Saturday, July 20, 2013

Cab Thoughts 7/20/13

"I'm not sure I'm ready to have fun yet."--child on sideline of tennis camp

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist. Among whites, according to the same Rasmussen poll, 38 percent consider most blacks racist and 10 percent consider most whites racist. Just 29 percent of Americans think race relations are getting better, while 32 percent think race relations are getting worse. Polls are limited but a lot of national effort has gone into the Black community since the '60's and, if this poll is in any way representative, one wonders when exasperation will set in.

Nate Silver, the New York Times statistician who became famous for his 2008 and 2012 election predictions, has been hired by ESPN. Prior to the 2008 campaign, Silver was a baseball statistician

The Cassini–Huygens, a joint NASA-European robotic spacecraft, was launched on October 15, 1997 on a Titan IVB/Centaur and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. On December 25, 2004, Huygens separated from the orbiter and landed on Saturn, the first deep space landing. The Cassini orbiter, currently orbiting Saturn, will be in position to shoot a good photo of Earth this week. Because of the Earth's proximity to the Sun and its great distance, it is difficult to get a good picture of the Earth from deep in our solar system.

Reservation change charges and baggage fees accounted for greater than 6 billion dollars in airline revenue last year. Small airlines are experimenting with overhead bin charges.

When President Obama proclaimed that those who commit sexual assault in the military should be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,” it  muddied legal cases across the country. Judges and defense lawyers have said that Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to “unlawful command influence,” tainting trials as a result. “Unlawful command influence” refers to actions of commanders that could be interpreted by jurors as an attempt to influence a court-martial, in effect ordering a specific outcome. He is a lawyer, right? Or maybe just a visitor from the Land of the Righteous.

The IRS teapot scandal will likely fade away as the Benghazi disaster has but information this week was significant, if unreported. The chain of command over the totally unreasonable and probably felonious behavior in the IRS was extended to the Chief Counsel, William Wilkins. He is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS.

Terminator: The DARPA Virtual Robotic Challenge is a program run by DARPA to encourage the development of humanoid robots with some real-life--read military--applications. The current robot, Atlas, was developed by Boston Dynamics. It is a hydraulically powered robot in the form of an adult human, weighs 330 lbs, is 6'2", 30" width at the shoulder and has 28 hydraulic joints. It is controlled by an operator. It can adapt to irregular ground and keeps its balance with a lateral blow.

Australian PM Kevin Rudd will announce plans to scrap the carbon tax within days as he clears the decks for an election. The decision could slash electricity bills by up to $150 a year for families spending $2000 annually, assuming a floating price for carbon emissions as low as $6 per tonne.

A recent study by Purdue University has found that, contrary to popular thinking, drinking diet soda doesn’t aid in weight loss, and that its consumption can actually increase the likelihood of obesity and development of precursors to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments.

Gossamer: n. 1. Something light, thin, or insubstantial. 2. A soft sheer gauzy fabric, used for veils, etc. a. Thin, light, or delicate. A remarkable etymology:
From goose + summer. The term is believed to have originated as a name for late autumn when geese are in season and then transferred to cobwebs seen around that time of the year. Earliest documented use: 1325

The Dogon, a tribe from Bandiagara in West Africa, have a history of fierce independence and separation. They live in towns of caves away from the Niger River to avoid the slavers and the Islamic religious press gangs. They have an inexplicably sophisticated cosmology, one that would excite von Danikin. Without the benefit of modern scientific instruments they have detailed and precise observations of the heavens, particularly Sirius, which is 8.6 light-years away and the brightest star in the sky. Somehow they have learned of the existence of a dwarf companion star to Sirius, which they named Po Tolo. Long ago they had accurately described its orbit. Telescopes described this star a century ago.

When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2003, it took them a decade of intensive work to sequence the three billion base pairs. Now, a decade later, a single facility can sequence that much DNA in a day.

Arabic script. There are a number of types of Arabic script from different times and places. These are a few of the more popular: "Kufic" script is one of the staples in architectural Arabic writing and one of the oldest. It is primarily found in stone-carved structures, and defined by its sharp angular qualities--perhaps for ease in working with stone--which differ slightly from the more popularly known modern Arabic scripts. “Naskh” script comes from the Arabic root “nasakha,” which means “to copy.” This way of writing uses thin lines and round letters, making it easier to read. It is the most widely used script among the Arabic, Persian, Pashto, and Sindhi languages. The Kufic script preceded Naskh, as this one was easier to write out. It is also the computer type on an Arabic keyboard. "Thuluth" is an older Arabic script primarily from medieval times. Like many of the older scripts, it was used on mosques and in Koran texts because of its longhand elegant appearance. This writing uses markings above and below each of the letters. These are called Harakat, and they demarcate vowel sounds.

Russia's Federal Guard Service — the rough equivalent of the Secret Service in the U.S. — is returning to typewriters in an attempt to avoid damaging leaks from computer hardware, according to a British newspaper.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is said to intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, and other communications every day, according to a Washington Post investigation in 2010. 2010. Three years before Snowden.

The FEC, The Federal Election Commission, was created in the wake of Watergate, in part to remove primary power over political actors from the Justice Department. It is balanced, with equal representation so agreement on activity is mandatory. Lois Lerner—before serving as the center of today's IRS scandal—was the senior enforcement officer at the FEC. A Christian Coalition lawyer has testified that during a FEC investigation in the 1990s—in addition to generating endless subpoenas, depositions and document requests, Ms. Lerner's staff demanded to know what Coalition members discussed at their prayer meetings and what churches they belonged to. This investigation was agreed upon by both parties on the commission.

Who is....George Pollard, Jr.?

An article in Forbes notes some surprising statistics about health care.
About one in five employees who are offered employer-provided health insurance turns it down; among workers under 30 years of age, the refusal rate is almost one in three. Since employees pay about 27% of the cost of their health insurance, on the average, millions of workers are passing up the opportunity to buy health insurance for 27 cents on the dollar.
About one in every four individuals who are eligible for Medicaid in this country has not bothered to enroll. This insurance is free.
Forbes' explanation? 1. We have made it increasingly easy in this country for the uninsured to obtain health care after they get sick. 2. We have also made it increasingly easy for people to get health insurance after they get sick.
This is particularly relevant when assessing the Affordable Care Act which was created on the assumption that many people were excluded from health care because of cost and whose success depends on low risk people signing up to support it.

Open data sources: 2009 President Obama initiated the creation of a website called data.gov, a repository of openly accessible information from the federal government. The site mushroomed from 47 datasets in 2009 to nearly 450,000 across 172 agencies by its third anniversary in July 2012.

Dominican shortstop Adrian Valerio, 16, signed with the Pirates for a $400,000 bonus, the largest bonus the Pirates have paid this year. Latin American scouting director Rene Gayo says, “He's the first guy I've ever signed more for his defensive ability than his bat. He's one of the best I've ever seen. He reminds me of Ozzie Smith — he has uncanny timing and can slow the game down. You don't see shortstops like that anymore.” Strangely, he is said to be not terribly fast.

Golden Oldies:

Thomas Sowell raises something interesting in a recent column. He says that ethnic progress to prosperity in a culture is rarely a function of ethnic leadership. He asks, how many can name Asian-American ethnic leaders or Jewish ethnic leaders? Ethnic leaders, he says, have personal motives to continue their position of leadership and might promote polarization that is counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country. So the question might be, does leadership engender growth within the group or only antagonism against a perceived opponent? And if that opponent is only symbolic--or, at least, not actively suppressing--does that antagonism engender nothing more than wheel-spinning stagnation?

Bert Trautmann, a former German World War II prisoner of war who became Manchester City's goalkeeper and helped the team win the FA Cup despite a broken neck for the last 17 minutes of the 1956 final, has died, the German soccer federation said. He was 89.

AAAAnnnnnndddddd...........a link to the Atlas Robot:

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