Astronomers have now confirmed it -
we have a new planet (
click here for NASA images and renderings). About 3 times further away than Pluto and slightly larger...OK, it's not REALLY '
Planet X', since that was supposed to be another Neptune or Uranus. In fact, there's a movement about to reclassify Pluto from
being a planet at all, since it's now recognized as one of the largest Kuiper Belt objects. NASA has a
quicktime video describing the discovery.
Reading further, it would appear that the
International Astronomical Union has not clarified the definition of this as a new planet, tho a name has been submitted for it. So, I guess the jury is still out.
Discovery Is Back In Space
[Update late Saturday July 30 - latest on the Discovery is that it should be given the all clear to return to Earth. Mind you, as I stated before this is BY FAR the most scrutinized shuttle flight ever, even more so than the Enterprise glider tests in the 70's and STS-1 with John Young and Bob Crippen flying Columbia. And they've never had the capability they have now to scrutinize in this manner.]Where it should be...looks like a safe launch so far, and that will be verified. This is probably the most watched and recorded (in terms of cameras, analysis, etc.) shuttle launch ever. One of the upgrades they made was to turn the film cameras on the external fuel tank which record orbiter separation into digital wireless cameras, which allow us folks planted on the ground to see the following spectacular shots (thanks
NASA via CNN):
CNN's Miles O'Brien, one of, well, maybe the
only CNN reporter I respect (and remember, he did correctly predict that the debris seen falling off of the external fuel tank for the Columbia launch was the culprit of the disintigration) has
his own blog regarding the shuttle launch.
[Click the post title the link from CTJ] [Update 07/26/05: adding this link to the methodology for the tax base model used by CTJ to generate these numbers]
Latest data shows the same, fiscally irresponsible trend from the so-called Bush tax relief policies - that the rich get richer and the poor get almost nothing. For 2005:
67.5% of cuts to top 20%Update #2 07/26/05: What the NYT says about this tax model:"In all of Washington, there are three computer models built to produce what are called distributional tables--showing how any particular tax increase or tax cut would be distributed among various income levels. One model is the Treasury Department, one is at Congress's Joint Tax Committee and one is at Citizens for Tax Justice... whose numbers are completely reliable."
--The New York Times, Sunday, March 4, 2001, (referring to the ITEP model as the source of CTJ analyses)
I'm just going to copy the whole post regarding CostCo (investor relations here) - I can't say anymore than this. Also, here's a link to basically the same thing that was said a year ago, via NPR, and another from WBUR's On-Point from April 1st, 2004. Last link I'll add - laborresearch.org:Wow. How do these Wall Street analysts sleep at night?
Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."
Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."
................................
Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco's workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.
"He has been too benevolent," she said. "He's right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden."
Steve gives them a good beating.
Remember, when dotcom CEO's were living like kings, they didn't say shit. Dennis Kozlowski lived like a king and no analyst said a fucking word. But working people need to make less money? Ignore that nonsense.
Loyalty pays its own rewards. There is tremendous internal pressure to keep a Costco job. You show up, on time, sober and don't steal. It pays as well as a factory or civil service job. The health care plan alone can keep their workers loyal. They save millions on training and theft investigations. When you treat the worker as disposable, they treat the job the same way. When you invest in them, they will save you money.
I wonder what Wall Street will say when Costco carries on unimpeded by the costly challenges facing Wal Mart -- lawsuits, hostile unionization drives, consumer boycotts, community efforts to keep them out of new markets, and the tarnishing of the Wal Mart brand until KMart looks good in comparison.
Economics Post: Borrowing + Low Savings = Binge Consumption
Got this from
Angry Bear's article comparing two slightly different views on the current account deficit, the low US savings rate, and the lowering Net Investment rate (
click here for the graph).
From one of the
linked posts, I think this explanation is the clearest way of describing our current situation:
Investment has actually declined as a fraction of GDP over this period, and I don't see why it's going to be that much easier for either the government or private households to pay off that debt in the future. Instead to me it has more the appearance of a consumption binge.
You can see that the savings rate as a % of GDP dropped DRAMATICALLY starting about the time the Dubya got into office. So pretty much, I'd say he's helped drain out everybody's savings accounts by billions.
Corporate Responsibility Lesson 1: Own Up When You Do Something
The makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got into extremely hot water when the game that was released had all kinds of code in there to make it pretty much an NC-17 (if it was a movie). Basically, all you needed was a mod in order to unlock the code to allow you to literally get some booty. They initially lied about it, saying that the code was added by the mod, but in this article from Yahoo!,
they state that it was there the whole time:
Company officials had previously suggested that a modification created by outsiders added the scenes to the game, last year's best seller in consoles.
"There is sex content in the disc," Take-Two spokesman Jim Ankner told The Associated Press. "The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it's not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc."
I call bullshit on the last bit. They meant for this easter egg to be in the game the whole time and allow people to find out about it through message boards etc.
Firefox Likely Target for Spyware Infestation Soon
Apparently it's code structure is such that
spyware and other malware makers can actually, in theory, infect IE
THROUGH Firefox. I'd bet that Firefox is better primed to deal with the threat v. IE could ever be, tho.
Boston Real Estate: Most In Jeopardy of Busting
Or so says
this article. They give it a 52% chance of declining in the next two years...how much? the little Yahoo! article does not say. This quote shocked me:
The city is at risk despite falling home prices between 1992 and 2001
Are you kidding? I've never seen that. Since the last housing bust in the late 80's, it's just been up, up, up. It's been crazy since about 1997-98 timeframe. I had also not known of this statistic which is causing another part of the problem:
The problem, says Lawrence Yun, regional economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), is that the Boston area has lost 200,000 jobs since 2000 and that housing prices remain high, with a median home selling for $398,000
This stat seems to jibe slightly with my impressions, at least recently - for example, biotech is primed for a boom in hiring with all the new infrastructure being built in the area. The other things, of course, are that wages are not keeping up with expenses and mortgage lenders are making ever riskier loans. Lastly, people are house poor here in the greaer Boston area; I cannot tell you how many people that I know that are about 50% invested, which is WAY above the historical 'rule of thumb' I learned that you want to be between 25-33% invested. If they lose their jobs, they lose their houses pretty quickly, I'd imagine.
"Double Diabetes" Phenomenon
Something I've never heard of before...people having both Type I and Type II diabetes...I'm not a doctor so I can't comment too much, but seems to me this just make the case for the link between obesity and diabetes that much stronger. Bottom line - obesity is one heckuva a killer and can get hurt you in so many ways it's just not worth it.
Brit Hume: Terrorism Is Good For Investing
I meant to post on this subject immediately after the London attacks on Jul 07, but have not had the opportunity or pushed myself to devote the 5 minutes to link...Brit Hume, former ABC reporter and current FOX News "journalist" had
this to say that day that over 50 people were killed in London:
"I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.' "
Time to buy. This guy is a real piece of work, worrying about his portfolio when a real neo-con would be talking about
nuking Mecca or something...
Been Trying To Avoid Plamegate, But...
This article (reprinted) from NY Newsday (
via Kos) immediately after the Novak outing in 2003 pretty much has the smoking gun and refutes all 2005 spin from Rove, WH Press Office and Novak himself (as I recall). Novak's quotes from immediately after:
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information.
"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
And, to refute the claims that it was Plame herself that sent her husband to Niger. Novak says they said:
Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.
CIA says what really happened:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.
"They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."
But, from the beginning, we know what the issue was (quoteth Wilson):
Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures. "It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.
Massachusetts Technology Collaborative
Watching WCCA Channel 13 (Worcester Community Access) on P-in-P with C-SPAN w/ Clinton and Ted Turner talking about energy independence and, lo and behold, WCCA was showing how
Massachusetts is working on energy independence by various means:
- recovering old water-power from old paper mills that had dammed water power
- using biomass
- photovoltaics
- biomass
- wind
There were a series of small 10 minute shows on the various power generation technologies.
On C-SPAN, I still remain amazed at how much detailed information Clinton can keep in his head. Of course, he is well read, but the things that I would point out as an engineer (relative inefficiency in coal-powered turbines, for example) is something that he brought up in his initial talk. He just has a great way to tell a story and make an issue real for people listening.
Anyway, check out the website for the Mass. Technology Collaborative.
Via Alternet: Who's Watching the Watch List?
I've been worried about
this for some time. I flew a lot immediately before and after Sept 11 and after that travel died down, I've been on planes about ten times. Because a TSA computer sniffer picked up something on my leather bag, I'm now tagged on some list in the TSA. Fundamentally, how do you defend yourself? This is guilt before innocence. I have no means, really, of fixing this or finding out what the chemical was that was found. That bag had been chemically sniffed multiple times, and that one time something was found. The guy that wrote the article, John Graham, found this on one of the TSA forms that he filled out:
The TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists. Instead this process distinguishes passengers from persons who are in fact on the Watch Lists by placing their names and identifying information in a cleared portion of the Lists.
So, people that are on the watch lists can never get off. Ever. This lumping of people sounds eerily familiar to the 2000 voting lists in FL that would have names like "J.Jones" and that's it. So ANYBODY who had that name derivative - man, woman, felon, etc. were restricted. Without due course. This needs to be fixed, man.
When Republicans Eat Their Own, Vol III
The Theo-Cons don't like AG Alberto Gonzales for some reason...enough that dubya is
publically defending him. Makes sense, since he'll defend his backers no matter what. It's funny that the rancor is really much more on the extreme right than from any part of the left:
Bush seemed aggravated by the attacks on his friend, who followed him from Texas to Washington and served as White House counsel before taking over the Justice Department in February.
"All of a sudden this fellow, who is a good public servant and a really fine person, is under fire," Bush told reporters at a news conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"I don't like it at all."
