Category: Interesting Tidbits

One news item that probably escaped your attention — and who could blame you as many things as are going on in the world — is that a coalition of industry, government, and academic experts are forming a center whose purpose is to study and come up with ways to prevent identity theft. Identity theft is a serious problem. Here’s what the federal government has to say about it. As we speak, legislation is circulating around the Senate and House that — although it would not prevent identity theft at all — would at least attempt to create uniform guidelines about what financial institutions would have to do in the event that consumer data is compromised. Some experts opine that many problems could be avoided if common sense were more common.

Here’s a radical thought: let’s start preventing identity theft by agreeing not to pass financial information around like mashed potatoes at Sunday Dinner!

We can start by not putting Social Security Numbers on documents such as health insurance cards and school ID cards. We can continue by not putting Social Security Numbers in state driver’s license records. Let’s limit access to Social Security Numbers to entities who have a legitimate tax, credit, or financial reason to know. Your boss needs your Social Security Number so he can pay the taxes associated with your employment. Your High School has no legitimate reason to know your Social Security Number. Your college might need it if you receive student aid, but your professors don’t need it.

Then let’s have a long hard look at the sorts of data corporate America has. Some of it they have — legitimately — because of doing business with you. Some of it they have because they bought or “shared” it with another business. And some of that data is in turn bought or shared from yet a third or fourth or fiftieth business. Company A might know you own a microwave oven made by Company B, purchased at Company C, through a data purchased from Company D, but what business is it of theirs? I mean really. Why do they need to know? And are the big data warehouses of aggregated consumer information really a benefit to real people? Or are they just a way for corporate America to sell us more stuff and have more information about us? Such databases are already being used by law enforcement to get around petty little things like search warrants. Not surprisingly, they are also being used by criminals to find targets.

Maybe then we can deal with computer security, and seriously ask companies why Social Security Numbers would ever be kept on a laptop computer, and why a computer with such information would ever be allowed off the premises. Yes, those are all different instances. I guess it’s hard to learn from the mistakes of others.

In closing, The President calls the press a tattle-tale for daring to say things that are unflattering but true. Wisely, he doesn’t look in his own back yard.

You know I don’t usually do little stories like this, but this one was so interesting I double checked to make sure it wasn’t released last Saturday.

Scientists have found fossils of a new dinosaur in Utah. It resembled a 7 foot tall turkey. It had brightly colored feathers, but did not fly. It had a strong, toothless beak, and hand-like claws.

Upon reading this description, all I could think was “Oh my! They’ve found fossilized Big Bird!“

Today is the 250th birthday of one of music’s great geniuses, Mozart. According to Grove’s, he was christened Johannes Chryostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, Wolfgang Gottlieb for short, even though he always preferred the Latin translation of his middle name, the more familiar Amadeus.

Let me join the rest of the world in a big rousing “Happy Birthday!!”

Mozart, alas, died at the age of 36. Speculation that he was poisoned has run rampant since then, fueled by his widow, who was always willing to make money from the works and remembrance of her husband. The fact of the matter is that his doctors knew quite a bit about poison and ill effects of mercury; if Mozart was poisoned, we must presume the far-fetched idea that both doctors were involved in the plot. By the way, you can tell a lot about a book on Mozart by flipping to the back and seeing what day they say he was buried. Mozart died December 5th, 1791. Local law stated that a body could not be buried until two days after death (to prevent accidental burial of someone not quite dead yet). Any book that says Mozart was buried December 6 is not to be trusted.

If you only have the opportunity to read one book about Mozart this year, make it The Mozart Myths. This little book slices and dices the legends surrounding his all-too-brief life with great skill and insight. If you have more time, consider Mozart in Vienna and Mozart’s Last Year, particularly nice for the evaluation of Mozart’s estate. I have always found the assertion that he “died a pauper” to be a little bit of an exaggeration, even before you consider that his possessions were deliberated undervalued for tax purposes — to say nothing of whatever cash Constanze might have hidden on her person.

There is one book on Mozart I must recommend you not read. I will not name it here. The author’s primary hypothesis is that Mozart’s marriage was falling apart, and indeed his younger son was actually his apprentice Sussmayr’s child. His “evidence” is that the husband and wife were not in the same city exactly 40 weeks before the child’s birth. Had the author run this idea past his own mother — or any woman who has ever been pregnant — the book would surely never have been written. Furthermore, if the author had done an additional two minutes of research, he would have found this drawing from an early Mozart biography (written by Constanze’s second husband) of a particular deformity of Mozart’s outer ear. The model was Mozart’s younger son, who inherited the condition.

As far as his music goes, don’t limit yourself to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the Requiem. There’s a whole world of Piano Sonatas and Operas and the Clarinet Concerto and all kinds of work for strings, as well as the much overlooked Music for Glass Harmonica. (It was a very new instrument at the time, having been invented like many things of the era by Ben Franklin.)

He’s one of the most famous composers in human history. If you were to ask random people on the street to name a composer of classical music, odds are good he is one of the half dozen names you are most likely to hear. So let’s crank the stereo. Rock me, Amadeus.

I must admit some amusement to your objections to the nomination of Ms. Miers to the Supreme Court. No, really, that line about how she’s not qualified to play a Supreme Court Justice on The West Wing was just hilarious, dear.

But really, I must express some concern that the worst thing you could think of to say about Harriet Miers is that she’s an SMU girl! Putting aside my own status as an SMU Alumna, do you really mean to insult the fine women who have graduated from Southern Methodist University, including the esteemed Mrs. Bush?

I mean really, it’s not like she got her law degree from Fill-In-The-State Wesleyan!

You could have chosen to make fun of her Tammy Faye makeup, or her her long history in the sordid tale of Dallas politics; you could even have pointed out that she would still be working within a half hour of her alma mater if the President hadn’t taken her to Washington D.C.. You could have wondered aloud why she didn’t get her MRS along with her JD, speculating whether or not she might be a closet feminist, albeit with some hypocrisy. You could have focused on the fact that she’d never been a judge of any sort, not even on the SMU Moot Court. Better yet, you could have tried to figure out what the woman actually thinks and stands for. Instead you chose to impugn a fine university that apparently doesn’t meet your discerning standards.

Surely a Cornell grad like yourself can come up with something intellectually rigorous to say against Ms. Miers.

Sincerely,
ShortWoman

It’s been a little over a year since I purchased a Sunset Orange Pearl 2004 Honda Element.

About once a month someone — usually a complete stranger — asks me “So, how d’ya like your truck?” This is often followed by rather specific questions about such issues as milage and hauling capacity. Honda ought to pay me as many times as I have demonstrated the Element’s features to the curious masses.

There are a lot of things I like about my Element. It’s a small but serious truck, as is evidenced by this fellow taking a world tour in one. The towing capacity is only 1500 pounds, but you can still fit a startling amount of stuff in back. We have even taken the sunroof out and transported a small tree in it. It’s tough enough for light offroading in stock configuration, and there are plenty of aftermarket parts to make it more rugged.

It has the same iVTEC engine as the Honda Civic Si (the little sports coupe), so there is plenty of power. Although a manual is available, I have the automatic transmission. It was decided that we should have at least one vehicle that doesn’t have a stick shift. I get a pretty solid 22 mpg in mixed driving, which definitely isn’t bad for all wheel drive. Heck, it beats some minivans. It handles well in town or on the road, and takes curves without feeling like it is tipping over. Shorter than other Hondas, it parallel parks with ease.

“Polarizing styling” means people either love or hate the way it looks. A lot of people hate the composite body panels, but they are both recyclable and replaceable. I like the eye-grabbing yet dirt hiding color, but I must say there are two new colors this year that look awesome: bright red and charcoal grey. The vehicle sits high, but not so high that a Short Woman such as myself has any trouble climbing into it. I have been telling myself I should get some of those stainless tube running boards, but clearly it is not a priority as I have yet to do so.

Moving inside, I definitely think the Element has a nicer interior than the CR-V. Granted, the CR-V seats 5 and is 10 inches longer than the Element, but the Element is just a more practical and appealing vehicle. Every interior surface can be cleaned by sweeping or wiping it off. Every interior surface is water resistant. This should be instant appeal for anyone with kids, dogs, or outdoor/wet hobbies. Each seat has a cup-holder — and really who needs more than one? — that will easily accommodate a variety of containers ranging from a juice-box or can of Red Bull up to a fast food large drink. The seats and seatbelts are comfortable and fully adjustable; adjustable belt points are an absolute necessity for any person under 5’2″. The back seats have more than adequate room for an adult, making them absolutely luxurious for smaller passengers.

One of the best things about the Element is storage, storage, storage! There’s a little ledge for your garage remote and gas receipts. There’s another little ledge over on the passenger side for some mints, your iPod (handy stereo input right there), your cell phone charger (the outlet is right next to the stereo input), and other important stuff. There’s a compartment overhead for a CD case or sunglasses. There’s a door compartment on all 4 doors for things like maps and windshield shades. There’s a spot near the front seat cup-holders for small snacks or maybe sunscreen. There’s room on the backs of the seats for, uh, i don’t know, stuff. There’s pockets in the rear compartment for the bag you can put the sunroof glass into, a tarp, bungies, a couple plastic bags… you get the picture. The bottom of the cargo compartment can be made into a picnic table.

Speaking of cargo, there’s hooks in the cargo area where you can make sure your cargo stays put! It’s a quirk of mine, but I hate when the groceries circumnavigate the trunk on the way home. If you end up with a lot of stuff, each rear seat easily folds up to give you more cargo room, and protect the windows while you’re at it. It is always amusing to watch some Good-Ol-Boy go from “Ha! she’s never going to get all that stuff into that little itty bitty truck!” to “Wow, that’s amazing.” If you have a really big hauling job, the seats can be taken out altogether — no tools required — and stored until you are done.

This is also a vehicle with a sense of community. There are Element owners clubs all over the country. It is not unusual for Element drivers to wave at one another. Some may scope out another’s modifications. At the very least, you can almost always get a smile out of another Element driver at a stop light.

As many things as I love about my Element, there are a few things I don’t like. For example, the large exterior rear view mirror on the driver’s side creates a blind spot. This may partly be a function of how far forward the seat is, in my case. I wish I had a small vanity mirror on the back of the sun-visor. And occasionally, I wish I could seat five.

Nevertheless, if someone asks how I like my truck — and they never say car, although they sometimes say “rig” — I will tell them I love it. And as long as I am not in too big a hurry, I will answer a question or two.

Here are the undisputed facts: In October of 2001, a dairy farm in Washington bought a cow from a Canadian source. On December 9, that same cow was slaughtered and sent for processing. By this time it was a “downer” cow — one sufficiently ill that could no longer stand up. On December 23, it was announced that after testing, the cow in question was found to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease. In response, there was a recall of 20 cows worth of meat, reportedly about 10,000 pounds, “to reassure the public” and with an “overabundance of caution.” Oh, you didn’t know it was legal to sell cows too sick to stand up and make food out of them? Blame Congress. There is still time to send a letter before they get back to work after Christmas (January 20. It must be nice.)

Here’s where things get dicey. Once it was clear that chopping up very sick animals and feeding them to animals who are not sick was a bad idea — an idea which should have been common sense — both the United States and Canada banned the use of cow parts in cow food back in 1997. That’s 6 years ago. The problem is that the official American records on this cow indicate that it was born in 1999, 4 years ago.

Or was she? One of the links above says 5 years. One source even claims the cow was 12 years old! Today they are saying the Canadian paperwork shows the cow was 6, maybe even 6 and a half. So then, is it even plausible that somebody made an honest mistake? Or did somebody deliberately make the cow out to be 2 years younger than it was? And in that case, who did it and on which side of the Canada-America border? Who should be expecting the fraud lawsuit Monday morning?

Oh, but don’t pin all the blame on the cattle brokers. It seems that the bad-stuff-in-feed ban isn’t enforced as well as it probably should be. In fact, even officials admit there is now only 99% compliance. You wouldn’t think it was hard to keep cow parts out of the feed mix, but apparently it is!

After we figure out little details like where the cow came from, when it was really born, and how the heck it came to have a terrible brain eating illness that can be transmitted to humans who eat it, the next step will be to track down every cow that shared a feeding trough with it. Most of these cows are likely to still be alive. Perhaps insane, but alive. Be skeptical if absolutely none of the cattle in question turn out to be infected.

These guys suddenly don’t seem as wacky as they used to.

Yesterday, the Librarian of Congress issued some rules clarifying the scope of the DMCA. For those who don’t keep track of this stuff, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act essentially reiterates that making and distributing illegal copies of copyrighted works is illegal. Furthermore, it makes devices that circumvent copy protection and Digital Rights Management (DRM) illegal. This has resulted in some amusing cases where permanent markers and computer shift keys are technically illegal. This is the law that got Dmitri Skylarov* in trouble a couple of years ago.

To be brief, there are 4 exemptions:

1) It is legal to publish a list of internet sites blacklisted by filtering software. This is considered crucially important for determining whether such filters work adequately without unduly restricting access. It is also vital for preventing ideological abuse of such filters, for example blacklisting materials on unpopular but legal political groups.

2) It is legal to circumvent a damaged, obsolete “dongle”. How annoying would it be to lose access to a possibly expensive computer program just because some little gizmo got broken and the company that made it is out of business!

3) It is legal to emulate obsolete programs that ran on obsolete hardware.
Go ahead, get out the old Apple II disks. Or, here’s something you might enjoy.

4) It is legal to circumvent copy protection of eBooks for the purpose of access by the handicapped. What Skylarov did is now unambiguously legal, so there.

One interesting aspect of these guidelines is that not one of them will cost copyright holders any money. Heck, two of the rules specifically deal with materials not for sale anywhere at any price. Indeed, the rule allowing circumvention for handicapped access may increase eBook sales.

DMCA is still an over-reaching behemoth of a law, and it still needs to be cut down to size. Nevertheless, these four guidelines are a good first step.

*If you are not familiar with this case, please feel free to read up. The way I used to explain it back in the day was that Skylarov was a Russian citizen arrested in the United States for violating a law of the United States while in Russia.

Many thanks for those of you who have come here from JayCurrie.com, JerryKindall.com, and Fecundity.com. Also, a warm welcome to those of you who found us through Blogosphere, Blogdex, Weblogs.com, Technorati, and of course Google. We now have readers from over 20 countries.

This morning I picked up the newspaper and was just
shocked to see this quote in oversized letters on the front
page:

“I am a senior and I
am on retirement (income) and Social Security, and I thought that homes, as they
got older, usually went down (in taxable
value).”

I was flabbergasted! Has
this person not noticed housing prices going up both in her neighborhood and the
nation at large, with talk of a potential housing bubble? Has she not noticed the assessment
notices from the county each year? Can she possibly not be aware that housing
prices and tax assessments have at least some passing relationship? Have we not
been told since we were old enough to pay attention that a house is not merely a dwelling, not only our
castle, it is an investment, a cornerstone of our financial
planning, a colossal tax break, and the most important asset most of us are
likely to ever possess?

A related story on the front page tells us that in
the last year “the average value of resale homes jumped an unprecedented 10
percent.” This rise is not typical, but it’s still impressive. That’s pretty
darn good in an environment where the long bond is earning less than 5% and the S&P 500 has risen about 7% in the last year.
Housing has been a bright spot in a dull economy
in many parts of the country.

Even
considering this performance, I am of the opinion that a primary home is not
always
an asset and not always a good investment. I am furthermore not alone in this
opinion. The issue of whether your home is an
asset or a liability depends on many factors, some of which are unique to your
situation. Here are some issues you should consider when deciding where the
family home fits in the family
finances.

What are you
really paying? No, not just the accepted
offer price, the amount of money you
will pay over the term of your mortgage. If you take a 30 year
mortgage, even a low interest rate like 5.5% will leave you paying twice the
mortgage amount. Do you really think your house will be worth twice your
purchase price when the mortgage is paid off? Be honest. Before you start
shouting that all the interest you pay is all tax deductible, you should know
that is only completely true if you are not subject to AMT. Furthermore, your deduction will only save
you the amount of interest you paid times
your tax rate. Paying $12,000 and in the 28%
tax bracket? Your $12000 expense will only save you $3360. A mere $280 per
month. I certainly would not buy a bigger house just for a bigger tax
break.

Have you considered
the incidental expenses? Incidental expenses
include a raft of bills and hassles that come with homeownership. Many of these
things apartment dwellers only pay in an incremental, pass-through fashion
instead of a big bill. The list includes all maintenance, such as repairing
roofs, painting, replacing carpet and appliances, mucking out gutters, mowing
the lawn, keeping the water softener full of salt, checking the air
conditioning, and keeping the common areas clean. The list also includes
non-maintenance items such as property taxes, homeowner association dues,
utility bills, and even helping resolve problems with the
neighbors.

How does buying a
house compare to the alternatives? If the
cost of renting the size dwelling you need is comparable to the cost of buying
in your area once you have considered incidental expenses, then buying is
probably the way to go. When this even close to the case, the mortgage interest
deduction actually does some good. Furthermore, equity is a pretty good thing.
However, don’t make yourself “house-poor,” don’t justify spending a lot more
each month to get the equity and the deduction, don’t tell yourself the house
surely will go up in value unless you have looked at the facts. Be sure to take
into account special situations, such as knowing you are going to get a job
transfer or wanting to be in a particular school district.

How important is
liquidity? A house is a tough asset when it
comes to using your equity. There are really only two ways to get money out of
your primary residence: mortgage it (again) or sell it. If you mortgage it, you
have another bill and are paying more interest — depending on your equity level
and your tax status, it might not even be the deductible kind. Furthermore,
mortgage paperwork is time consuming, and there will be closing fees associated
with the new mortgage. If you sell it, you have to find a new place to live.
That is an expensive pain in the butt. If you think you may need to lay hands on
your money in a hurry, a house is not the best place to
invest.

Is this particular
house a good investment? Is it reasonable to
think it will go up in value? How is the neighborhood doing: improving or
declining or maybe just stable? Are people in the neighborhood families planning
to stay around, or transient executives, or older people planning on moving to a
more retirement friendly area? Is the house or the neighborhood historical?
Are there some obvious improvements you could make that will increase the
house’s value? Are there tax implications beyond mortgage income deductions and
property taxes? Do not forget to consider your timeframe. Planning to live in a
house 5 years is different from planning to live in a house 20 years. Don’t
forget any value you may extract simply by living there and enjoying it. On the
other hand, do not overvalue that experience.

I am not saying you shouldn’t buy a
house. I am saying you should consider whether it is really in your best
interests to do so.