Mark your calendar: Asteroid strike on agenda in 2182

H'mmm ... from the look of things, what I write today will make absolutely no difference to anybody in about 172 years.

Good to know. I guess I can stir things up without worry.

FOXNews.com - Scientist Warns Massive Asteroid Could Hit Earth in 2182

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Survey: A majority of phone users have ditched the landline

Found this in Consumerist, and it gives an idea of how the times are a-changing. In an informal, admittedly nonscientific poll, more than half of respondents said they no longer have one of those home phones that comes with wires. Not even a cordless phone.

Cell phones have taken over.

Do You Still Use Your Land Line?: 

According to a recently released study, there are more than 5 billion cell phones in use around the world today, with 20% of those just coming into use in the last 18 months. More and more, people are either ditching their traditional land lines or relegating it to a secondary role, especially in large metropolitan areas.

A few months ago, when we polled readers on whether or not they still needed their physical White Pages phone book anymore, an overwhelming number of respondents voted 'no.'

So, in the interest of pseudo-science, we now want to know just how frequently you use your land line compared to your mobile -- or if you even have a land line at all anymore.

Take the survey: How Frequently Do You Use Your Land Line?

Over 5 billion mobile phone connections worldwide [BBC]

Of course, I had to take this survey, and as soon as I put my answer in I grabbed the results:

In all, 4,479 people voted in this poll.

- It's my main mode of telephonic communication -- 14 percent (643).

- As frequently as I use my cell phone -- 11 percent (499 votes).

- My cell is the main phone, but I use the land line on occasion -- 23 percent (1,010 votes).

- What's a land line? -- 52 percent (2,327 votes).

By the way, I am one of those who does not have a land line. Got rid of it seven or eight years ago, after realizing the only calls I got on it were telemarketers. My parents thought that was funny, and they thought it was even funnier that their attorney uses a cell phone for home and office use.

Landlines? We don't need no steenkin' landlines.

(By the way, I still keep a current phone directory in my office. Can't remember when I last used the white pages, though.)

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1995: Internet replace stores, books? You're kidding!

An Internet store? Never happen. (Image from sxc.hu)

Here's a blast from the past:

Back in 1995, the Internet was the Big New Thing. Folks were getting used to the idea that you can go to any library anywhere, "talk" to anyone, and experience some of the world without ever leaving your seat.

But to Clifford Stoll, it was just a fad. He offered his views in Newsweek early that year, saying that while the Internet was pretty cool, it wouldn't really catch on or be truly useful.

Stoll said:

"Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works."

Stoll wasn't a technophobe. He'd been involved in the online world from the jump. Helped track down some computer crackers who stole military secrets and sold them to the KGB. And he has a little online business going now.

But back then, he knew computers would not replace books or newspapers. He knew it. Check it out:

"How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure."

He said ecommerce wouldn't work all that well because, well, there's little human contact involved. Same thing with the rest of the Internet -- takes away that eyeball-to-eyeball. It's that same dynamic that author John Naisbitt pointed out in the 1982 book Megatrends -- that push-pull between high-tech and high-touch. 

Less than two decades after Naisbitt's book, and about five years after Stoll's predictions, high tech won the war.

Still, take a look at Stoll's Newsweek article. While you're about it, read the comments. The whole thing is a hoot. 

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Link: Clifford Stoll's Web site.

Obsolete Anonymous: Who's next to join?

I saw this in the Huffington Post, and man, does it make me feel ancient!

J.A. Konrath: Is Print Dead?: "

Moderator: Welcome to Obsolete Anonymous! I've gathered you all here to welcome our latest member, the Print Industry.

Print Industry: Hello, everyone. But there's been a mistake. I don't belong here.

(chuckles all around)

Print Industry: I'm serious. I'm not obsolete. I'm relevant. Print books have been around for hundreds of years. They're never going to be replaced.

VHS Tapes: Yeah, we all thought like that once.

LP Records: It's called denial. It's tough to deal with at first.

Print Industry: Look, everyone, I assume you all think that ebooks are going to put me out of business. But that won't happen.

Phone Company: I remember when you couldn't walk twenty yards in a city without seeing a pay phone. Then those gosh darn cell phones came along. Do you know some people don't even have land lines anymore?

(Phone Company begins to cry. Print Phonebooks joins in. So does Dial Up Modems. Encyclopedia Set, wearing an I Hate Wikipedia T-Shirt, pops a few Prozac. A group hug ensues.)

Video Rental Store: What Phone Company is trying to say is that when a technology comes along that's faster, easier, and cheaper, the old technology--and all the companies that supported it--tends to fade away.

Print Industry: Why are you here, Video Rental Store? There are a lot of you around.

CDs: There were record stores everywhere once.

Cassette Tapes: Hell yeah! They sold cassettes, too! Someone give me a high five!

(no one gives Cassette Tapes a high five)

Video Rental Store: Things looked good for a while. I had a decent run. Then I got hit by all sides. Netflix. On Demand. Tivo. YouTube. But the nail in the coffin came in the past two years. Hulu. Roku--which allows subscribers to stream video instantly. iTunes and Amazon offering movie downloads. Red Box, which rents DVDs for 99 cents and takes up no more space than a candy machine...

Print Industry: But ebooks are just a tiny percentage of the market. People have been reading print since Gutenberg. They won't adapt to change that easily.

SLR Cameras: You're correct. It takes a few years for people to fully embrace new technology. Some never do. Instant Cameras never replaced me.

Instant Cameras: Shut up, SLR. We both got our butts kicked by digital. How much film did you sell last year?


TV Antennas: I'm still big in some third world countries!

Typewriter: The bottom line is; when technology improves, it becomes widely adopted. Me and Carbon Paper used to have a groovy thing going. I'd make the words, he would make the duplicates. Then Copy Machine got into the act, but he's not doing well now either.

Copy Machine: Effing computers.

Dot Matrix Printer: Effing laser and inkjet. Doesn't anyone else miss tearing off the perforated hole punches on the side of paper? Don't they miss the feel and smell of that?

Fold-Out Paper Maps: I agree! Isn't it fun to open up a big map while you're driving, in hopes of figuring out where you are? Don't you miss the old days before cars came equipped with GPS and no one ever used that upstart, MapQuest?

CDs: Effing internet. That's the problem. Instant access to information and entertainment for the whole world. You guys want to talk about pirating and illegal downloads?

(everyone shouts out 'no!')

Moderator: We all read on JA Konrath's blog that the way to fight piracy is with cost and convenience. Print Industry, are you lowering your prices and making it easier for customers to download your books?

Print Industry: Actually, we just raised prices on our ebooks.

(all-around sighs and head shaking)

Moderator: Well, far be it for you to learn from any of our mistakes. Are you making it easier at least?

Print Industry: Well, we've begun windowing titles, releasing them months after the hardcover comes out.

(collective head slapping)

Music Industry: Have you at least tried selling from your own site? I wish I'd done that. But then Apple came along...

Print Industry: Uh... no. We haven't tried that. In fact, some ebooks--we'll use JA Konrath as an example since he was mentioned--aren't even available on all platforms and in all territories.

Moderator: What do you mean? Konrath's ebooks are available all over the place.

Print Industry: Those are the ones he uploads himself. The ones of his that we sell are missing from several key markets, and have been for years. But it's okay. We're paying him much smaller royalties and jacking the prices up high so we can still make a profit. Besides, ebooks are a niche market. Ereading devices are dedicated and expensive.

Arcades: I used to be a thriving industry. Kids dropped millions of quarters in my thousands of locations. But then Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft made home arcade machines, and now people play their videogames on dedicated devices. It's a multi-billion dollar business now, and I can only compete if I sell pizza and give out plastic trinkets to kids with the most foosball tickets. If people want the media, they buy the expensive device. Period.

Print Industry: None of you are listening to me. Print will always be around.

Newspaper Industry: Yeah! What he said!

Print Industry: Let's not compare ourselves, okay Newspaper Industry? No offense.


Newspaper Industry: None taken. Hey, maybe we can help each other. I'm selling advertising space for dirt cheap these days, and...

Print Industry: No thanks. No one reads you anymore. People get their news elsewhere.

Moderator: So why won't people get their novels elsewhere as well?

(Print Industry stands up, pointing a finger around the room.)

Print Industry: Look, this isn't about me. All of you guys have become irrelevant. Technology marched on, and you didn't march with it. But that WILL NOT happen to me. There will always be bookstores, and dead tree books. We'll continue to sell hardcovers at luxury prices, and pay artists 6% to 15% royalties on whatever list price WE deem appropriate. And the masses will buy our books BECAUSE WE SAID SO! WE SHALL NEVER BECOME OBSOLETE!!!


Buggy Whip Industry: Amen, brother! That's what I keep trying to tell these people!

CDs: (whispering to LPs) I give him six years, tops.

All of this begs the question: Who is next to join their ranks? My money is on DVDs, and they haven't been around very long. I can hear 'em now: "&%$#@!! Blu-Ray!"

###

Making a living in ObamaNation

Like it or not, Obamacare is the law of the land. The chances of having it declared unconstitutional are only enough to hang a prayer on, and the chances of it being repealed are nonexistent.

OK. I wasn't planning to debate that piece of legislation again; y'all should know by now what I think of it. But Obamacare ushers in a whole different world, and it's especially noticeable if you like to eat, and if you work to keep beans on the table.

Not long ago I was drawing unemployment, and looking for work. I was thinking, anything that moved was subject to my attention, and if it didn't move I'd kick it a few times and make it move. But the job market is, well, pretty slim.

Enter Obamacare. Now, people who hire others are taking a long hard look at whether they can afford to do that. It's bad enough with a tanked economy, but now that the federal government is requiring health care besides? That just kicked any possibility of recovery right between the eyes.

It's a real bad time to look for work.

A few weeks ago I said that one is foolish to depend on one source of income, what with the uncertain economy. Let's amend that. Now, anyone who works for another person in a typical employer-employee relationship faces a bigger disadvantage than ever before.

Welcome to the new world. The independent contactor is king. Instead of punching a clock, getting paid by the hour and banking on those cool benefits, the jobs scenario has people getting paid by the job and seeing to his own benefits.

I'm no stranger to this. For years I worked as a taxi driver and as a freelance journalist. Although the taxi company often played it fast and loose with independent contractor law, it was a pretty good way to work. Call my own hours. If I'm not making money it's my own issue. If I have a problem with the boss, then it's time for some serious therapy.

Now, I'm doing it again. I pretty much gave up on finding actual work for someone else, but am throwing my resources into working for myself. A bit of a high-wire act, admittedly, but it's starting to pay off. I have a couple of income sources for writing Web content, and am making moves toward hire-out writing and editing.

It's a tough go. My biggest hurdle is personal. While it's true that a person with ADHD always has several things in the pot (I'm making no admissions here), focus is my biggest issue. I'm working on that, and making small gains. Except for that, there is really nothing standing in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm making a little hay:

• Got my high-speed Internet up. This in itself is huge. I don't have to run out with laptop and capture a wireless signal; I can work from home.

• Getting my routine together. A few hours in the morning writing and editing today's copy, a bicycle ride in the afternoon (I wrote this column while riding back home from the bank), digging up a little more work, and things like that.

• Working, as I mentioned, on focus. I checked out the "Pomodoro technique," which is nothing but a fancy name for setting a kitchen timer while you work and taking regular breaks. I do my best work in short bursts, living in a bubble of kick-butt for a half-hour at a time.

Meanwhile, I have a to-do list for the next few weeks:

• Continue getting my groove on, fine-tune the routine.

• Get a wireless router. Currently my desktop computer is hooked up to my high-speed Internet, and I do most of my writing on my netbook, outdoors. I move files back and forth with a thumb drive, an inelegant solution. I've priced routers, and I should have one within two or three weeks.

• Start looking at upgrading equipment. My desktop computer is the bottleneck in the system. It's probably 10 years old, and it hesitates a lot when I'm doing high-speed online stuff. I've gutted the operating system and am running one that's little more than a browser and text editor, but it's still the thing that slows me down.

• Dedicate part of my work day to what lawyers call "rainmaking," hitting the wires hot and heavy to drum up some more work.

It's coming together. It's a whole new workaday world out there, and I'm ready for it.

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Sucking up info, by the gigabyte

There's no question information bombards us from all sides every waking hour, every day. But what's interesting is exactly how much information we consume.

The University of California at San Diego even studied this aspect of our culture, and was able to put a number on it.

According to this recent study, the average American absorbs 34 gigabytes of information every day.

No wonder people flip out a lot.

Think of it this way. The netbook I'm typing this on has a 160-gigabyte hard drive. Assuming I'm average (don't even go there), my brain would fill that hard drive in 4.7 days. I carry an 8-gigabyte flash drive in my pocket, and just my average daily activity would fill more than four of them. And if I tried to stream all this stuff on either my laptop or desktop? Forget it. The computer would melt.

In 2008, American brains processed a grand total of of 3.6 zettabytes of information. That's 3.6 billion trillion bytes, and there's no hard drive available to harness all of this.

Now, this information isn't limited to computer usage, but includes what you watch on the tube, what you read, what you listen to, and what goes through your telephone. In fact, television is still far and away the biggest purveyor of all this material. That's a lot of Fox News, infomercials, Seinfeld reruns, HBO, and WWF.

This study doesn't really consider the quality of the information processed. Information is information whether you're watching Gilligan's Island or The History Channel, surfing Web porn or the MIT open courseware site, reading romance novels or the Bible, listening to the pop diva du jour or John Coltrane. That's not differentiated in this study (although you may want to keep in mind my argument of finite capacities when deciding exactly how to fill your brain).

From Engadget:

... in terms of time, the study found that Americans spent about 11.8 hours a day consuming information in one way or another, the majority of which was spent staring at a screen of some sort -- and, yes, they did take HD content into account, but its growth apparently hasn't yet resulted in a huge jump in data consumption ...

Again, no wonder people are bad to flip out. I've argued that the human mind is like a hard drive, with a finite amount of storage space. The more crap you load into it, the less room there is for really important stuff. And when you're completely blasted by information, it can't be good for your mental healh. A person does need to get away from all this stimuli every once in a while, just to vegetate on the front stoop in his undershirt. Without the newspaper or phone.

I think it was Einstein who suggested a person should never remember something that is just as easy to look up, and he truly lived by that credo. The legend is that he couldn't remember his own address. I don't remember phone numbers myself -- not even my own -- but I don't need to because all that stuff is right there on my cell phone. Now I just need to remember which button to push ...

But despite my own best efforts to chill out every once in a while, I don't feel right if I don't have my cell phone on my hip, or a computer close by. When my portable mp3 player died a few weeks ago I thought I'd go crazy, but I've come to enjoy a little silence every now and again.

I'm not sure where I fit among the national average. I have a TV, and I think it works, but I never turn it on (thinking of using it as a monitor for a music server). But I have music playing nonstop when I'm home, so that accounts for a fair bit. And I'm at this computer a lot, but most of the stuff I deal in is straight text and minimal graphics. But it's a lot of text -- just my daily RSS news feeds (which is the bulk of my computer activity) accounts for more than a thousand headlines that I scan every day.

If I was to do a word count of my whole day, I don't even want to think about that. Maybe someone else is studying that. Whatever it is, don't tell me.

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(art from flickr, by DeaPeaJay)

Going paperless is possible, but is it practical?

How much has technology changed our lives?

I saw an indication when reading John Grisham's latest legal thriller, The Associate. There's an exchange between two old college buddies, Kyle and Joey. Kyle is under surveillance (part of the story, of course), so he goes to old-school methods to contact his buddy ... like writing a letter. Joey answers:

"What's with the snail mail? Your handwriting really sucks ... my hand is aching and I feel like such an old fart writing with ink."

It sounds left-field futuristic, but we are moving toward a paperless society, bit by bit. I guess you can say fewer trees are being killed to cover our daily needs, but a lot more electrons are dying in agony.

A productivity blog called Dumb Little Man recently ran a piece about steps one can take to eliminate paper use in his or her life. And while I'm using a lot less paper these days, I'm not completely paperless. Nor do I plan to be.

I haven't owned a printer in years. It's not moved any higher on my shopping list, either. The last time I owned a printer, I went through a ream of paper every month or two. Most of that printing was unnecessary, now that I think about it. About the only things I need to print now are my resume (a factor now that I'm in job-search mode), charts to songs I'm learning, the occasional letter, and that's about it. If I need to get something printed I can put the photos on a thumb drive and get that done anywhere.

Here's where Jay Scarrozzo, who wrote the DLM piece, suggests technology can take the place of paper:

- Books: DLM is big on the idea of ebooks and their offshoots. If you have something like an Amazon Kindle, you can load some 1,500 full-length books onto your handheld device and take it with you. I understand you can even download the Kindle software onto your laptop and save a step there. A whole lot less paper, no clutter, no bookshelves ...

... you can have it.

I do have a few books loaded on my computers -- mostly old ones from the free Project Gutenberg site -- but I can't get interested in a full conversion to electronic reading. I like the weight of a book in my lap. I like the feel and smell of the paper. The mere act of turning the page of a really good book is like opening another gift. I can shove a bookmark wherever I want and do something else -- like read another book. I'll often have three books going at a time; does that make me ADHD?

When I read, I'm a big annotator and use high-lighter pens liberally, which are habits that don't lend themselves well to electronic books.

So while I find the idea of e-book readers intriguing, they're for other people.
- Magazines: I don't have many at all, and I used to be a big magazine reader. I can go on line to get most of that information, and the magazine industry is dying even faster than newspaper publishing.
- Newspapers: That used to be a daily habit, and back then I'd get two or three of them -- one for local news and one for national. But somewhere I skipped the next logical step, going to the newspaper's web site for my daily fix. Today, I RSS everything. My daily news feeds include the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, the local newspapers,and just about everything else. The last newspaper I bought was 10 days ago, and I know that because it's still on the couch, half-read. But folded neatly.

- Sticky notes: Dumb Little Man suggests using your smart phone (for those who have one) or even the notepad feature on your regular cell phone (that's for the rest of us rabble). All phones have that feature now, but by the time I find my electronic notepad, get to it, and start typing on the keypad, I've already got it down on a real index card. Pass. I have experimented with some Web services that will take a phoned-in note and transcribe it into text, and while there's a geekiness factor there, I'd rather have my million-dollar idea down on paper.
- Notepads: Here's another area where you're not going to see me change much. While I do most of my writing -- including first drafts and outlines -- on a computer, I still rough out ideas on a legal pad. I'm also big on making lists and writing little notes to myself, and I always have my Hipster PDA (nothing more than a bunch of index cards held together with a binder clip; the ultimate in understated cool) with me.

- Bills: I get one, from the electric company. But they also send me a paper bill at the same time, so there's no change in the amount of paper used.

- Checks: I write two a month, for rent and for my electric bill, and I have the folks at the bank do that. I can't remember when I last wrote an actual check, but it's not because I've gone high tech. In fact, I went the other way. Nothing beats cash.

So I'm using less paper than I used to. I notice it in my waste stream. I only need to bring my trash can out for pickup every couple of weeks, unless I just cleaned out the fridge. But I'm noticing I'm less of a pack rat than I used to be, because there's less to pack. My desk actually has some clear spots on it. I have a small work table in my living room, and there are a few things piled on it:

- Three books
- Bottle of water
- Two 5x8 legal pads. One carries notes on a couple of songs I'm arranging.
- One 8x11 clipboard, holding brochures for the local college.
- A pair of pliers. It still escapes me why they're there.
- Receipts I've already entered on my spreadsheet. Why don't I throw 'em out already?
- Two miniature, pocket-sized composition books.
- Sheet music -- some bound, some loose.
- Several pens and high-lighters.
- Shoot, there's even room for a cup of coffee, as long as I'm real careful.

Let's not even look at my bookcase, OK? And I'm not even going to get into hard-disk clutter. Not even going to go there.

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Photo by burgermac. If you look hard enough under all that paper, you can tell that's a MacIntosh under there.

hipster PDA
wikipedia = RSS

Health care plan needs to be put out of its misery

The ObamaLosi health care plan cleared its first hurdle over the weekend with a narrow, 220-215 vote Saturday, and it's a tough call whether it will pass muster with the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolinian who swears he's a Republican, said the proposal for national health care, all 1,990 pages and $1.2 trillion of it, is on life support as it hits the Senate.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday. "It was a bill written by liberals for liberals."

Which is amazing because Graham is one of the most liberal of Republican senators, and has been one of the early supporters for national health care though he draws the line at a public option. He may be right, though, and people who see the big picture hope he's right.

If the health care bill is not DOA already, then it's time to mash a pillow in its face. Put it out of its misery. Please.

Here's one thing that gets me about this piece of legislation: If approved it won't even kick in until 2013 -- after the next presidential election -- but the White House and Congress are both in a hurry to get it approved and signed now.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, 'this is making me sick,' " said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

The only reason I can see for this urgency is that the Democrats -- and in particular the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Barack Obama troika may never see as much pull as it has now. If the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey give a clue, the liberal gang's power base will be in trouble in 2010.

And voters won't realize how terribly screwed up the health care system will be until after Obama is up for reelection. Convenient, no?

I'm not much of a prognosticator, and the only message I get from reading my coffee grounds is that it's time for a refill. But I expect to see the best doctors shutting down their practices and the second-raters taking over. If that's the case, health care will suffer.

I also expect to see changes in the workaday world. Unemployment is high enough right now, but if employers are required to provide health care for its employees, they'll think twice about hiring extra help.

So if you're expecting unemployment rates to drop with the health care plan in place, forget it.

Companies are already cutting back to save a few bucks, letting some employees go and dumping the extra load on the workers that stay. Crank in the cost of mandatory health coverage -- or the fines for noncompliance -- and more workers will be cut loose. That's almost a guarantee.

I expect to see employers riding the razor's edge and going more toward independent contractors instead of employees. Unfortunately, not everyone is smart enough to know what that entails or honest enough to care -- under the law independent contractors set their own schedules and work conditions, and employers won't have the same control they have over on-the-books employees. Many employers, I suspect, will attempt to call their employees independent contractors and try to set their same operational rules, and eventually lose their butts in lawsuits everywhere.

On the short-range view, national health care almost sounds like a good thing. What's wrong with keeping the people healthy even if they can't afford the scandalously high medical costs?

But on the long view, everyone loses, and the biggest loser will be the guy who punches a clock, puts in a day of work, pays his taxes, and tries to put some beans on the table. He won't be able to afford fatback to go in the beans.

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(Photo: An anonymous ticked-off taxpayer somewhere in the USA has his say. The photo came with an email I received this morning. Convenient, yes?)

Growing older beats the alternative, but has its glitches

I love this! Thanks, Dad!

Observations on Growing Older
• It's harder to tell navy from black.
• Everything old is new again, but if you wore it before, you're too old to wear it the 2nd time around.
• Your kids are becoming you -- and you don't like them, but your grandchildren are perfect!
• Yellow becomes the big color -- walls, hair, teeth.
• Going out is good; coming home is better!
• When people say you look "Great", they add, "for your age"!
• When you needed the discount you paid full price. Now you get discounts on everything -- movies, hotels, flights.
• You forget names, but it's OK because other people forgot they even knew you.
• The last 2 outfits you wore had spots on them.
• You ask your husband or friend how your outfit looks, and they tell you the truth.
• The five pounds you wanted to lose is now 15, and you have a better chance of losing your keys than the 15 pounds.
• You realize you're never going to be really good at anything -- especially golf.
• Your spouse is counting on you to remember things you don't remember.
• The things you cared to do, you don't care to do, but you care that you don't care to do them anymore.
• Your husband sleeps better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring then he does in bed. It's called his "pre-sleep".
• Remember when your mother said "Wear clean underwear in case you GET in an accident"? Now you bring clean underwear in case you HAVE an accident.
• You used to say, "I hope my kids GET married; now it's, "I hope they STAY married!"
• Who wants to wear 3" heels anyway?
• You miss the days when everything worked with just an "ON" and "OFF" switch.
• When GOOGLE, ipod, email, modem were unheard of and a mouse was something that made you climb on a table.
• You use more 4 letter words -- "what?"..."when?"
• Your husband has a night out with the guys but he's home by 9:00 P.M.; next week it will be 8:30 P.M.
• You read 100 pages into a book before you realize you've read it.
• Notice everything they sell in stores is "sleeveless"?
• Many of the people in People Magazine you've never heard of.
• What used to be freckles are now liver spots.
• Everybody whispers.
• You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet, 2 of which you will never wear again.
• But old is good in some things -- old songs, old movies, and best of all -- old friends!

Trust me. Even though I'm a mere pup of 51, I can relate to some of this stuff.

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Internet reaches middle age, though not many realize it

(Screenshot: Browsers old -- Lynx -- and new -- Firefox 3.5.3. Lynx was my go-to browser when I first went on the Internet in 1996.)

Published in The Workbench, Reloaded

Although few had even heard of this Internet thing (then known as the "information superhighway" until the early or mid-1990s, it got its real start 40 years ago this week.

It was Oct. 29, 1969 when the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. And unless you were one of the guys on the inside, you really didn't know or care.

I was a bit of a late adopter. It was 1996 when I used a noisy modem to link into an Internet provider in a nearby city. My computer was an old Leading Edge XP, with an 8088 processor, Hercules graphics card, DOS 5, and 2400-bytes-per-second modem. I used Procomm to link up, and the text-only Lynx browser to surf ... more

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Where's a plumber when you need one?

Another one I can't make up. But it seems a document by the British Minister of Defense explaining how to stop information leaks ... was leaked.

This is from Slashdot:

"A restricted 2,400 page-document put out by the Minister of Defense designed to help intelligence personnel with information security has been leaked onto the internet ... Wikileaks notes that Joint Services Protocol 440 (JSP 440), was published in 2001 and lays out protocols to defend against hackers, journalists, and foreign spies ... it says, 'Leaks usually take the form of reports in the public media which appear to involve the unauthorized disclosure of official information (whether protectively marked or not) that causes political harm or embarrassment to either the UK Government or the Department concerned...

Malevolent forces at work?

"The threat [of leakage] is less likely to arise from positive acts of counter-espionage, than from leakage of information through disaffected members of staff, or as a result of the attentions of an investigative journalist, or simply by accident or carelessness."

It appears information isn't any more secure on the other side of the pond.

'It Can't Happen Here' more relevant, though harder to find

Back in the 1930s, while the economy sat in the tank and a few bad-news dictators left little jackboot prints all over the globe, folks were saying we were still reasonably safe in the USA. That it couldn't happen here.

Novelist Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel that said, oh yes it can. And "It Can't Happen Here" created something of a stir. I discovered the book quite a few years ago, and am rereading it now, as if I need something to make me all paranoid about things.

I understand he based the lead character (Buzz Windrip) on Huey Long, the populist politician who ruled Louisiana any way he wanted.

I'm big on history, mostly because it gives a been-there view of the future.

I downloaded it some months ago from the U.S. Project Gutenberg site. I looked at that site again today, and while quite a few other Lewis books are available for download, this one is not. What's up with that?

I did find it at the Australian Project Gutenberg site. It'll load into your Web browser, and you can save it from there as an .html or .txt document. Or you can read it or download it from the Adelaide site, also from Australia. Get 'em while they're hot, folks!

Or, you can get the actual book from here.

Grab it and read it. And if you're a thinking person, it should scare the pants off of you.

Viagra 2.0: Rub it in

A new version of Viagra appears to be coming down the pike -- allegedly it'll be in a cream.

This is from the BBC:

A cream allowing erectile dysfunction drugs to be applied directly could make them safer, scientists say ...

[Insert bad joke here.]

This may be a real good thing for those who are on Prozac, as the 10-mg tablets look a lot like the Viagra pill (I had to go online to see this for myself, though I know what Prozac looks like). See, Viagra is mentioned as the best way to mitigate one of Prozac's most notorious side effects. You don't want a medical mixup at a most crucial moment.

M.O. in hard times: Ready, fire, aim

I don't know what's going on these days. I mean, it's got to be a full moon or something.

Whatever the cause, tempers are getting short. People are going off the deep end, shooting from the hip without aiming first.

I'd reported the first part of this before; the outburst of Congressman Joe Wilson (R, SC) during Barack Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress last week. Whether he was right or wrong in calling Obama a liar is moot, but the man did go off in a most public and undignified way. Earlier today, Wilson told local radio show host Rocky D that he "had a Town Hall moment." Says it all.

Then, there's Serena Williams. For at least a decade she and her sister owned women's tennis. Up against Kim Cljisters in the U.S. Open last week, she went nuts after the ref called her on a foot fault. Got loud and said something about where she'd like to shove the ball.

And on Sunday, Kanye West went bonkers. Now, I don't really know who this Kanye West is; I'd have to ask my younger friends who are more hip to this pop culture thing. But during an MTV music video awards ceremony, West got on stage and interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech with a rant using lots of words beginning with the letter F.

Maybe these folks, who don't exactly have holes in their shoes, are feeling the pinch of the times too. It's a little hard for us working stiffs to understand what kind of pressure the Williamses, Wests, and Wilsons may feel, but it's there regardless.

I know that here on the mean streets of Anywheresburg, USA, people are getting slap crazy, as we say Down South. Short with other people. They're on edge, and sometimes completely over it. Watching out more for Numero Uno than before. And that's understandable. Times are squirelly. Those who have jobs are wondering how long they'll keep them, and those with a little money in the bank or a 401(k) are watching their balances shrink.

As our economy gets more uncertain, tranquilizer darts become essential survival gear.

We had a batch of layoffs at work last week, and I was one of four casualties in a small shop. OK, that's a personal thing, and my own situation doesn't really play into this topic. But for a 10-day period -- from the time my boss announced that layoffs were coming until the day the ax finally fell -- nobody was worth a flip at work. Everybody on the ol' totem pole guarded his own hindparts, from the lowest to the highest. No one was really sure where the cuts were to occur -- bottom or top. Also under scrutiny was whether the railroad company might shut the whole ramp down, as it incurred heavy losses in the past eight months or so.

Because of this uncertainty, all of us were on edge. There were one or two guys we were especially worried about. One guy was a crane operator, running heavy equipment, and we were concerned he might attempt to carve a whole new lane right on top of the office. He was chosen as Most Likely To Go Postal in our informal staff poll, and we had our escape routes mapped out in case we heard that crane engine roar.

For that week and a half, very little work got done. But once the ax fell, things started getting back to normal. Layoffs were announced Thursday, and three of those casualties showed up for work Friday to finish their terms. Kind of a sad scene -- Handshakes and hugs all around as the newly-minted ex-employees clocked out for the last time, and the folks in my department bought me lunch and gave me a nice card. But for all of us the pressure was off. For now, anyway.

Among truckers, this mess our politicians call an economy had them under the gun for several months and tempers were quite short there, too. More haulers were driving like idiots than before, cutting one another off in line, scaring people on the freeway, screaming that they were in a hurry to make some coin while it's still there. One trucking company -- the one most affected by the railroad's loss of its biggest client -- is likewise in a precarious position. I expect to see many of its drivers laid off within the month, and now they're getting crazy.

A few other haulers saw layoffs in the past few months, and there's more a spirit of every-man-for-himself among the survivors. I began to see more predatory practices. Truckers were hauling things I'd never seen them haul before. Rather than one company handling one shipping company, the lines were blurred. As an example, Bridge Terminal Trucking (BTT) used to haul all Maersk containers. It was an exclusive contract. Now four or five companies are pulling them, and I used to rag those drivers about all the starving BTT drivers. The usual response? "Screw 'em."

Strangely enough, the one place where everyone seemed at a low key was at the unemployment office. I'm serious. At least things are a little more certain there. It's a lot easier to operate -- or at least hold your mud -- when some ax isn't hanging over your head.

Either that, or those tranquilizer darts are taking effect.

From the jump, Volt gets raves by GM

GM is promising some really big things with the new Volt electric vehicle -- like some ridiculously efficient 230 miles per gallon in the city.

And the critics are saying, yeah surrrre. But 230 mpg is a whole lot more than most automakers even fantasize.

From Newser:

... and from EcoGeek, one of the more fuzzy-wuzzy, left-leaning, tree-hugging of sites that I check out.

GM held a triumphant press conference this morning, announcing that, using newly devised EPA methodology, its 2011 Chevy Volt will get a whopping 230 miles per gallon in city driving, by far the highest fuel efficiency rating ever. No car has ever so much as sniffed 100mpg before; the Prius gets 51 ...

OK. The Volt still looks like a beer can. It does. And where do you stick the wind-up key?

How many Twinkies will solve California's budget woes?

Here's an interesting piece in Time. Seems Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would let California regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. The state's proposed $50-per-oz. pot tax would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in additional revenue.

An excerpt: ... supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing factor yet: the bummer economy. Advocates say that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to the nation's largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth an estimated $14 billion a year) and biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).

I don't care. Smoke as much of the stuff as you want, but it won't make the economic picture look any better.

(Photo by Mike Hutchings / Reuters)

Facebook turns five; will the child live?

Facebook, weighing in with 250 million users, is now five years old. But with its popularity -- and a few advertising deals struck along the way -- it has yet to make a dime of profit.

OK. Real world time. Most new businesses are not going to show a lot of profit in the first five years anyway; in fact survival is the name of the game. At least that's the way it used to be. And while many of these business truths are skewed in the Internet age, speculations about Facebook's future are probably premature anyway.

With this in mind, Newsweek's Kurt Soller takes a look at whether Facebook can last another five years.

Here's an excerpt:

... my generation had decided, almost for me, that Facebook was the only social network that mattered, so why bother with anything else? By now, that's a familiar logic, and it's part of the reason the site has grown so quickly this year, from 150 million users in January to 250 million last week. It's a number the site loves to tout with the following fact: were Facebook a country, it would now be the fourth most populous in the world ...

Broke? Try paying with shells or beans

So Wall Street is crumbling and folks are looking at alternative ways to exchange goods and services?

Barter's great. But there are limits.

Here's a piece in Newser, which goes to MentalFloss for a bit of analysis. Or something.

Broke? Try Paying Like Our Ancestors, With Shells, Beans - Business News Briefs | Newser

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Etiquette in wired world is different

I found these new etiquette rules for the digital age to be real interesting -- and yes, being wired and connected every which way does make the new rules necessary. Like, do you leave your wireless Internet open? Is it OK to send text messages from the head? What to do when your cell phone service drops a call? Should you ignore your ex on Facebook?

To help out, Brad Pitt addresses issues ranging from inter-Rock Band dynamics to choosing a ringtone for Wired. Here's an example: Your World of Warcraft wife might actually be a guy. Pitt's solution: "If it's good, don't check under the hood."

Don't forget to wash your hands first

Is there a new demand for this old product? (Photo from ecogeek.org)

No comment necessary here -- this is all a little hard to imagine. I'm always interested in any thinking out of the box, especially if it helps to stretch our planet's resources, but I usually take a nice-work-if-you-can-get-it attitude about such things.

This article by Hank Green of ecogeek.org is interesting, though it's a little technical. Some of the readers' comments are just too good.

Hydrogen seems like a logical choice for fuel - it's energy dense and emits only water upon combustion - but upon closer examination we see that it's extremely expensive to make from water, so all the hydrogen in production today is made from fossil fuels. But Gerardine Botte at Ohio University has figured out an easy and efficient way to break the bonds in urea to produce hydrogen. The process consumes roughly one quarter of the energy needed to electrolyze water. And, yes, the world has a fairly plentiful (and renewable) supply of urea. Maybe not enough to power all our cars, but it's a start.

Interested in knowing how this is done, and you don't mind more technical stuff? Then there's more: