Last week MIT Media Lab’s One Laptop Per Child program generated a ton of press. Here’s CNet’s article for example and here’s the Post’s. The plan is to give away millions of hand-crank powered laptops that will cost roughly $100. What surprised me was that the press wasn’t critical of this idea. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea that could help kids in the third world. How great would it be for kids to be able to access the internet or networks to allow them to learn? But there are a lot of problems with their idea. Just for starters, they don’t have a working prototype, they don’t have a prototype of the electrical generation system that would power the computers with the hand crank, and they don’t have a prototype of the screen they want to include in the laptop. And nevermind the fact that they haven

Biofuels are all the rage, but the drive for biofuels is encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. The New Scientist.com reports:

THE drive for “green energy” in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction

The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rising demand for green energy has led to a surge in the international price of palm oil, with potentially damaging consequences. “The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia. It is one of the most environmentally damaging commodities on the planet,” says Simon Counsell, director of the UK-based Rainforest Foundation. “Once again it appears we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them in developing countries, where they have devastating effects on local people.”

The main alternative to palm oil is soybean oil. But soya is the largest single cause of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. Supporters of biofuels argue that they can be “carbon neutral” because the CO2 released from burning them is taken up again by the next crop. Interest is greatest for diesel engines, which can run unmodified on vegetable oil, and in Germany bio-diesel production has doubled since 2003. There are also plans for burning palm oil in power stations.

The UN should not control any internet infrastructure. The reason is simple, why else does China, Libya, Iran, and Vietnam want to control the internet

From Miscellaneous Factz:

An explosion in research (mainly dependent on access to proprietary data) as a result of public interest in these issues means that we are now in a position to provide answers with some degree of certainty. The basic result is that online illegal file-sharing does have a negative impact on traditional sales. The size of this effect is debated, and ranges from 0 to 100% of the sales decline in recent years, but a figure of between 20 and 40% would be a reasonable consensus value (i.e. that file-sharing accounted for 20-40% of the decline in sales not a 20-40% decline in sales).

Beyond this basic result several other very interesting facts have emerged. First is the differential impact of file-sharing on an artist depending on their existing popularity. According to Blackburn who investigates this issue the

Mars

Originally uploaded by dr5.

This photo is from NASA’s website. NASA says:

This synthetic image of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover on the flank of “Husband Hill” was produced using “Virtual Presence in Space” technology. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., this technology combines visualization and image-processing tools with Hollywood-style special effects. The image was created using a photorealistic model of the rover and a false-color mosaic. The size of the rover in the image is approximately correct and was based on the size of the rover tracks in the mosaic. The mosaic was assembled from frames taken by the panoramic camera on the rover’s 454th Martian day, or sol (April 13, 2005).

On cool thing about Michael Hiltzik’s blog on the LA Times website is that he actually reads the comments. If you scroll down this post, he responds to my argument.

I had a thought today: the people that don’t think Wal-Mart workers are paid enough ought to be visiting Wal-Mart and tipping these underpaid workers. Why not help the workers directly that Wal-Mart is oppressing?

I had this thought after I read this post on the Golden State Blog by Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times. This is the part of the post that got my creative juices flowing:

A few interesting nuggets in this memo may not have received the attention they deserve: The memo grouses about technology driving up health care costs. Funny, we keep reading about how technology will drive down health care costs. One main reason for higher costs is the unequal distribution of care–underinsureds use more expensive care, such as ERs. They’re Wal-Mart’s workers, and what the company is complaining about is its being forced to carry its own weight. The memo complains that the public is sadly unaware that the company provides health insurance for 900,000 workers. Yes, but that’s about 50% of its workforce. The average among national companies, as Wal-Mart acknowledges, is 68%. Fully 48% of the children of Wal-Mart workers are on Medicaid or uninsured: What a shameful record.

My problems with this are many-fold.
1. Hiltzik claims that “The memo [from Wal-Mart] grouses about technology driving up health care costs. Funny, we keep reading about how technology will drive down health care costs.” Unlike Hiltzik I have read that one of the reasons health care costs are high is because of high-tech treatments. In the past, if you tore your ACL there wasn’t much doctors would do for you. Now it can be repaired. In the past, there were no such things as MRIs or CAT scans. These things increase the costs of health care since they are new treatments that were previously unavailable.

2. Hiltzik claims, “One main reason for higher costs is the unequal distribution of care–underinsureds use more expensive care, such as ERs. They’re Wal-Mart’s workers, and what the company is complaining about is its being forced to carry its own weight.” There is truth in the argument that underinsureds use more expensive care, but to suggest that some incredibly high number (high enough to change the entire medical system as Hiltzik implies) is absolutely silly. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Wal-Mart is complaining about the high costs brought about by high costs created by new technologies.

3. Why it is a shameful record that Wal-Mart pays for health care for only 48% of its workers? Is Hiltzik implying that Wal-Mart workers are too dumb to switch jobs where their employers provided healthcare? How can Wal-Mart get away with this if their workers were incredibly unhappy? Wal-Mart workers aren’t slaves.

Here’s a great article from Hit and Run that underscores our problems in Iraq. Other Arab countries hate the US more than they love freedom.

Via Volokh:

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The Guardian has a list of the Top 20 Geek Novels. I guess I’m a geek because I reall like a lot of these books:
1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune — Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen – John Wyndham 21% (19)

I really liked Hitchhiker’s Guide and The Colour of Magic (but if you were going to read Terry Pratchett, there are better places to start, such a Small Gods). Dune is great. If you haven’t read Neal Stephenson, you need to read Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, or the Diamond Age. They are all great. And make sure to read Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land is great, but so is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Below I have pated the opening paragraphs to Snow Crash:
Continue reading →