The Worker's Calm

The Supreme Court Spares Sarbanes-Oxley

2010-07-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

Having run a small company, I know how important it is to completely understand all of the metrics of your business: payables, receivables, profit, debt, sales, etc, etc. It kills me that there are a fair number of business people out there who have a problem with the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. To me, if you really know and understand your business and have the proper systems in place, compliance should not be that big of deal.

Those against seem to have these attributes: none have ever really run their own business, most work for large companies and none are willing to actually commit to the accuracy of whatever system they employee to describe their business.

Perhaps this is function of how we educate the people chosen to run businesses? The typical MBA course seems to focus on what went wrong and how to weasel out of it. And there does seem to be a high degree of self-selection amongst these people as they seek those most like themselves when recruiting. It seems that our business leaders want the dough but not the responsibility or risk.

The number one knock on Sarbanes-Oxley is the cost of compliance. I laugh when I read this because I reckon that if some hot-shot CEO has to affix his or her own name to the accounts for their company, then their training and culture of avoiding responsibility and risk compels them to spend whatever dough it takes to make damn sure that what they're signing is the truth (or some version of it). Of course, you'd think that this is something they should be doing anyhow on behalf of their shareholders.

Perhaps the critics should think about Sarbanes-Oxley and corporate governance differently. I propose that a business should incorporate the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and good governance into a quality program that constantly measures the performance of a business, identifies areas where incremental changes can be made to improve performance, identify and expand the relationship with investors, customers, employees and suppliers. Many firms already spend money on accounting, CRM, ISO 9000/Six Sigma, ERP, tax avoidance (er, compliance), etc. If a company has to spend more to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, then perhaps they need to take a good look at their other processes that feed such compliance?

The Declaration of Independence

2010-07-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

New Uses For Old Equipment

2010-02-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

I love to retask or use parts from broken machines. They are already paid for, you reduce the amount of garbage created, I get to work with my hands and brain and there's a soulful warmth knowing that you're getting over on the planned obsolesce or shoddy workmanship of much of what is available.

So I was quite pleased to read about NASA's plan to use the Spirit rover currently stuck in the sand to study Mars orbit and the composition of it's core. The engineer who came up with this idea should be given a bonus or at least new Sears Dog Bone.

This is another example of clearly useful science being produced at at very cheap price, a hallmark of NASA's unmanned programs.

Moral Obligation Versus Risk Management

2010-02-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

This link describes people with high credit scores who are walking away from property that is underwater (i.e., what they owe on it is more than its currently worth). The article itself reveals nothing that we haven't known before. It's some of the comments that readers of the article have posted. One in particular struck me from a reader named 'questioner 5000': "However, that STILL doesn't solve the problem of a bank making a loan to people, who buy a home for $600,000, put down a 20% down payment, have good jobs and a spotless credit history, who suddenly decide, (because writers like you think it's "savvy"), to walk away from their contractual and moral obligations". Yes, in essence, even if it doesn't make sense, you have to stick to it because you have a moral obligation to stick to the agreements you've made. Most people would agree that such behavior is necessary to insure the smooth workings of our society. It's doing the right thing. Or as one of my teachers harped at me, "You must accept the consequences of your own actions." Or as a Gunny once commented, "You have to eat your own cooking even if it tastes like shit."

Okay, I can deal with that. And I've taught my own children the same.

But then I heard mention in the news about the Q & A between the Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Phil Angelides, and the Chairman/CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, LloydBlankfein. The exchange I'm referring to is about 45 minutes into the hearing. Mr. Angelides asked if it was right for Goldman to sell mortgage-backed securities into the market and simultaneously bet against these same securities. Mr. Blankfein indicated that this behavior may not have been right. But he then goes on to say that when the behavior is taken in "context", it seems that the behavior was all right in order to manage Goldman's risk! In other words, Goldman only moral obligation was to do only what was in their own best interest. Whereas implications of the comments of 'questioner 5000' is that each individual has a moral obligation to do what is in the best interest of society as a whole.

So, according to Mr. Blankfein, if those people whose houses are underwater walk away from their mortgages, then it's okay when taken in the context of managing their own personal risk.

Or is it that one set of morals applies to the big money interests and another to rest of us saps?

Drink Beer For Your Bones

2010-02-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the University of California Davis have recently determined that beer is a good source of silicon for humans.

Undressing the Terror Threat

2010-01-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

This link gets you to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He puts into perspective the risks we face from terrorism. When you think about how other risks to our life and liberty can be minimized with greater effect or results compared to the costs we incur on a daily basis preventing terrorism, then you wonder if the Congress and Administration really do have the intelligence and courage Prof. Campos eludes to in his article. But blaming our politicians and the bureaucrats who service them is too easy. After all, listen to the blowholes on AM talk radio. Ultimately we only have ourselves to blame for lacking the courage to recognize the many risks we face on a daily basis for what they are and intelligence to prioritize them when living our lives.

I think it's time I stopped smoking. Cigarettes.

The Frame

2009-10-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

An outstanding blog of photos covering various topics published by the Sacramento Bee.

100 Places A Risk Of Disappearing or Radical Change

2009-10-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

Pictures of 100 locations around the world at risk of disappearing or radical change due to rising sea levels, rising temperatures, change in weather patterns and other disruptions. There are some surprises on this list. Kind of light on background for each case.

How Much Does A Smart Phone Cost Per Month?

2009-10-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

An interesting chart showing the annual and monthly cost of use and ownership of various smart phones. Is this expense really necessary?

Beautiful Photomicrography

2009-10-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

35 years of winning photomicroscopy images from Nikon's Small World competition.

How Can you Fly Without An Atmosphere?

2009-10-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

Use thrusters!

Amazing Shot on Goal

2009-10-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

An incredible shot on goal by a 9 year old kid. The goalie is baffled!

Galileo & Gravity

2009-10-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

Video of Astronaut David Scott from Apollo 15 dropping a hammer and a feather at the same time on the moon. Which will hit the ground first?

Interesting John Lennon Interview

2009-10-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

From Flixxy.com: In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced this film about it, which was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short.

Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.

Basic Corporate Governance

2009-10-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

One of the important things I look at before investing in a company are the corporate governance policies of the company. Here are several things to look for in a company with strong corporate governance:

1. Separation of the CEO and Chairman positions: This immediately removes a conflict of interest and allows the holders of each position to concentrate on their job. For the CEO, that means running the firm. For the Chairman, that means looking out for the interests of the shareholders.
I'd also go farther and stipulate that the Chairman be truly independent and not be the ex-CEO of the firm.
2. Allow shareholders to approve the compensation packages of senior management: If you accept that aligning the interests of senior management toward the long-term growth and profitability of a firm is in the best interests of the shareholders of that firm, then allowing shareholders to approve the compensation packages of senior management serves as a means of insuring that the compensation incentives of senior management are structured to best reflect shareholder's interests.
3. All Members of the Board should be elected annually (or some other shareholder approved term that could be longer) and must win over 50% of the votes of shares outstanding: If a director knows that they must win over 50% of the shares outstanding, then their interests would most likely be aligned with the interests of a majority of the share outstanding. Please note that I'm not pitching for approval by a majority of the shareholders themselves. One shareholder may own 100 shares and another may own 1000 shares. They don't have an equal vote. Please note that I'm also not pitching for a threshold of 50% of the votes cast. I advocate the threshold be over 50% of all shares outstanding. I also prefer to have all Director's elected at the same time to prevent the staggering of terms that can often prevent a change in the Board's behavior.
4. Shares without a formal proxy given to the Board cannot be voted by the Board or shares not voted cannot be assumed to be in favor of the Board's recommendations: It is fairly common practice for shares that are not voted to be counted by Boards as shares in favor of whatever the Board recommends. Please see my prior post on this matter.
5. Allow nominations of Directors to be made by groups of longtime shareholders representing an agreed upon percentage of all shares outstanding to using the firm's own proxy material: If you take a look at the Boards of many companies, you'll notice that the same names seem to come up over and over. This is because of the tendency for senior management and Boards to nominate Directors based on criteria which has nothing to do with the expertise of that individual in the business of the firm or how that Director could best serve the interests of the shareholders. By making it easier for established groups of long term shareholders to nominate Directors, then it levels the playing field and could result in a Board that is more closely aligned with the interests of the shareholders. Of course, the length of time and amount of shares that a group holds that is putting up Directors for nomination should be established to prevent short-term interests from infecting the process. Furthermore, these groups must make a full disclosure of who they are and what are their short-term and long-term positions are in terms of shares, derivatives, options and other financial connections with the firm in question.
6. Members of the Board must meet minimum requirements including limiting the number of other Board positions or other jobs they hold and they must have a credible amount of their wealth invested in the firm on whose Board they sit: The danger of not requiring Directors to at least fulfill these requirements are best illustrated with the example of recent corporate implosions including Lehman Brothers, AIG, etc. Boards at these companies were stuffed with people whose time and attention were divided between their day jobs or other Boards that they served on and had little or none of their personal wealth associated with the firm on whose Board they sat. Directors must put their money and time where their mouths are. In doing so, then they would most likely align their personal interests more closely to the interests of a majority of all shares outstanding.
7. Independent or outside Directors would lead or chair the Compensation, Audit and Risk Management Committees of the Board: If a fundamental duty of a Board is to manage risk, then it is crucial that the rewards of senior management, the reporting of financial results and the assessment of the risks of the business be overseen by members of the Board not closely associated with the senior management of the firm. This could prevent situations where long shot bets are placed with shareholder's money with no consequences to the people placing those bets without prior knowledge of the risks of placing those bets. Some would argue that this would stifle innovation and recruitment. But I counter: wouldn't this encourage a more open appreciation of the risks senior management takes with the shareholder's money?

How would these provisions be enforced? Because they would need to be enforced to achieve the aim of more open governance of a firm. Depending on a government agency such as the SEC or the Fed enforcing laws subject to the whims of the political winds blowing through Congress would certainly be a part of this scheme. However, ultimately, it would be each shareholder's responsibility to actively exercise their own oversight of the firms they have invested in.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Video

2009-08-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

NASA has pointed the Hubble Telescope twice to seemingly empty patches of sky. See what comes up!

When Does Not Voting Mean You've Voted For Something?

2009-05-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

If you are a shareholder in a public company in the United States and do not cast your votes or proxy when given an opportunity, current SEC rules and interpretations of these rules are that non-votes or abstentions are counted as supporting whatever the board or management of that company has determined what is supposedly in the best interests of the company.

But I think we've seen enough examples amongst entrenched management and do-nothing or incestuous boards who've confused what they purport to be the best interests of the company with what is in their best interests and not in the best interest of the shareholders.

If the purpose of voting in any sort of election is to ascertain the mind of the majority, then any voting rule or interpretation of the voting rule that takes away one or more of the choices that a voter naturally has in an election destroys the integrity of that election. Voters are typically given at least three choices in a typical election: for, against or abstain. The current SEC rule of allowing management or the board of a company to count non-votes or abstentions as for that management's or board's favor therefore misrepresents the intention of the voter.

To put this in perspective, imagine an election in your town for mayor. Imagine that the current mayor is complete bum and should be fired by the voters from his or her job for the greater benefit of all. However, using SEC rules, those registered voters in this election who do not cast a vote would be counted as having voted for the incumbent bum!

There are many reasons not to vote: apathy, laziness, principle, forgetfulness, etc. But the choice of whether to vote or not and how to use that vote should in all cases remain the exclusive right of the voter.

Petition 4-583 is currently before the SEC requesting a change in the rules and interpretations of rules regarding the counting of shareholder votes and non-votes. The title of this post links you with the SEC webpage where you can read the petition. If you agree with my argument above, I urge you to send your comments to the SEC regarding shareholder voting rights to rule-comments@sec.gov. Be sure to mention petition 4-583.

The Aim of Computer Technology

2009-03-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

Please see this interesting video presented at the Wharton Business Tech Conference by Stephen Elop of Microsoft about a vision of 2019. Of course the gadgets are amazing and all of the actors are very attractive and seem well-to-do. And that's what a vision of future ought to be. But it got me thinking about what was the common thread connecting all of the scenarios beyond the basic premise that by 2019 we'll be completely wired.

I believe it's all about finding things: information, your car, evidence of a medical condition, a product in a store, your bank balance, your friends, a restaurant and so on. And before you can find the things you want, you must decide what it is you wish to find. In other words you must define your search. If you accept that ongoing convergence of networks, computing, information storage, data management and most forms of communications that can use these tools provide the primary advantage of delivering information at blazing speeds, then we must ask how best to use this advantage.

There are two means of attacking this problem. Most strategies near as I can tell depend on at least some of both means. The things you're looking for must be cataloged in such a manner that they can be found and accessed by whatever system you're using. But the ideal system must also know a lot about you to cache the information you most likely would wish to find most often, how you prefer it to organized, when you want the information and how you wish it to be sent to you. It is this side of a search that I wonder about.

In many situations, an efficient search is one where the parameters of what you wish to find are very well defined. I don't mean exactly to the dotted 'i' or the crossed 't' but in a contextual basis that narrows your search to not the single best choice of what you're looking for but to the top 10 or 20 choices. Efficient searches would also build on the experience of prior searches. Various search engines strive to accomplish this based on very little information input from the searcher. But the vision of 2019 presented in this video will require a lot more input from the searcher to complete the real time, mobile and continuous searches the user would make as they go about there business in this brave new world.

So where is all of the information from the searcher side accumulated? Who stores this information, authorizes access and secures it? What rights do we sacrifice to gain such convenience and power of this world? Where will the line between our personal privacy and society's collective need to know be drawn in 2019? Now that's a video I'd like to see.

Manage Your Virtual Presence

2009-03-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

The many means of communicating using the cable, wireless and phone systems are magnificent. The dream of the convergence of these many streams into a great river of information in such a brief period of time is surely one of the greatest ongoing achievements of the human race. E-mail, blogs, websites, cell phones, social networks, text messages, twitter: the list of the means to communicate in a virtual way are many. That being said, it's the responsibility each user of the river to protect themselves from those who would do harm to the river and the users of the river. To this end, I recommend that you should consider doing the following:

1. Actively manage your online presence. Establish and grab control of your own profiles on the various social networking websites before somebody does it for you. Even if you insert only minimal information, at least it's you doing it. And check it ever so often. If I were a crook bent on finding a new identity, the first place I'd look would be on a social network site.
2. Maintain strong firewall and other security software on your various machines, keep them upgraded/patched and monitor their performance. So what if your performance is slightly degraded; its still better than what you had just a few years ago.
3. Use strong passwords and encrypt your most sensitive information.
4. Google yourself and see what comes up. If you see something fishy, check it out.
5. Monitor your credit reports. There are three major providers of this service. You're entitled to one free report per year from each. So get one every four months.
6. Remember that anything you put out there is potentially out there forever. Those old college pictures that were fun and appropriate when you were 19 can come back and haunt you when you're interviewing for that dream gig when you're 28.
7. If you buy stuff online, use a one time credit card number. You can get them from all of the major credit card companies. Don't save credit card information at sellers websites. Sure it reduces the convenience of the 'one click' experience. Show a little patience and enter the credit card info each time. You might even save some money doing this as the extra time gives you an opportunity to reconsider that impulse purchase.
8. Don't download stuff or click on links unless you a absolutely sure they are from a trusted source. If you are not sure, don't do it.

However the most important thing that many experts advocate is to think before you click.

I'm sure there are many other things one can do to safely enjoy the information river. And I'll add them as they occur to me or are brought to my attention.

Standard Wisdom

2009-03-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.Henry Ford

Severe Space Weather

2009-01-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

NASA has recently come out with a report that imagines the effect on our way of life of a large geomagnetic storm that could occur after a super solar flare. Follow this link to a short article that summarizes the conclusions.

Winners of The Nature Conservancy Photo Contest Announced

2009-01-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

Winners of The Nature Conservancy Photo Contest were announced on February 15. Please have a look and make a donation while you're at it.

Are We A Republic Or A Democracy?

2009-01-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

This links to a very interesting video about a new way to view the spectrum of types of government. It shows some of the advantages and disadvantages of each as well as how one form of government may lead to another, sometimes with unexpected results. The best takeaway from this video is the contrast between a democracy and a republic. This is very important because the use of the term democracy to describe our form of government is not entirely correct. A far better description of our form of government is a republic.

HELP SAVE ARECIBO RADIO TELESCOPE!

2008-07-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

A request from the SETI@Home Team:

Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope and the source for
the SETI@home data that your computer analyzes, faces massive budget cuts that
will END its ability to continue the search for life beyond Earth. The decision
to ensure full funding currently rests upon votes in Congress on Senate Bill S.
2862 and House Resolution H.R. 3737. These bills desperately need more support.

Please take a moment to help us SAVE ARECIBO.

Clicking the link below will direct you to a web page that allows you to print
out letters prepared for your Senators and Congressional Representative urging
them to support Arecibo. Printing and mailing the letters is really easy, too!
You will also have the chance to add a few personal thoughts, if you wish, to
let your Senators and Representative know why this funding is important to you!
And if you're really feeling passionate about saving Arecibo, please use these
letters as the basis for letters you write yourself, urging your congressmen
and women to vote to save Arecibo.

Because our representatives in Congress rarely give much attention to all the
email they receive, printing out and MAILING these letters via standard U.S.
Postal mail remains our best option for contacting them and our best hope for
saving Arecibo (The second best option is to call your representatives). Your
42 cent stamps on these letters could help us get the millions of dollars
needed to save Arecibo.

Our search cannot continue without the necessary support. Your work, as
SETI@home participants, represents an indispensable resource for conducting the
search. Now, we need your help to ensure that our other most valuable resource
- our eyes and ears to the cosmos - can continue to probe the universe as we
seek to answer the question: Is there anybody out there?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/arecibo_letter.php

Thank you for your help,

The SETI@home Team

Phoenix Spacecraft Lands on Mars!

2008-05-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars Sunday to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later Sunday night.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

"For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars," Griffin said. "I couldn't be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement."

During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels. The cruise stage with those solar panels was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries will now provide electricity until the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power," said JPL's Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

[Update: The solar arrays have deployed!]

Above: First pictures beamed back to Earth from Phoenix's arctic landing site. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona. [more]

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have swung to their vertical positions.

[Update: The stereo camera and weather station have swung to their vertical positions.]

"What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. "I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission."

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network.

Check http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix for updates.

Personal Care Products Linked To Pollution And Health Concerns

2008-05-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Parental concerns in maintaining germ-free homes for their children have led to an ever-increasing demand and the rapid adoption of anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning agents. But the active ingredients of those antiseptic soaps now have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA, due to both environmental and human health concerns.

Two closely related antimicrobials, triclosan and triclocarban, are at the center of the debacle. Whereas triclosan (TCS) has long captured the attention of toxicologists due to its structural resemblance to dioxin (the Times Beach and Love Canal poison), triclocarban (TCC) has ski-rocketed in 2004 from an unknown and presumably harmless consumer product additive to one of today’s top ten pharmaceuticals and personal care products most frequently found in the environment and in U.S. drinking water resources.

Now, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University researcher Rolf Halden and co-workers, in a feat of environmental detective work, have traced back the active ingredients of soaps — used as long ago as the 1960s — to their current location, the shallow sediments of New York City’s Jamaica Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary.

“Our group has shown that antimicrobial ingredients used a half a century ago, by our parents and grandparents, are still present today at parts-per-million concentrations in estuarine sediments underlying the brackish waters into which New York City and Baltimore discharge their treated domestic wastewater,” said Halden, a new member of the institute’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology. “This extreme environmental persistence by itself is a concern, and it is only amplified by recent studies that show both triclosan and triclocarban to function as endocrine disruptors in mammalian cell cultures and in animal models.”

Aiding in his team’s research was another type of contamination: the radioactive fallout from nuclear testing conducted in the second half of the last century. Using the known deposition history and half-lives of two radioactive isotopes, cesium-137 and beryllium-7, Halden and his collaborators Steven Chillrud, Jerry Ritchie and Richard Bopp were able to assign the approximate time at which sediments observed to contain antimicrobial residues had been deposited in the two East Coast locations.

By analyzing vertical cores of sediment deposited over time in the two sampling locations on the East Coast, they showed that TCC, and to a lesser extent, TCS, can persist in estuary sediments. TCC was shown to be present at parts per million levels, which could represent unhealthy levels for aquatic life, especially the bottom feeders that are important to commercial fishing industries like shellfish and crabs.

In the Chesapeake Bay samples, the group noticed a significant drop in TCC levels that corresponded to a technology upgrade in the nearby wastewater treatment plant back in 1978. However, earlier work by the team had shown that enhanced removal of TCC and TCS in wastewater treatment plants leads to accumulation of the problematic antimicrobial substances in municipal sludge that often is applied on agricultural land for disposal. Lead author Todd Miller concludes that “little is actually degraded during wastewater treatment and more information is needed regarding the long term consequences these chemicals may have on environmentally beneficial microorganisms.”

Along the way of studying the deposition history of antimicrobials in sediments, the team also discovered a new pathway for the breakdown of antimicrobial additives of consumer products. Deep in the muddy sediments of the Chesapeake Bay, they found evidence for the activity of anaerobic microorganisms that assist in the decontamination of their habitat by pulling chlorine atoms one by one off the carbon backbone of triclocarban, presumably while obtaining energy for their metabolism in the process. “This is good news,” said Halden, “but unfortunately the process does not occur in all locations and furthermore it is quite slow. If we continue to use persistent antimicrobial compounds at the current rate, we are outpacing nature’s ability to decompose these problematic compounds.”

While combining bioenergy production and pollutant destruction has its own appeal, Halden sees a simpler solution to combating the pollution his team discovered: limit the use of antimicrobial personal care products to situations where they improve public health and save lives.

“The irony is that these compounds have no measurable benefit over the use of regular soap and water for hand washing; the contact time simply is too short.” Unfortunately this cannot be said for the bottom-dwelling organisms in the sampling locations on the East Coast. “Here,” Halden concludes, “the affected organisms are experiencing multi-generational, life-time exposures to our chemical follies.”

Halden is planning to continue his research on persistent antimicrobials by studying their body burden and associated health effects in susceptible populations including mothers and their babies.

[Joe Caspermeyer @ Arizona State University]

Some Things Never Change!

2008-05-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled." -- Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Ballast-Free Ship Could Cut Costs While Blocking Aquatic Invaders

2008-04-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

I love stories where the search for the solution of one problem results in at least a partial solution to the original problem but also an unexpected bonus solution to an entirely different problem:

University of Michigan researchers are investigating a radical new design for cargo ships that would eliminate ballast tanks, the water-filled compartments that enable non-native creatures to sneak into the Great Lakes from overseas.

At least 185 non-native aquatic species have been identified in the Great Lakes, and ballast water is blamed for the introduction of most-including the notorious zebra and quagga mussels and two species of gobies.

This week, the U.S. Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. will implement new rules designed to reduce Great Lakes invaders. Ships will be required to flush ballast tanks with salt water before entering the Seaway, a practice corporation officials describe as an interim measure, not a final solution.

Meanwhile, Congress is considering legislation that would force freighters to install costly onboard sterilization systems to kill foreign organisms in ballast water. The systems use filters, ultraviolet irradiation, chemical biocides and other technologies, and can cost more than $500,000.

The U-M ballast-free ship concept offers a promising alternative that could block hitchhiking organisms while eliminating the need for expensive sterilization equipment, said Michael Parsons, professor of naval architecture and marine engineering and co-leader of the project.

“There is no silver bullet. But the ballast-free ship has the potential to be an economic winner while addressing the ballast problem in a serious way,” Parsons said.

Ships take on ballast water for stability when they’re not carrying cargo. They discharge ballast when they load freight, expelling tons of water and anything else-from pathogenic microbes to mollusks and fish-that’s in it.

Instead of hauling potentially contaminated water across the ocean, then dumping it in a Great Lakes port, a ballast-free ship would create a constant flow of local seawater through a network of large pipes, called trunks, that runs from the bow to the stern, below the waterline.

“In some ways, it’s more like a submarine than a surface ship,” Parsons said. “We’re opening part of the hull to the sea, creating a very slow flow through the trunks from bow to stern.

“You’re continuously sweeping water through the ship and out,” he said. “So you’re always filled with local sea water, not hauling water from one part of the world to the other.”

The U-M ballast-free ship concept was conceived in 2001 and patented in 2004. It is intended for new-vessel construction only.

With funding from the Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute, Parsons and his colleagues recently built a 16-foot, $25,000 wooden scale model of an oceangoing bulk carrier to test the concept.

The work is underway at the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory’s towing tank, the oldest facility of its kind that is owned by a U.S. educational institution.

In addition to helping fine tune the design, results from the latest round of tank tests and computer simulations suggest the ballast-free ship will deliver an unforeseen benefit. The design appears to provide a significant savings-possibly as much as 7.3 percent-in the power needed to propel the ship.

For a 650-foot bulk carrier hauling 32,000 metric tons of cargo from the Great Lakes to Europe and back, that translates into a roundtrip fuel savings of roughly $150,000. A report on the latest test results, including their economic implications, will be published next month in the Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

In upcoming towing tests, tentatively set for late June, the naval engineers will try to confirm and explain the unexpected power savings. Most of the improvement is likely due to the fact that water expelled from the stern-end of the trunks “smooths out the flow” into the propeller, allowing it to operate more efficiently, Parsons said.

“It’s a huge power reduction, a hard-to-believe improvement in power, and we have to convince ourselves that all of it is real,” he said.

Building an oceangoing bulk carrier can cost $70 million. The added construction costs of the ballast-free design-for extra hull steel, trunk-isolation valves, piping and welding-would be more than offset by eliminating the filtration system and the ballast tanks.

The researchers conclude that the new design would result in a net capital-cost savings of about $540,000 per ship. Combined with the expected fuel savings, total cargo transport costs would be cut by $2.55 per metric ton.

“It seems that, compared to other ballast treatment systems, it’s a viable alternative,” SUNY Maritime College engineer Miltiadis Kotinis said of the ballast-free ship concept.

“We have proven that the technical part is feasible and that it can be applied to new vessel construction,” said Kotinis, a collaborator on the project and a U-M alumnus. “And we have also shown that, regarding the economics, it can reduce the operating cost and reduce or even eliminate the introduction of non-indigenous aquatic species.”

The Basics of Space Flight

2008-04-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Description from the website:

The people of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory create, manage, and operate NASA projects of exploration throughout our solar system and beyond.

Basics of Space Flight is a tutorial designed primarily to help operations people identify the range of concepts associated with deep space missions, and grasp the relationships among them. It also enjoys popularity with college and high-school students, as well as faculty, and people everywhere who are interested in interplanetary space flight.

This website attempts to offer a broad scope, but limited depth, as a robust framework to accommodate further training or investigation. Many other resources are available for delving into each of the topics related here; indeed, any one of them can involve a lifelong career of specialization. This module's purpose is met if the participant learns the scope of concepts that apply to interplanetary space exploration, and how the relationships among them work.

Basics of Space Flight is intended to be used online via the worldwide web (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics). Links to external sites provide further depth to many topics. There are interactive quizzes to let you check your own progress. No records are kept. Caltech does not offer academic credit for this training.

What You See Is Not What You Get

2008-03-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

Another site showing how we can be misled by media. This is an interesting German site that compares the pictures of food products used on the packaging with what the products actually look like.

Point of View

2008-03-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

A click on the title of this entry will take you to an interesting video. We often only see one aspect of a situation. And what we see may be misleading. So the responsible thing to do is to not rush to judgement until you've checked all the facts.

Interesting Quote

2008-03-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

HIGH SPEED FIGHTER JET PASSES

2008-02-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

If you feel the need for speed!

Atlantis Launch

2008-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Cool photo of recent Atlantis space shuttle launch.

NETWORK TOOLS

2008-02-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

If you run a small business or home network, please have a look at this article from Computer World about some potentially useful network tools. I can personally vouch for Network Magic. It's kept my home network up and running for over six months.

Great Alaskan Aurora Photos

2008-02-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

See these excellent aurora photos taken by Dave Taylor and posted on Spaceweather.com.

Bio-Crude

2008-02-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

One of the problems of bio fuels has been the reliance of crops that are easy to crack. The cost- benefit calculation when using corn, grains and other food crops to make alcohol is that the energy input to convert these sorts of crops to usable fuel is greater than the amount of energy you can gain. Add in the reduction of land diverted from food production plus the rise in food prices in addition to distortions in tax policy and all you've achieved is another boon for the farm lobby with no net increase in fuel supplies and no reduction in carbon emissions.

The hope has been to use less valuable bio matter to produce fuel. However these sorts of raw material have been difficult to crack into usable fuel. The CSIRO and Monash University recently announced that they have developed efficient and cheap chemical processes that could achieve this dream by making is possible to use cellulose to make fuel. Lignocellulose is both renewable and potentially greenhouse gas neutral. It is predominantly found in trees and is made up of cellulose. Waste material that is currently burned or buried could be used to make fuel without using more land and using energy inputs that already exist and not increase the carbon cost to the environment.

If the chemical processes can be scaled up, even those farmers and distillers who currently benefit from high corn and grain prices and tax benefits may sign on as they could use material that is now merely treated as waste. For instance, all the paper devoted to describing, reporting, calculating, checking, proposing and regulating our current system of taxation could be used to make fuel. The results: lower carbon emissions, lower food prices, less drain on the treasury and an alternative source of energy. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Now if we could only find a way to harness all the hot air blown by politicians into usable fuel!

Xerox Printers

2008-02-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued with the latest series of printers from Xerox that use solid ink sticks. I write this as I look at a box of empty Epson and HP ink jet cartridges. I can't throw them away; we throw away too much crap already. I've looked into giving them to charities that collect such things to be recycled. But nobody wants the Epson cartridges. And there aren't really many charities actually collecting these things around where I live. So a printer that doesn't create more garbage is attractive to me.

Furthermore, I do wish for a printer of higher quality than existing ink jets using ink that's clean and easy to load into the printer, prints that don't smear, doesn't go through cartridges like they're going out of style and doesn't jam at the least little deviation in paper quality. Have you ever run out of ink in the middle of the night when the stores are closed and you have a big presentation the next day? Thank God for Kinkos! And nothing irritates me more than having to replace a cartridge when I know there's more ink in the damn thing. I can hear it when I shake it!

I do appreciate the work my battle worn HP's and a relatively new Epson have done. But my requirements are exceeding the occasional use that such printers are built for and going up a step to the laser printers offered by those companies doesn't satisfy my desire for simplicity and green behavior.

So I'm going to look into the costs associated with the Xerox Phaser series of printers and actually see if I can play with one somewhere to see what this new line Xerox can do.

US Coast Guard Visual Information Gallery

2008-01-26T08:36:00.000-08:00

I put the the US Coast Guard in the same category as fire departments: unreservedly necessary, money well spent and incredibly brave.

Shark Labs Tested Software

2008-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

From the that hotbed of computing innovation in Buena Park, CA, Shark Labs tests various software. Attributes we look for are as follows: free or low cost, stable, secure, efficient and a small footprint in terms of resources and space. All have been tested on old, used and decrepit equipment for at least 6 months.

WinPatrol: A useful addition to your system. This award winning software is a system support utility and security monitor. It also features a dog named Scottie as an added benefit. See http://www.winpatrol.com/.

Comet 8P /Tuttle

2008-01-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

Emerald Comet 8P/Tuttle glided by spiral galaxy M33 producing a heavenly scene for astrophotographers around the world.  Dozens of photos may be found in Spaceweather's Comet Tuttle gallery: http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_tuttle_page4.htm.

Blue Angels 2008 Schedule

2008-01-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

The Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, The Blue Angels, announced its show schedule for the 2008 season. Following winter training, the team begins their season at Naval Air Facility El Centro, Calif., March 8 and will conclude the season Nov. 16 at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla. The Blue Angels are scheduled to perform 68 shows at 35 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. For more information, including a complete show schedule, visit www.blueangels.navy.mil.

SETI @Home

2008-01-19T09:19:00.000-08:00

The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations is getting a burst of new data from an upgraded Arecibo telescope, which means the SETI@home project needs more desktop computers to help crunch the data.

Since SETI@home launched eight years ago, the project based at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory has signed up more than 5 million interested volunteers and boasts the largest community of dedicated users of any Internet computing project: 170,000 devotees on 320,000 computers.

Yet, new and more sensitive receivers on the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and better frequency coverage are generating 500 times more data for the project than before. The SETI@home software has been upgraded to deal with this new data as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) enters a new era and offers a new opportunity for those who want to help find other civilizations in the universe.

“The next generation SETI@home is 500 times more powerful then anything anyone has done before,” said project chief scientist Dan Werthimer. “That means we are 500 times more likely to find ET than with the original SETI@home.”

According to project scientist Eric Korpela, the new data amounts to 300 gigabytes per day, or 100 terabytes (100,000 gigabytes) per year, about the amount of data stored in the U.S. Library of Congress. “That’s why we need all the volunteers,” he said. “Everyone has a chance to be part of the largest public participation science project in history.”

The 1,000-foot diameter Arecibo dish, which fills a valley in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center operated by Cornell University with funds from the National Science Foundation. Since 1992, Werthimer and his team have piggybacked on radio astronomy observations at Arecibo to record signals from space and analyze them for patterns that could indicate they were transmitted by an intelligent civilization.

When the team’s incoming data overwhelmed its ability to analyze it, the scientists conceived a distributed computing project to harness many computers into one big supercomputer to do the analysis. Since SETI@home was launched, other distributed computing projects have arisen, from folding@home to predict the three-dimensional tangle of a protein to the newly-launched cosmology@home to model possible universes. Most are now on a platform called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), which was developed by SETI@home’s director David Anderson so that the various projects could share resources.

“There are now 42 projects on BOINC, and, until now, there has been enough computing power to go around,” Werthimer said.

What triggered the new flow of data was the addition of seven new receivers at Arecibo, which now allow the telescope to record radio signals from seven regions of the sky simultaneously instead of just one. With greater sensitivity and the ability to detect the polarization of the radio signals, plus 40 times more frequency coverage, Arecibo is set to survey the sky for new radio sources.

These improvements also prime the telescope for an improved search for intelligent signals from space.

“The multiple receivers help us weed out interference better and make us less susceptible to thinking that things terrestrial are extraterrestrial,” Werthimer said.

Werthimer noted that, despite the fact that UC Berkeley has been analyzing radio signals from space since 1978 on various telescopes, no telltale signals from an intelligent civilization have yet been found.

“Earthlings are just getting started looking at the frequencies in the sky; we’re looking only at the cosmically brightest sources, hoping we are scanning the right radio channels,” he said. “The good news is, we’re entering an era when we will be able to scan billions of channels. Arecibo is now optimized for this kind of search, so if there are signals out there, we or our volunteers will find them.”

A Good Quote

2008-01-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin