrong to believe that McCain is their kind of Christian, but the Republicans and the religious right have been in bed together for so long now that I think it is another act of faith.

It is also understandable that the few true fat cats in our society would have reason to fall in behind the Republican ticket.

What baffles me, though, is the huge number of so-called 'Joe Sixpacks' who are a big part of the nearly half of the electorate who will end up voting for McCain. I'd really love to know how it is that these folks can think that they would be better off with the Republicans running the show.

Luckily for me, there was a good example of each candidate's followers presented in our local Sunday paper. I wasn't very interested in the Obama supporter's opinions, but I was anxious to see what the McCain support had to say.

He started with the fairly predictable subject of taxes. He is convinced that the economy is better off if we keep taxes low so that those who make piles of money can decide who best to pass it along to. He states this as a proven 'fact', without citing any proof. I think that if you look at how the economy has fared over the last few decades it would be pretty hard to link low taxes with a strong economy. This just seems like a veiled attempt to justify wanting to not pay taxes.

His next topic was the war in Iraq. His basic thesis was that since McCain was "right on the surge" he would have the best strategy going forward. Again, I don't think that there is any way to know what sort of difference the 'surge' made or whether it was a good idea or not. I also think that it is quite interesting that this McCain supporter sees no connection between this hugely expensive folly in Iraq and the need for substantial taxes to pay for it. I am pretty sure that defense is a major part of our budget, and it just seems amazingly dim to think that we should be spending a lot on defense without taxing people to pay for it.

The third item on his list was abortion. He is anti-abortion, and thinks that McCain is too (even though McCain has not had much interest in the topic in the past). I think that this is largely a case of religion sneaking in, and it kind of drives me nuts that an issue that directly affect so few people ends up being a constant big deal in our politics.

In the end it was all a little unsatisfying. I still don't see how the average American who truly thinks independently can come to the conclusion that the Republican ticket is the best choice.

I'll keep watching for signs of rational thought, if anyone spots any please pass it along.

Dream Ticket? - NOT!

I keep hearing noise about whether the Democrats might manage to field a 'Dream Ticket' for the Presidential election. This is presumed to be either an Obama/Clinton or a Clinton/Obama combo, depending on your favorite choice.

Somehow I can't help but see this as a Nightmare Ticket for the Democrats.

I obviously don't think like the average voter, since my favorite candidates never make it anywhere past the starting line, but I feel like I've got a clue about the level of support that each of these candidates can likely achieve. I have the impression that for both of these candidates it isn't about the positives, but about the negatives. Each candidate possesses a certain liability that will prevent a sizable number of people from voting for them. This means that rather than the team being worth the sum of its assets, it is more of a case that the team is hurt by the sum of its liabilities.

I think that there is some sizable percentage of folks who will not vote for a black person (let's be honest and call them racists). There is also a sizable percentage of folks who will not vote for a woman (we'll refer to this group as sexists - and not all of them are men). Finally, there is one more cohort who dislike Hillary specifically, and therefore will not vote for her. I believe that all of these groups would vote for McCain rather than compromise their misguided 'principles'. That means that you can add together all of these groups as negatives - votes specifically against the 'Dream Ticket'.

Just to demonstrate the point, let's make up some numbers. Say for starters that 60% of voters would likely vote Democratic this election (that is already possibly a bit generous, given how evenly divided our country has been recently). Now, of those likely Democrats, let's assume that 25% would fall into the racist category defined above, and another 25% fall into the sexist group, with a final 5% who just don't like Hillary. If we assume that all of these groups do not overlap at all (which is probably not true - I believe there is some overlap), then that 60% of possible Democrats gets reduced to a paltry 27% of the total votes. Even if we assume a lot of overlap (the whole 5% who dislike Hillary are part of the sexist group, and that group and the racist group overlap enough that the total 'no' voters amount to only 40% of the possible voters), that still brings the 60% overall total down to 36%, which will be tough to win an election with.

Granted, with these fake numbers either candidate alone winds up with only 45% of the possible Democrat vote, but other guesses can produce different results (20% rather than 25% results in 52% for either one alone, yet could still drop the pair down well below 45%, depending on the overlap). Still, I am fairly certain that there are sizable percentages of folks who just will not vote for one candidate or the other, and that the sum of these groups is even larger, and would vote against a 'Dream Ticket'. Either Obama or Clinton alone may be able to pull some voters from the other party that may not be included in that original 60%, but I wouldn't expect much of this to happen.

I suspect that there may be significant pressure on whoever finally emerges as the Democrats' candidate to consider the other as a VP candidate, but I think both of them really ought to be very wary of the other. Either one needs to avoid collecting more negatives if at all possible, and try to get someone who at least will not reduce their chances of winning in the end. The other way to negate this effect is for McCain to select a running mate who is either a woman or black, and therefore give the racists and sexists nobody else to vote for, but I haven't heard of anyone like this being mentioned as a possibility so far.

Data Destruction

It has been a while since I've posted anything here, but I finally came across something worthy.

At our office we periodically need to get rid of old, useless computers. We don't want to run any risk of any private data escaping on their hard drives, so for quite a while we just tossed the hard drives in a box and kept them. We knew that eventually we'd have to deal with them, but that is why we have the word 'Later' in our language, right?

Later arrived, and it was time to deal with the pile. We wiped quite a few of them by connecting them four at a time to a PC and running a disk wiping program. This worked reasonably well for the drives that worked and were reasonably fast. For many drives, however, the effort to get them running
and wait while they were wiped just didn't seem to be worth it.

Some of my staff had been kicking around the idea of just drilling holes in the drives to render them unusable. We even did a little test with a couple, and being largely aluminum, drilling worked pretty well. Since we had a pretty large pile we decided to pick up a cheap drill press and get to work. We quickly found that many of the old drives had stainless steel covers that were a chore to drill through. The guy doing the drilling was spending a fair amount of time at it, and was stinking the place up with hot steel and oil (not the usual office sounds and smells).

So, I decided to experiment with another option: the hard drive firing squad.

I set aside a couple dozen drives and put the drilling on hold for a while. Then this past weekend I was able to visit my dad (who has the fire power) and we headed to a gravel pit to see what we could do. We experimented with stacking the drives so that we could possibly destroy more than one with a shot, and had pretty good luck. Here are some pictures of the damage:

	Front
	Rear

This sample was shot with a .243 caliber rifle from the front. Not only did we get a nice little hole, but with the .243 we could pretty easily pierce a second drive that was stacked behind this one. If you are familiar with what a hard drive looks like inside (or if you peek ahead to see one with the cover removed) you'll know that the platters that store the data are round disks located toward an end of the enclosure. We wanted to damage those platters. To get the job done we had to hit the end of the drive where the platters are located, and we didn't want to get too tangled up with the drive motor at the center of the platters, or else we wouldn't get through as many.

I have to commend my Dad on having his rifles sighted in perfectly. While it wasn't a surprise that he could hit these targets from our safe distance of 50 yards or so, it did surprise me a bit that I had about the same luck he had. We were able to destroy 25 drives with just 13 shots. Given what rifle rounds cost, this ended up being faster and cheaper than our drilling process, and quite a bit cheaper than a commercial shredder service. Plus, it was a LOT more fun.

We shot most of the drives with the .243, but then had to try out something a bit bigger, just to see how it worked.

Here are some drives that we shot with a .270 caliber rifle (which doesn't sound that much bigger than a .243, but the .270 has much larger shells with more powder and the bullets are a fair amount heavier than the .243):

	Front
	Rear

And here is a sample that we barely managed to hit (twice) with the .243 before finishing it off with the .270:

	Front
	Rear

And, just to let you see what these look like inside (and to show what sort of damage is done to the disk platter themselves), here is one that I removed the cover from:
This one actually got shot a few times. You can see the smaller dents in the platter - these were made with a .22 caliber rifle, just to see if that was capable of destroying the drive. It probably did well enough, but we had to make sure when we had the larger rifles out. I don't recall for certain, but I think the larger hole was made with the .243 after having gone through another drive first. The ones at the rear of a stack were a bit messier, as the bullet had mushroomed quite a bit on the first drive. In fact, with the .270 we may have been able to do more than four in a stack if we clamped them in place, but with them just stood in the sand the impact on the front of the stack tended to knock the ones in the rear out of the way.

Given how successful and fun this was, I've retired the drill press and have set aside the rest of the drives for one more visit to the gravel pit. I am a bit sad that we probably won't be adding any more drives to the destruction pile as we are now wiping them as we retire the computer. But, we don't really want to be destroying drives that may be of some use. As you may be able to see on the labels of the drives shown, the ones we destroyed were old SCSI drives in the quarter to half gigabyte size range - not something that had any chance of ever being used again. Plus, it is a bit hard to justify rifle ammunition on a computer support services budget.

Why Blog?

The other day a friend of mine, who is aware of my occasional posts to this blog, asked why I do it. I don't think that the question was necessarily directed just at me, but toward bloggers in general. I think I was just a convenient person with a small amount of personal experience to ask about it.

I mentioned the simple case of the major blogs. In these cases I think it is pretty clear that the motivation is largely the ad revenue. For the bulk of bloggers, however, ad revenue rarely amounts to anything, so there must be other motivating factors. I suspect that there are almost as many reasons as there are bloggers.

The question got me thinking, both about my reasons for blogging and about why others write and read blogs. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to give my thoughts on my reasons for blogging and then solicit the readers of this blog to pass along their own thoughts on the subject.

I should preface my own reasons by noting that I am not a very involved blogger, so I am quite likely not very representative of the blogging community at large. I manage to write a couple of posts a month for a blog that is not primarily mine, and I regularly read only a couple of blogs. Because of this I expect that the comments of others will be more interesting than what I have to say.

The prospect of interesting comments is one of the main reasons that I post blog entries. I usually write a blog post when I feel like I have something interesting to pass along to whoever may be out there to read it, but I also look forward to what people might have to say about that topic. To be able to make a statement about something and then find out what others think about the topic (or about my opinion) is quite appealing to me.

As for reading blogs, I have come across a few that are reliably thought-provoking, or entertaining, and they make for an enjoyable bit of reading each day. Not only do blogs provide an opportunity to continue a dialog with the writer when I would like to, but they allow for a wider range of topics and opinions than I would find in any mass-audience commercial media. No matter that your area of interest or your point of view you can find someone who has something to say about it. If you are looking for validation you can find folks who see things the same way as you, and if you want a challenge there are plenty of opposing viewpoints out there.

Now, here is your chance to make this post into something interesting. I would love it if everyone (and I mean everyone) who reads this post would do me the favor of leaving a comment with their thoughts on the subject. You can think of it as your small payment for the content you have just consumed if that helps guilt you into commenting (that sometimes works for me). If you have a blog of your own I'd be interested to hear why, and for everyone I'd be interested to hear what you get from reading blogs. If you aren't excited about identifying yourself I'd be happy to get your comments anonymously.

An Embarrassment

No matter how often it happens, the inability of many retail clerks to simply make change always strikes me as a telling statement on the pitiful condition of the average American's reasoning abilities. If you can't figure out the simplest of computational problems there isn't much hope that you can figure out much else.

Here are the two latest examples of what has happened on my two most recent attempts to buy lunch:

Today my total bill came to $6.46. I gave the clerk a $10 bill and a penny. I even tried to let her know that I was complicating things with the penny before she keyed my payment into the cash register so that she'd have a chance to avoid the difficult task of figuring this problem out for herself. She got out three $1 bills and two quarters (good so far...) and then started rummaging around in the penny bin. I mentioned that I had given her the penny to avoid getting a wad of pennies, and that I'd rather get a nickel than the five pennies. That prompted her to drop the pennies, dig up a dime and hope for the best. It seemed rather pointless to try to correct her at this point, so I kept the extra five cents as my tip for helping her do her job.

The previous day was an even scarier example. My bill totaled $5.50. I handed the clerk a $10 bill and two quarters. He spent a LOT of time staring at the register, maybe wishing he had keyed in $10.50 rather than just the $10 he had quickly punched in when he saw my bill. One of his helpful co-workers saw the confusion and stepped in to help. The first guy seemed to be trying to figure out how to re-enter my payment so that the register would tell him what to give me, and the other guy told him not to worry about the register, and to just give me my $4.50. As the first guy fumbled around to count out four $1 bills, I mentioned that I'd really rather have a $5 bill, at which point they both pretty much said, "Uh, OK", and handed me a $5 bill.

As a quick reality check I presented the above scenario to my third-grader. He heard the particulars and when I asked what I should have gotten for change he gave a look that clearly meant "Are you kidding me?" and immediately said, "Five dollars."

I realize that I may be a simpleton clerk's nightmare, but I am very patient with them, and I try not to confuse them when there are other customers waiting in line, plus it really doesn't occur to me that I am giving them the functional equivalent of a differential equation to solve.

Still, it never ceases to appall me how often it is so easy to stump someone who should have mastered third-grade math many years ago. I just have to hope that the folks staffing the cash registers are not representative of the average US high school graduate.

Movie Recommendation

Unlike my buddy Wunelle, I am not one to analyze or deconstruct a movie and write a detailed and thoughtful review. My movie reviews tend to be more like "Hey, 'Cars' was GREAT! You ought to check it out." So I can't really call them 'reviews'.

Also, I am usually fairly slow to get around to seeing most movies, so by the time you might get a review from me it is likely to be rather old news. However, every now and then I do feel like bringing attention to a movie that I particularly enjoyed, especially if it is one that folks may have missed the first time around.

The wife and I watched 'Stranger than Fiction' last night and we both enjoyed it very much.

What more is there to say?

If you must have more details there are scads of real reviews all over the web, but those are not all positive, and so will just cause uncertainty and confusion. Some reviewers love it, some think it is so so, some hate it, blah, blah, blah. All you need is one opinion from someone who you can trust to be right all the time. That is the service I provide.

Jeffy sez.

Amatuer Medical Research

I've been suffering from the plague for the past two weeks; well, maybe not the Plague, but a nasty cold that has hit me rather hard.

Every time I get a cold I end up trying to fight it with a barrage of drugs. There are probably more drugs available to wage war on cold symptoms than just about any other category. Not only do we all get colds (and hate them) but given that colds are caused by viruses there is no way to actually 'cure' a cold - all you can do is treat the symptoms to hold the suffering to a minimum. Since nothing can actually 'cure' a cold there is plenty of room for drugs that make claims about being able to help in various ways. I am generally familiar with the various drugs available and know what they are able to do. Rather than buy one of the many available cocktails of the various drugs I prefer to buy the individual drugs and treat my specific symptoms one by one.

Early in the cold when congestion is the main problem I'll stick to just a decongestant. Later, when the aches and pains start to grow I'll go with a pain reliever. The toughest part to treat is the final stage that I've been in for a few days now when the main problem is a nasty hacking cough. The reason this is a tough symptom to treat is that there are no good drugs for treating coughs. There are many options available at the drugstore, but they have all been shown to work about the same as a placebo. If I were willing to visit a physician I suppose I could get a prescription for codeine, which is somewhat effective, but by the time I get seen the cold is likely to have run its course. So, with a cough that seems to get worse later in the day, just when it can have the maximum impact on my ability to get a good night's sleep, I've been doing some experimenting on myself to see if there is any way to get some relief. I am not sure if I have found anything that works very well, but I've at least found a treatment that shows promise.

On the first night I tried a widely accepted cough suppressant drug, and did not see any apparent relief. On the second night I combined that drug with a sedating antihistamine, since the sedating effect would be welcome, and there is some belief that the sedation helps the cough suppressant do its thing. No luck. I was no more able to sleep, but I was so drowsy that I couldn't do much else. One the third night I did some 'research' on the internet and found that most research does agree that the OTC cough suppressants generally are worthless (no surprise to me), and that various home remedies might do something. So I gave one of those a try and had a big dose of honey mixed in warm water. This treatment may be cheaper than the available drugs, and doesn't require a trip to the drug store, but I didn't see that it worked any better.

So tonight I headed back online for more 'research'. I started with the intention of finding out how well codeine might do in comparison to the various worthless remedies I had tried so far, but I quickly came across a different option entirely - dark chocolate. The National Heart and Lung Institute in London did a small test comparing a compound found in chocolate (theobromine) to codeine and to a placebo to see how it faired in preventing coughs. They found that the theobromine actually did a better job than the codeine did. I've got a supply of dark chocolate in the cupboard, so it was time for more experimenting on myself.

Theobromine is not something that is documented on the packaging of chocolate, so I had to do some guessing about how much chocolate was going to be necessary to get the effects found in the lab. I came up with a guess of two ounces of dark chocolate, and got to work medicating myself. I have no idea how quickly I might see any effects, but I did get the feeling that it may have helped a bit.

I'll have to sleep on it (or try to) and see how the treatment works when it really counts. If nothing else it is a much more appealing treatment that all the others, and given how little those other treatments do, it is unlikely that this will do less.

(Thursday ends...)
...
(Friday begins...)

So, I paid attention to my coughing after medicating myself, and it did seem to be improved. Plus, I was able to sleep better last night than I had for the previous three. The improvement could be due to the chocolate, or due to my cold fading.

This definitely seems like a treatment that will require further testing. I am already hard at work on tonight's run of the experiment.

Should we protect false speech?

This past Tuesday was election day in Minnesota, at least it was in the 99 school districts who had school levy questions on the ballot. As is usually the case, these levy referenda had quite an uphill battle convincing folks to vote themselves a tax increase. At least when you vote for the Democrats you only have a general concern that your taxes will go up - with a school levy that is the issue directly being decided. I am not sure of the final tally, but I think that about a third of these levy referenda were not passed.

Two levies in particular are now at the center of an interesting legal battle.

In these two school districts (Robbinsdale in the Twin Cities metro area and Howard Lake - Waverly in rural southwestern MN) organized campaigns were run in opposition to the levies. This opposition was spearheaded by a 'consultant' from Iowa who helps run these anti-levy campaigns throughout the Midwest - a guy named Paul Dorr. Dorr did not help these campaigns out of some altruistic desire to ensure that residents of these districts get quality schools at a fair price; no, he is an avowed opponent of all public schooling. He believes that children should be educated in parochial schools and that money spent on secular public schools is misdirected. Possibly as a result of this initial bias he directed campaigns based on the dissemination of blatantly false statements about these school districts and their finances.

As it turns out, Minnesota has a law on the books outlawing false statements made in a effort to sway opinion on a ballot question. These groups have not yet been brought up on charges, but they have decided to take the lead. They have sued the state hoping to invalidate the anti-falsehood statute. As MN Public Radio put it: "Levy opponents sue for right to spread false information". Talk about making things hard for your lawyer!

It is one thing to protect speech that is unpopular, but patently false statements of fact seem to be of no value and never worth protecting. We're not talking about beliefs or opinions about facts, or mistakes made in regards to facts, but bald-faced lies. One example cited in these school levy cases is a statement that the Robbinsdale district is suffering financially because of non-residents choosing to attend school there, when in reality the state pays more for non-resident students than it does for residents. This kind of falsehood isn't likely to be a mistake, since these anti-levy groups requested and received piles of documents from the school districts, including complete financial records. The campaign even went to far as to boldly state "Support the Kids - Oppose the Waste!" in the headlines of its literature. No matter which side of a levy debate you are on, it seems pretty hard to make the case that the best thing for the kids in the schools would be to deny them any extra funds. While it may be the case that the schools have plenty of money and their problems stem from other sources (not in my opinion, but folks can realistically think this way), it seems pretty far-fetched that giving them more money would make things worse for the students.

I think that the law in MN doesn't go far enough (and ought to be the rule throughout the country rather than the exception). When a case of this sort turns up, the violators of the law should not be subject to monetary judgments alone - the election ought to be re-run and the violators forced to pay the costs - including the cost of disseminating factually correct information to counteract the effects of the garbage they spread the first time around. Just making them pay a fine after they have achieved their desired results in an election doesn't seem like much of a deterrent - they were already willing to pay to try to sway the vote their way. The folks who contributed most to the anti-levy campaign in Robbinsdale donated more to the campaign than they would have paid in increased taxes over the entire 10-year term of the levy, had the levy passed, so money alone is clearly not the primary concern of these folks.

When I'm Dictator

I imagine that I could make a long list of the things that I'll do when I become supreme ruler of all the universe, but at the moment the one little thing chapping my hide is Daylight Saving Time.

Don't get me wrong, I love the extra daylight that DST shifts to the evening. It is great to trade daylight from the morning to the evening and not have to adjust everyone's schedule to make it happen. My problem arises from the (relatively) new laws that change the start and end dates for DST. The new rules have caused HUGE amounts of grief for those of us who have to manage devices that know the time. All over the place are devices that keep the time and many also know the timezone. Many of these have been trained to automatically handle the change to and from DST, but now that the rules have changed all of those devices need to be updated to make them work properly.

This issue first arose when the first new changeover date came around, and there were plenty of devices that didn't get it right then. Well, there are still lots that don't get it right. The biggest problems I run into are in scheduling and calendaring applications, and in email. These applications usually include time zone info. All manner of trouble arises from systems and devices that don't properly convey time zone info.

So, my grand scheme, that everyone will hate (therefore it requires a firm-fisted ruler to force it on everyone) is to adopt Universal Time for everyone everywhere. It will take a little time to adjust to the fact that I have lunch at 18:00 GMT (or UTC, but I kind of like the nostalgia of GMT, and if I'm the Decider...), but I think that in the end we'll all be better off.

Independent of all the grief it causes me personally, there are many cases where it just doesn't make sense any more to try to convey time zone info. With instant worldwide communication and fast worldwide travel come constant demands to try to figure out what time it is somewhere else based on the time zone there. With GMT everywhere there is no figuring - when the schedule says the plane arrives at 15:15, that is 15:15 on my watch no matter where I was when I last set it. When I tell someone we'll have a conference call at 8:30 we all know when to call, no matter where we are.

Unfortunately, adopting GMT for all times means that DST as we know it will be no more, but I guess that is the price we have to pay for the simplicity of one single consistent representation of time. Anyone who wants more daylight can just get up earlier (sez he who can never get up remotely early).

Collective Futility

A while back I had made some comments via email to Wunelle about a strike that was going on at the U of MN. I didn't want to publish those comments at that time, as it was probably not completely appropriate (since I am a supervisor (of only four people) at the U of MN I am technically considered part of management and therefore prohibited to discuss strike-related matters with union staff). Now that the strike is over I don't think there is any reason I can't make some general observations about the execution of the strike. Still, it is important to state up front that the opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the position of the U of MN.

I'll start right off by stating that I don't really have an opinion on the merits of the demands of the unions involved - I don't know enough about the labor market or the U's funding to be able to evaluate either side's claims.

However, it was interesting to watch this strike unfold and see how everyone involved dealt with it.

The strike was waged by four local units of the AFSCME clerical and health care workers union. The walkout was prompted almost exclusively by an impasse over wages. The way that the U and the union spun their views on the proposed wage increases was quite revealing. The U makes the case that they offered the union a 4.25% annual wage increase each year for the coming 2-year contract period. They state this as an 8.5% increase for the contract period. The union choses to portray this proposal differently. They make the case that their contracts already allow for annual 2% 'step' increases, so that 4.25% is really just a 2.25% increase, which they maintain doesn't even keep up with inflation. So, from the U's point of view the total wage increases (and the cost to the UMN budget) are well above the cost of living, while the union portrays it as a 'step' increase (that they are entitled to as an acknowledgment of their dedication to the U and their increased value as an employee) - plus a 2.25% cost-of-living increase that doesn't keep up with inflation. As a comparison, those of us who are not represented by the unions were given a 3.25% cost of living increase (and nothing more), so no matter how you look at it the union folks could have gotten less.

Four years ago when it was contract negotiation time for these same union units one of the four struck for better wages while the other three units took the contract the U offered. That strike lasted 15 days and ended when the strikers just couldn't afford to stay out any longer. The settlement was kept quiet, but from the information available it was fairly clear what the final result was. The union was given the same cost of living increase that was initially offered by the U, but the union members were given a lump sum bonus that totaled about $1M. While that $1M helped sweeten the pill of having to accept a contract that wasn't especially appealing, it is interesting to note that during the strike the U saved about $2M in salaries for the striking workers who, of course, did not get paid while they were on strike. The union can claim that the strike was good for the union, but it certainly can't be said that the strike achieved its goal of squeezing more money out of the U. A true skeptic could say that the only folks who benefited from the strike were those who chose to cross the picket lines and report for work. They got the same lump-sum bonuses and didn't have to give up their pay to get them.

I agree with the folks who do not feel that their jobs pay all that well (the union pegs their average salary at $34,000), but it is hard to say that the U is under-paying them when there seems to be an ample supply of folks with the necessary skills willing to work for that pay. This is something that I think is misunderstood by many people. The wages that a company pays are simply the cost of buying the labor of their workers. The benefits offered are simply part of that overall package, and exist mainly because they can be bought by the employer for less than the perceived value to the employees, so they are a cheap way of increasing the value of the compensation to the employee (at least they were cheap before health care costs shot up). Wages are not a measure of how much the workers are appreciated, or a statement about what is a reasonable amount to try to live on, they are simply a measure of what the market demands for the work required. If it was hard to find folks to do this work there would be competition between employers and the price paid would go up. This is commonly seen in cases where special skills are needed, and there is therefore a smaller pool of available labor and the cost of that labor is higher. I might think otherwise, but unions tend to even take this pay-for-labor thinking a bit farther (albeit unintentionally) by arguing against merit pay. They effectively remove the case that can be made that folks need to be paid more to reward them for doing a good job (the related idea that unions DO support is that folks should be rewarded for longevity with across-the-board increases for all regardless of merit).

Unfortunately for these unions at a university, it is just not an effective strategy for them to strike. In the first place, the U is not hurt by them being out on strike. This is not to say that these workers don't do good work that contributes to the success of the U, but that they do not have an impact on the U's ability to produce income. Unlike a normal business, the U does not lose income if its workers are not producing. Also, the U can not do anything to generate more funds to pay its employees more - all it can do is ask the state for more money and then allot where it goes. The last several years it has been given less than it asks for, and so has had to find ways to get by on less than it 'needs', and so generous wage increases are not likely to happen. Also, with a few minor exceptions their cause doesn't seem to generate support from other unions in any way that might make their strike more effective. I am not sure, but I think it may be the case that other unions at the U are legally prohibited from staging sympathy strikes, and with the U involved in so few interactions with other unionized businesses there isn't much in the way of outside support. All I have seen is that unionized UPS drivers will not cross the picket lines. However, they still will make deliveries and pickups from a central location, so it is still possible (and only somewhat inconvenient) to do business with UPS. And the other package haulers all have no problem crossing the picket lines, so the U has no difficulty due to the actions of the UPS drivers, it just costs UPS a bit of business to allow their drivers to uphold their union code of honor. In a case like this a strike might even be counter-productive. Not only will there not be issues like bringing in replacement workers, but it may be realized that many things work just fine without some of these folks around, and maybe not all of them are even needed.

As I had suggested to Wunelle in private the U was not interested in improving their offer and the workers could not afford to stay out any longer than last time. Nobody who lives from paycheck to paycheck can afford the luxury of a several week strike. Throw in the loss of health coverage that would occur once a person missed an entire pay period and that is just too much. So, yesterday the union came back to talk again about settling, and agreed to end the strike with the offer that the U had made a few days ago - the same cost-of-living increase plus a $300 lump sum bonus for each employee. In the end the outcome is very much the same as last time they struck - a net loss for those who chose to walk out and a tiny net gain for those who chose to stay at work. That gain probably doesn't cover the grief taken by those who crossed the picket lines to go to work, and once there had to help do the work of those who walked out.

It will be interesting to see how things proceed from here. The union members have not yet voted on the proposed contract, so it still may not be entirely over, but it seems unlikely that they would reject a contract when they have no other option (I don't know if they can strike again, but I doubt it). I have to think that the union members might get fed up with their leadership. Twice now they have led the union out on strikes that resulted in net losses to the faithful members. Both times the leaders appeared to enjoy 'playing union' and leading a strike. I would have expected somber reluctance toward the idea of a strike, especially when the membership consists of folks who can't afford to miss a paycheck and the union has no real capacity to offset those losses, but the leaders looked like they thought this was a fun game they were playing. Even once the strike was done the leaders appeared to have enjoyed the exercise and talked about how good this was for the union as an organization. I couldn't help thinking that it may have been the straw that breaks the unions back. Few of the 2/3 of the union members who crossed the picket lines seemed to think this was a good idea. I don't think that many of them are much inclined to work to dissolve the union, but the leaders may find a gaping lack of support the next time the union holds elections.

So, the grand total as a result of the strike is a net loss in compensation for the union workers as a group, a backlog of work for them to handle when they return (unless someone else worked extra to handle it during the strike), and general bad feelings for everyone at the place. It may not be fair to lay this all at the feet of just one party when it clearly takes two to tango, but I still have to say: Nice work AFSCME!

Digital TV Free-For-All

I finally had a chance to give digital over-the-air TV a try. A friend bought a new TV (a sweet 46" Samsung LCD) and as part of the deal also got a 19" Samsung LCD to go with it, and I got to bring the little one home for a while to play with.

I had been very curious about the prospects for getting HDTV by tuning into the digital TV broadcasts that are now quite commonly available in the US. My expectation was that like other digital technologies it would be a go/no-go affair. A digital tuner ought to either receive a functional signal or not be able to tune in at all - none of the fuzzy, snowy, partial reception we are all used to with typical analog TV broadcasts. However, I had not yet heard of anyone actually using an antenna to pull in HDTV content, so I suspected that it was not that simple.

Turns out that it is.

I plugged in the TV, hooked up a small indoor antenna, and viola - instant HDTV!

I didn't have to fiddle at all with the antenna to get a decent picture, every local digital channel just came in perfectly. Simply getting perfect reception of broadcast TV would be a big win all by itself, but this deal provides even more. Not only is the reception perfect, but the picture quality is better to boot. Digital broadcasting provides each station with a wide 'pipe' that they can send programming over. How they choose to make use of that bandwidth is up to them, and several different schemes are being used. Some stations broadcast only a very high-def version of their usual programming (our local CBS affiliate, for example, is broadcasting the usual CBS programming at a resolution of 1080i - the maximum possible for broadcast). Others have chosen to split their allotted bandwidth into multiple channels, some at high-def and others at the digital standard-def (480i), which is a fair improvement over analog TV (around 350i). Some of our local stations are showing 2 channels of the same programming - one at 720p high-def and another at the 480i standard-def. Others have gone for 2 channels with different programming on each, like our local ABC affiliate which is showing the usual ABC programming in 720p high-def and also a second channel with local news and weather programming in 480i. Our local public broadcasting station has really gone for more content - they have split their main channel into 2 with unique programming on each, and they split their secondary channel into 5 channels each with its own category of programming.

So, not only does the existing programming arrive in higher-quality digital perfection, but I get more channels as part of the deal, many of which are in high def!

I had been considering my options for cable or satellite, all the while balking at the cost. While there are certainly some cable channels that I'd like to get, there are not many, especially if I don't count the local stations that I can get at no cost over the air. Also, the local digital broadcast is less affected by weather than satellite is, and there is no compression of the data stream as satellite must do, so the local channels that I do get are (marginally) better than what I would get if I opted for satellite (I don't yet know much about what would come in via the cable in terms of quality, but I am guessing that it is pretty similar to satellite).

So, I think I will take the money that I'll save by not buying TV content and put it toward a decent LCD TV that can make it's permanent home here. Once you go digital it is tough to go back, so I think I have to get something rather quickly before I feel too bad about keeping my friend's little TV for too long (the 27" Sony tube is already feeling a bit left-out - I have not been able to tolerate it since this little 19" Samsung LCD arrived).

The Disaster Outside Jeffy's Office

The collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis last week has been the big news item of the week for everyone in the vicinity of my office. The building I work in is right on I-35W very near to the south bank of the river. The bridge that collapsed is one that I see close-up every weekday (and many weekends) - I cross it twice a day commuting to work, and pass under it twice a day when I head out for lunch. I returned from vacation to find that it had dropped from under several dozen vehicles that were tracing my usual route home at my usual time.

The next two days at the office were surreal. In the first place it was not easy getting there. Not only was this bridge gone, but its nearest neighbors were closed (and still are). There were police lines protecting the entire area, and my parking ramp had been commandeered as temporary parking for the rescue personnel who were on the scene. Upon seeing how much the rescue workers and the office workers were in each other's way the University decided to send everyone in my building home that day and close close it for the next day. I was one of the few who were permitted (expected) to enter the office on Friday (somebody has to be around to keep an eye on all the servers). This meant crossing several police lines with checkpoints. Between the place I parked and my office building I had to show my ID three times.

That first day was spent mostly looking out the windows and marveling at how such a collapse could happen. There was also much talk of co-workers who narrowly avoided disaster - the person who had crossed the bridge moments before its collapse, and the person who was stranded on the on-ramp to the bridge, and the professor who was on the bridge and walked away after her car fell 20-30 feet (the silver Prius that is visible in many news photos is hers). I spent some time on our upper floor and got a couple of photos of the scene from my vantage point:





Most of the wreckage of the bridge is hidden from view in the river valley. Many news photos show this quite well - check out the coverage at www.startribune.com or www.pioneerpress.com if you are interested. The bridge in the background is for a local city street (Tenth Ave.), not a highway, and it has been closed since the collapse.

The second day at work was also very odd. The building was eerily silent, with only a couple people in the entire building. My cubicle is in the basement, but I had to make many trips upstairs to see how things were looking. Given the difficulty traveling near my building I didn't get outside for lunch, even if I had, most of the area around my building has been cordoned off. The area was subject to power shortages due to damage to transmission lines near the bridge, so I spent much of my day going desk to desk shutting off computers.

There has, of course, been much talk of what happened - how could a bridge just collapse? Other than the usual large dose of human-interest stories, most of the media attention has been focused on how recent inspections have shown the bridge to be in less than tip-top shape, but it was supposedly still safe. Throughout the summer a resurfacing project has been underway on the bridge, but little has been said about how that might have impacted the bridge. For this project crews have been working with half of the lanes closed to remove and replace a layer of the concrete decking. Given that half of the lanes were closed at the time of the collapse it is hard to imagine that the construction was not somehow a major factor. The weight load on the bridge would have been at most half of what it usually carries, so that seems like a very odd time for stress and fatigue to finally take it down. The Feds are confident that they can figure out what the cause of the failure was, but as usual those answers will be a long time coming.

So will a new bridge. I was impatiently looking forward to the end of this construction project so that we could get back to somewhat normal traffic in my area by the end of the summer. Now it looks like we'll be lucky to be back to normal by the end of 2008.

The Chrysler Story

Either I have not been paying attention, or the recent sale of Chrysler has received a paltry amount of news coverage. I read a story about it in the latest Time magazine that was quite interesting and contained many facts that I had not yet heard.

Here are the highlights:

Nine years ago (can it be that already??) Daimler-Benz (as in Mercedes) bought Chrysler for $36 Billion.

This month Daimler PAID Cerberus $675 Million to become the new owner of Chrysler. What Cerberus brought to the table was a plan to pay $7.4 Billion to help cover the $18 Billion that Chrysler owes for the health care of its retirees.

As the author of the Time article put it, the Detroit Three (no longer the Big Three, as Toyota has surpassed Chrysler in US sales) have become health benefits companies with a side interest in making cars (a side interest that loses them money - Chrysler has lost $2 Billion in the first quarter of this year).

Other factoids of interest: GM is currently valued at $18 Billion, while its pension fund is worth more than $100 Billion. GM has 3 retirees being supported (including health benefits) by the company for every 1 current worker (for Chrysler the ratio is 1.3 to 1). GM is no longer the largest private employer in the nation, but it is the largest purchaser of health care. A GM or Chrysler vehicle has about $1500 of health care costs rolled into its sales price, while a Honda or Toyota has around $350 (Ford is only a little better off at $1200). The Detroit Three are some of only 13% of private-sector US employers who offer health care benefits to retirees.

I have no idea how the Detroit Three will be able to succeed competing against companies that are not saddled with these huge financial obligations, but one thing is certain: if the UAW doesn't start coming up with some pretty creative ideas it will soon have no members who are actually working anymore. At some point they are going to have to settle for a level of compensation more in line with what Toyota's and Honda's US workers get - not as sweet a deal as what the UAW has provided in the past, but reasonable compensation none the less. While a sweet deal is great, a fair deal is much preferable to no job at all after your employer dries up and blows away.

Movie (Theater) Review

I have just about given up on going to the theater to see movies. Not only is the ticket price rather high (full-rate tickets for two about equal the cost of the movie on DVD), but all of the extras combine to make the total cost way too much (and having to pay a babysitter just adds another $20 to the bill). On top of the high cost the experience is often marred by projection problems or distracting audience members.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the theater experience is finally being addressed - the paltry 24fps frame rate. It may seem a bit odd to folks who are not familiar with the technology, but while even the lowly TV shows 30 images per second, movies on the big screen are shown at the rate of 24 images per second. Given that the theater projector has to deal with actual rolls of film and the TV just gets a signal fed to it that is not so bad, but it still results in rather poor reproduction of motion on screen. I have never been able to tolerate the low frame rate when there is anything more than minimal motion going on, even a pan across a static scene starts to give me a headache.

A solution has finally arrived, at least to some theaters. While it would be possible to make higher frame rate film projectors (and some folks have championed this cause), the 'easy' solution is to get rid of film. That is what has been done at theaters that now have digital projection systems. The technology is very much like the digital projectors that folks use for Powerpoint presentations in boring meetings everywhere, but scaled up quite a bit. Many movies are now shot on digital video, so transferring the final digital master to film for distribution is a bit of an anachronism.

I was happily surprised Saturday night when the wife and I went out for a movie at our local theater and got to watch our first digitally projected movie. It was great!! As it turns out, one of our local theaters is in the rather small group of theaters who have made the conversion to digital projection. Not only do we get a flicker-free movie with nice smooth motion, but there is none of the wear and tear that would normally be visible on a reel of film that had been run through the projector umpteen times.

It might just be enough to get me to go back for more.

Outdoor Fun

This past weekend the kids and I tried a new outdoor activity that I had been interested in for a while - Geocaching. If you have not heard about this, the idea is that someone hides a small cache somewhere and the only clue given for those who want to try to find it is the exact coordinates. To find this cache you use a GPS which can get you within 20 or 30 feet of the spot, and then its just a matter of looking in the places where something might rest undisturbed until you find it. The cache almost always contains a log where you can record your visit, and usually there are some trinkets for trading. You take something and leave something else for the next person who finds the cache.

It was a beautiful day, and we had lots of fun. Since the caches are often hidden in places that are a bit off the beaten path the hunt leads you to places where you may not have bothered to go otherwise. We hiked through wooded areas of nearby parks that we had never really noticed before, and visited other parks and trails that we knew about, but had never bothered to check out. The kids had a fabulous time.

A big part of the process is that the folks who have hidden these caches register them on a web site (www.geocaching.com) and provide the coordinates there. Also, the listings on the web site provide a place to leave log entries about your hunt for the cache, so you can see who else has found the cache and when they found it even if you have not yet found the cache yourself. The person who hid the cache can also see who has found it and how often it gets found, and can get some feedback from the folks who have found (or tried to find) the cache.

Looking on the Geocaching web site you can see that there are many of these caches around. There are some hiding just about anywhere you might be. Here is a map of the ones near my home, several of which the kids and I searched for and found:



Now that many cell phones have GPS capabilities, folks who don't have a dedicated GPS unit can get in on the fun. In some cases it is even possible to find a cache without a GPS. With a good enough map you can get pretty close, and in some cases there are just not that many good hiding places where a cache could be stashed. In an urban area with good coverage you could just about nail down the spot with the satellite view in Google Maps.

I've always been totally impressed by the GPS system and the idea that a little hand-held receiver could determine your position on the planet to such great accuracy just by knowing the precise orbits of a few satellites and then listening for broadcasts of the time from them. I've played with the units in the car and while hiking and biking, but I rarely drive anywhere where a GPS is very necessary, so it is fun to have found another great way to play with one.

Political Terminology

I think we need to start over and redefine the labels we use when talking politics. The tried and true Liberal and Conservative are just not that accurate, and Right and Left are fairly well-understood, but too arbitrary. I'd like to see more accurate and meaningful labels used like Populist, or Elitist, or some other terms that actually mean something like what a person might believe.

My biggest gripe about the term Right is that the folks who inhabit that end of the spectrum seem to think that it means Correct when applied to them. We have a local right-wing radio host who has billboards around town advertising his show that refer to him as Mr. Right. Other signs for his show say that it is "Right, Every Day at 5PM". I really get the impression that these folks like being called Right, even if they realize that it doesn't mean that they are actually correct.

Another local billboard provides a handy definition of the term Liberal - the Taxpayer's League says that it means Tax Tax Tax and Spend Spend Spend. I kind of thought that liberal meant open to new ideas, willing to try new things and not too interested in unnecessarily restricting people's rights. Sometimes being liberal does mean spending tax money to provide services that are needed and beneficial, sometimes being liberal means giving people the freedom to live their lives without government interference. I suspect that it just doesn't work to have catch-all labels for just about anyone's political views. I have many views that are aligned with folks on the left end of the spectrum, and many other views that are aligned with folks on the right end of the spectrum. On average I probably end up somewhere in the middle, but there are few situations when the middle is a real option. This is probably the case for even the most extreme cases. The far right-wing folks who consider themselves frugal are perfectly happy collecting taxes and using the money for things like law enforcement or national defense. The far left-wing folks who get painted as tax and spend liberals have plenty of situations where they find themselves not wanting to spend tax money, like on public school bible study classes or on stadiums for profitable sports teams.

I guess that maybe instead of looking for better labels we'd be better off just going without labels and taking the time to find out what someone actually believes, rather than just hearing Liberal or Conservative and thinking that we know their point of view on the whole range of issues.

Job Security

As a computer support specialist I always feel a like I am taking advantage of an unfortunate set of circumstances that are generally not the fault of the person I am helping. While I know that I do provide a valuable service, it is a service that I think should not be necessary (at least not the routine stuff). As time goes on and computer systems get better and better (or so one would expect) it seems reasonable to think that some day services such as those I provide would not be needed on such a routine basis.

If Microsoft's latest version of Windows, Vista, is any indication, there will be plenty of work for folks like me for the foreseeable future.

Until recently I have been able to avoid Vista, even though I run a shop that provides support for a few hundred PCs (as well as a bunch of much less needy Macs). Mainly this has been due to my belief that Vista provides very little real improvement over XP, and so I have little interest in upgrading existing PCs. I expect that before long we'll start getting Vista on new PCs that we buy, but so far our preferred configurations from Dell still come with XP on them.

This week, however, I got my first bitter taste. A group in our department that does some database development wanted to test their system on Vista to start getting ready for the inevitable day when their customers using Vista systems. They gave me a reasonably decent PC to install Vista on (a Dell with a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 and 1GB of ram) and I got ready to play.

The first task that requires too much tech savvy is selecting the edition of Vista to use. For those who have yet to look into Vista, there are 5 different editions available here in the US (and one more that is just for 'emerging markets'). The various editions provide a variety of capabilities, and impose a variety of requirements on the PC hardware. Even though most folks will get either the Home Basic or Home Premium edition of Vista, I chose to do my testing with the Enterprise edition, since that is the edition that we'd be most likely to use at our office.

So, I popped in my Vista DVD and got started. After a fair amount of time spent copying and expanding files I ran aground when the following error popped up:

Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code: 0x800706F8

What more could you ask for from an error message? It states the problem, and it provides the solution. If only one actually knew which files could not be installed and how to make them available. A little searching the web on another nearby computer turns up the actual solution - the DVD drive needs a firmware update.

So, its off to the Dell support site to download an update for the DVD drive. A little searching there turns up a slew of firmware updates for this model DVD drive. Now I just have to decide which firmware version I want - A02, A04, A05, A06, M002, M003, T104, T03, XP01, U005, or U007 - and then download it, find a floppy disk to put it on, and then boot from the floppy to update the firmware of the DVD. None of this is rocket science, but it is WAY beyond what someone should be expected to do just to install a new OS.

Now that the DVD drive was ready I restarted and completed the installation. This time it was uneventful, but there were still plenty of questions and choices that could trip up a novice.

Once the basic installation was complete the next task was to download updates for the OS and fetch drivers for any of the hardware components that were not handled by drivers that were included with Vista. This is when the real fun started. Several of the PC's components were not handled by the drivers that came with Vista. One was the built-in ethernet interface. Granted, Dells are pretty rare, so it is maybe a bit much to ask that Vista include drivers for their equally rare 3Com nics, but without a driver the process is once again halted while another nearby computer is used to track one down. Without a working network interface there is clearly no way this PC is going to be able to get the updates and drivers it needs on its own.

So, I head back to the Dell site (do you suppose they notice in their web server logs that lots of the traffic on their support pages is coming from Macs???) to find an ethernet driver, and possibly a couple others, like video and sound card drivers.

This time, instead of too many drivers to choose from, there are too few. None, to be specific. 3Com also does not have a driver for this nic for use with Vista. Nor is there a driver for the video adapter or sound card. There may have been other components that would never work on this system, but once the nic and video adapter were eliminated there was no point in checking anything else.

Game over. Vista is not an option for this PC, even though it meets the stated requirements to be able to run Vista. Not a very auspicious first experience with the next big thing for Windows PCs.

To be fair, this PC was certainly not what MS intended folks to run Vista on, but they did give every indication that it would be fine.

Luckily, all it cost me was an afternoon, and I gained some valuable experience in the process. For the average home PC user it would have cost far more than just an afternoon, and all of the hurdles would have probably seemed much less humorous than they did to me.

Bad Science

This was initially going to be a post where I vent about a minor irritation of mine: the general misuse of scientific terms. I hear many cases, and they especially grate me as I often know what the terms actually mean, and the popular use can be so far off. My favorite example (if you can call it that) is the term 'quantum leap'. This term is often used when someone wants to make something sound like an impressively large change. In physics the term actually refers to the smallest possible change in the amount of energy an atom contains, but when you don't know what the hell it means the term sounds like it must refer to something enormous.

However, that is pretty trivial when compared to other flagrant misuses of science. One of the latest that I just heard about is being called 'dirty electricity'. The theory behind this b.s. is that high frequency alternating electric fields can cause a variety of health problems. The proponents of this voodoo do not understand or care that there have never been any demonstrated (negative or positive) effects of electric fields on people (or any other life forms) - they just know that electricity is powerful, and scary, and mysterious, and it must be bad for you. Others throughout the history of domesticated electricity have assumed that it must have healing powers for much the same reasons.

For some believers this b.s. is just cause for great concern and a reason for misguided activism. Others see this a a chance to exploit the easily-scared public. The news story I heard was about some crackpot who is selling devices made by his company to clean up the dirty electricity in places where people hang out. He has been targeting schools with his scary sales pitch and has sold several schools thousands of dollars worth of gear to correct this 'problem'. The schools obviously don't have money to burn, but it isn't all that hard to get folks riled up about the safety of their kids.

Scientists generally shy away from debunking this sort of crap, since it a waste of their time and believers are not likely to change their beliefs anyway. So we are left with crackpots spouting b.s. on the one hand, and nothing to counter that on the other hand. All we can hope is that folks will rely on their skepticism and refuse to be baffled by bullshit.

Public Service Announcement

Like many men (and some women) I snore when I sleep. As anyone who has slept in the same house as me can attest, I am quite good at it (ok, REALLY good at it). My wife suffered with this noise every night for many years, until recently, when my snoring was shut off entirely. What we did not realize was that all that time I was suffering too, but in a different and more insidious way.

The end of my snoring came when we decided that it was time to see what could be done to stop the noise. Not only did we need to solve the noise problem so that my wife could sleep better, but we were both concerned about health problems that can result from sleep apnea, which often occur along with snoring. When a person suffers from sleep apnea he stops breathing while sleeping, and after a short time will wake enough to catch his breath and drop back to sleep. This can happen many times a night. Not only does this cause the obvious problem of a sleep deficit, it has also been found recently to be quite hard on the heart (as well as other organs that don't like being starved for oxygen).

The usual diagnostic procedure is a sleep study. I went in for my sleep study last winter. It was quite the experience. The study is conducted during an overnight stay at a hospital. I was wired up with electrodes to monitor my heart rhythm, my brain waves, my eye movements, my pulse rate, my blood oxygen level, and my leg muscle movements. I then got to sleep while being watched and listened to by technicians.

Halfway through the night the tech woke me up to make a change in my setup. He left all of my electrodes in place, and also hooked me up to a device called a CPAP (which stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). A CPAP is a small air compressor that is connected to a mask over the nose (usually, sometimes other masks are used). It blows air into the airway, which can keep soft tissue in the throat from relaxing and closing off the throat, which is what stops the breathing.

In the morning a physician looked over the data and filled me in. For the first half of the night I stopped breathing about 60 times an hour. Since I was constantly waking enough to resume breathing I spent none of that time in the deeper levels of sleep, including the deepest REM sleep. After getting attached to the CPAP I did not stop breathing any more times, and I spent most of the rest of the night in the deeper levels of sleep, including REM sleep.

A few days later I had my own CPAP machine to use every night. Now I don't snore anymore, but I sound a bit like Darth Vader. The biggest surprise for me was realizing that for many years I almost never managed to get any REM sleep, and so I never dreamed. I had always just assumed that I didn't recall my dreams once I woke up. Now I dream every night, and my wife happily sleeps in near silence.

Here is an example of what a mask like mine looks like:


So, if you snore, or someone you sleep with snores, it is probably worth getting it checked out. Even if you don't suffer from sleep apnea, it is very likely that the snoring can be treated fairly easily. If you do suffer from sleep apnea it is probably causing you a fair amount of harm, without you even noticing. One of the companies that sells CPAP systems has a website (www.healthysleep.com) that is pretty helpful and gives more info if you think you might suffer from sleep apnea.