SFA goes on strike: Attendance for NY v Boston, 324

Image via WikipediaI was listening to sports radio this morning as they were discussion the NFL Owners Association meeting to be held this weekend.  It was interesting to hear the analysis on what the owners were going to be discussing and then the follow up on what it would take to save the 2011 NFL season.  As a fan, you ultimately want the game to be played as always, but you end up taking sides and wanting one side to win or the other side to give in so we can play football.

One of the issues being discussed is the 18 week season.  This players don't like this because it leads to more fatigue, more injuries, and frankly, more work for them.  The owners like this because it allows them to charge full price for two more games without fans getting upset with having to pay for two more pre-season games.  Then I thought:  What would the fans want?  I imagine fans would want two more weeks of regular season football!!  But who is representing the fans?  Nobody!!!

Hence the creation of the Sports Fans Association!  This will be union of fans across America that will form a governing body, vote on specific rules and issues, and if things don't go our way, we will STRIKE!!  Can you imagine how quickly we would get owners and NFL players to agree on a specific deal or compromise if 0 fans attended the next big game?  Can you imagine going online and voting for whether you wanted replay on foul balls in baseball?  We could get specific rules in the sports changed, request pricing caps on tickets, or really start affecting the game in almost anyway we wanted.  I know there would be negotiation of sorts, but if it were to take off, the SFA would have more power that both the Overpaid Players Associations and the Greedy Owners Clubs.  

Anyone not think this is the best idea ever?  I think I might have to wright to Bill Simmons on this to see if he'll be NBA chair for me.  And once we figure out American sports, we can get something going for the World Cup and get something done about the excessive crying and horrible officiating.  We've got 4 years before the next one, let's get going.

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Traffic is Infuriating

Image via WikipediaI just can't imagine a bigger waste of time than sitting in traffic.  And this is a waste of time that spans socio-economic status, race, gender, and country of residence.  I just can't believe a world as advanced as ours isn't doing a better job of solving this problem.
Here's what I would do if someone handed me $50 million dollars tomorrow (give me a call).  Find an urban area with a large commuting population (almost any urban area).    Build a single PRT line from a remote area into the downtown of the urban area.  This line would consist of parking lots around stations every 10 or 20 miles.  A commuter could get into a vehicle at any of the stations and ride directly to the downtown (or other stations) at speeds of no less than 100 mph and possibly up to 200 mph with zero stops in transit.  Hopefully there would be a city/area that would donate at least some of the land to the cause.
Once this initial line is established and people realize the potential for this kind of system, we could expand these initial stops to other area stops.  The eventual goal would be to have a stop within .25 of a mile of all residences, or even a personal stop at each house/business.

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I am Happier than Tiger Woods

Image by Richard Carter via FlickrFor all my complaints and the difficulties in my life, all I have to say is that I am happier than Tiger Woods right now.

Phew, 5 Americans survived a plane Crash!!

Image via Wikipedia

There's a story out of Columbia today where a plane crashed and of the 130 passengers, only 1 died.  While this is generally a good story with a favorable outcome, it really bothers me that the media has to point out the nationalities of the people on the plane.  "130 other people aboard, including at least five American citizens."  I just don't see why that is important.  Would it be a bigger story if they were all American citizens?  Why are American lives more important than lives of the other 125 people on the plane?

This happens with a lot of disasters that are reported by the media.  Maybe the problem isn't with the media, maybe we as a people actually DO value American lives more than other lives.  Do other countries have this same kind of bias for their people?  

The other time this comes up and annoys me is when War breaks out somewhere.  One of the big things that's reported on is how the U.S. is sending war ships and military personnel to evacuate Americans.  I can understand that if someone is working for the U.S. in that country that we may have some kind of obligation to ensure their safety, but if someone's there voluntarily outside of government business, why should we use our resources to save them?  What about the people who live in that country, do they not deserve to be saved?

In the end, I believe this worlds problems with war, immigration, and racism all stem from the fact that we consider "our own people" to be more important than "them".  Those people who were lucky enough to be born within an arbitrary political boundary, regardless of any merit they may have, are special, protected, and god forbid they get killed in an airplane crash.  I wish the people of this world could open their eyes and see how exactly the same people in other countries are to you.  The last part that amazes me is how proud our country is for the civil rights movement that occurred here.  We're so just, and good, and we treat everyone like equals.  The shame is that for some reason, an imaginary line at our border makes it okay for us to forget the lessons of the civil rights movement and hang on to a "we're better than them" mentality that does nobody any good.

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Ending Life Humanely

I read this article on Letting Go.  It's a very long article, but worth the read.  I believe this is starting to address one of the areas of our society that we have just not been able to address.    The author is a doctor who is struggling with the conflict between trying everything you can for a terminally ill patient no matter the cost, and letting that patient go so they can enjoy the last days of their life rather than be tied up to machines or be worsened by treatments.  It's a hard topic and I think the author does a good job of presenting both sides of the issue.  I think the take away from the story is: "What are your end of life scenarios?"

The more we think about our end-of-life scenarios now, the better chance we have of making a good decision once we're in that situation.  Are you willing to suffer for a week for a 5% chance at living 2 years longer?  Are you willing to suffer for a month for a 1% chance at living 10 years longer?  What is your break even point?  What are the things that you want to live for?  Would you rather spend 1 more week comfortably with your family, or fight to the bitter end hoping for a miracle?  These are hard questions.

I believe that in an advanced society, we would not find it so hard to let go of the dying.  It's a certain shortfall of who we are.  Whether this is because of religion or an evolutionary need to preserve our own, our tendencies are misguided and we should work on this.  Figure it out for yourself.  Talk to your family.  Make a small step toward improving your end-of-life scenarios.

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The problem with the UN

Image via Wikipedia

I know, just one?  Well, this is the most important one.

What purpose does the UN serve?  Well, it SHOULD be able to enforce treaties, peace, prevent attacks on smaller nations.  It has not been successful with this.  Why?  Problem is that the UN has no power.  Even if it decides a country is our of compliance, or flat out defying UN rules, the UN will not do anything, especially if that country declares that any sanctions will be considered an act of war.  Not that sanctions ever help anyway.  They hurt the people and usually give the rebellious leaders added resolve.  It's not a good system.

We need a UN with teeth.  First, I'll take this to the extreme.  What if the UN had a host of Nuclear bombs and every time a country did not follow UN resolutions, that country's capital was bombed with a nuclear bomb with the intent on destroying that country's leadership.  I can think of a few problems that probably wouldn't have happened.  Once the UN drops one bomb, I can't imagine there would be a lot of countries causing problems.  We would still have gorilla type problems, but that's not what I'm addressing here.  So, once the UN establishes itself as having some teeth, then countries should feel more confident in reducing their armies, weapons, and other wasted resources so they can focus on growth, human rights, and anything else they might spend $800 billion dollars on annually.  Ok, so that's the figure for the whole world, but still, it's a lot of money.

So, it seems like the end goal could be beneficial, but we can't bring ourselves to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people for the sake of world peace.  Would it be worth it, or possible if it was just one bomb and it gave us world peace forever?  Still a questionable thought and almost impossible to do.  I get that.  So lets consider an alternative.

Alternative:  Are nuclear weapons so completely unacceptable that it's just not a reasonable policy?  Maybe.  So instead, put into place a policy of complete destruction of central political establishment, central political symbols, and some high end residencies.  The ideal situation would be to kill the leadership, but this comes close to the goals of using a Nuclear bomb.  I think especially, the idea of going after high end residencies is especially interesting as money buys influence no matter where you live and if you give enough of the rich a reason to put pressure on the government to change, then you may just get peace.

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Why isn't the post office a business?

Image via Wikipedia

I just don't understand government organizations that can't be run by businesses.  There are many departments or organizations within government that actually take in money to provide a service.  The DMV for example as well as the post office.  News is out now that the US Post Office is requesting a 23% increase in the price of stamps.  http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/07/07/standard-mail-prices-for-parcels-to-increase-23/

The problem here is that the post office is not improving it's services, should be making money off of us, and still continues to lose money and charge unreasonable rates to deliver mail.

I think it's about time there be a rival created for the USPS.  One of the large freight companies should start delivering mail door to door like a business would and see if it can't improve on how the USPS operates.  Here is a short list of some of the improvements I think could be made:
- Create an opt-in system for junk mail.
       -  Does the post office make extra money by delivering junk?  How much time would be saved if there was no junk mail?  What if companies had to pay the recipients in order to send mail to them?
       -  Provide ways for consumers to provide information so that junk mail could be targeted better.  This would increase the value to the advertisers as well as provide junk mail that may actually be interesting to the recipient.
- Establish accounts associated with sender's addresses.  Instead of stamping mail, just charge each account for the mail that is delivered from that address.
- Create different classes of mail delivery.  Have standard mail delivery every other day and have urgent or 1st class delivery every day for a higher charge.
- Instead of charging people for P.O.Boxes, make it cheaper for people to receive mail at a main postal office.  Saves on delivery time and expenses and may be more convenient for some people.
- Offer a fax to mail service.  Fax the post office, or bring it in, and we'll deliver a physical printout of your fax to the address specified.

I bet a serious competitor to the USPS could not only make money, but they could probably improve on service, reduce junk mail, and reduce prices for end consumers.

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Other people's creativity

I wish I would have been this creative.  Why are other people always doing things that are so much cooler than what I could come up with?  Even if I would have gotten this idea, I never would have been able to execute on it.  So sad.

Real Reviews

Image by pierre pouliquin via Flickr

The online social economy these days is very dependent on the reviews of others.  What do you think?  Would you stay there again?  Does the shoe make you feel well dressed?  These are all important opinions that can help a prospective buyer make a decision.  Are you getting real reviews from previous consumers?

On Amazon, I've tried to leave negative reviews a couple of times.  Once, I objected to paying almost $16 in shipping charges when the two items I purchased were combined and weighed less than 1lb.  I also mentioned in the review that one item was not as great as I'd expected.  Overall, the review wasn't terrible, but I tried to be honest.  After trying to reach the seller with no response, I posted my review.  At that point, the seller contacted me and was offering "anything" to get me to retract my review.  He was going to send me new items and refund all of my money.  It was unreasonable.  I removed the review and told the seller not to worry about it.

I also recently had a review opportunity for a b&b I stayed at in Paris.  The experience was really nice and the host was personable and provided a great experience.  However, there were some things about the stay that could have been better and because of how the overall review process is, some of my comments would have made the experience seem worse than I would like to specify.  I decided to not leave a review instead.

Am I the only one that does this?  Are there scores of untrue, or omitted reviews that could be helpful to us in our search for better products?  If someone walked into my house and asked me about this specific b&b in Paris, I would unashamedly tell them everything I think.  The prospect of putting those thoughts in writing and having those thoughts affect people I don't know is overwhelming.  Knowing the audience (my friend in my house) I tailor my comments for that person with the understanding of how they might use those comments.

How do you get around the fact that online reviews are too broad a stroke?  How do you also get around the fact that anything less than 5 stars is a harmful review?  How can consumers get the truth about experiences according to their own views and use of them?

Cheeting the clock

Seth Godin wrote an interesting article on cheating the clock:  


I have found this same thing to often be true.  If I know that I'm taking Thursday and Friday off, I can easily get my work done for the week in the first 3 days.  However, if I try to work that hard and get "Extra" things done in an entire week, I might end up burned out.  My solution is to show up to work 30-60 minutes early.  In that time, I get my intense work in, accomplishing the important tasks and setting up the rest of the day to accomplish what I want to accomplish.  What I end up with is a very successful morning, and in the afternoon I get to choose between going home early because I've done what I want, or sticking around to finish stuff up that isn't as important.  Either way, I end up feeling great about my job!

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Government Propaganda

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As I was driving from Las Vegas to Colorado a few days ago, I passed a large road sign that talked about a project being completed along I-70 that was paid for by the Recovery act.  I have no idea how much the sign cost, but even if it was only a few dollars, the purpose of the sign seemed to be to make me appreciate how the current government was spending my money.  It seems to me like a complete waste of my money.  It's bad enough that we're throwing money into wasteful projects, but then spending more money to convince me that it was a good idea just makes me bitter.  Shouldn't this fall under campaign financing somehow?

Cruelty to Animals

Image by Ghost-Rider via Flickr

I recently read this story discussing the miniaturization of horses.  I don't understand why more people aren't appalled by this.  Breeding for specific traits is very unnatural and leaves many animals with genetic dispositions for diseases, pain, and discomfort.  It amazes me that we as a people can be so cruel without even thinking about it. This would be intolerable if we were to do this with humans.

Related note 1:  Kind of weird that we are okay with breeding programs for animals, but yet we don't let them suffer when they are dying. 

 In people, we won't tolerate breeding programs, but will actually prolong suffering as long as possible when they are dying.

Related note 2:  I actually do think some genetic filtering in humans could be beneficial.  I'll write about this later in a "Meaning of life" post if I haven't done that already.

Related note 3:  We need a term for a tangent of a tangent.  Tangents in stories usually break things up and make  the story interesting.  Tangents within those tangents, if done well, are also interesting, but often get confusing.  Mathematically speaking, a tangent is actually a straight line, and by definition, a straight line can't have a tangent.  Okay, I don't really know the definition, but I still think it's true.  Anyone help me out here?

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Economies and the collapse of civilization

Over the history of the Earth, there have been many great civilizations.  Many of these great civilizations like the Romans, Mayans, and Mesopotamians, grew to greatness and then crumbled.  There are many theories as to why, but none of them are really satisfying.  I'll put forth my own unsatisfying theory here:

Capitalistic economies will eventually cause all civilizations who partake in them to fail.
This is true for these ancient civilizations where their currencies and economies were fairly isolated, but also true for today's world where the economy consists of the entire world.  The reason for this is that the way capitalism is setup, the system must grow in order for institutions or individuals to make money.  If the economy becomes stagnant, then the economy fails.  I'm not sure I understand this completely, but it does seem to hold across different times and cultures who have some sort capitalistic economy.  Economies can't
possibly grow indefinitely.  In modern times we have become creative and have used technology to increase output.  We've created fancy financial packages that somehow generate revenue from nothing.  It's great, and it's fun and profitable while growing, but what happens when there is no more growth to be had, or people are getting too creative with their financial instruments.

Our world is now seeing signs of problems to come.  These days, instead of hitting the peak of our growth and crashing, our governments are artificially propping up, or applying cpr to the economy.  How can borrowing billions of dollars and spending them on questionable projects across the country be a good idea?  The fixes for our current problems are a boom in population, or a real crash.  Let the big banks fail.  Let Greece go under.  Once we work through the really tough times following that, the economy will pick up again and find a way to grow.  Otherwise, we're just delaying the inevitable.

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Government and Religion

The Supreme court ruled yesterday on a memorial cross in California that had been erected on public land.  I don't think the ruling was important, but I do think there are some important issues here that people don't seem to grasp.

Why are we wasting millions of my money to argue about whether a cross in the middle of the desert should be taken down or not?  Aren't there more important things to be worrying about?

I want to examine the role of government in respect to religion.  If we look at our caveman ancestors establishing government for the first time, why would they have anything to do with religion?  I would argue that religion was likely a form of government for these cave men.  What can you wear, how do you have to be to hunt with the men, how do we treat the women, who is a valid sacrifice, what is sacred.  The problems start as soon as you end up with a real government as well as a religious government.  How do they handle disagreements?  If there are multiple religions, which one is more important for the government to side with?  I think in matters where separation of church and state questions come up, the litmus test should be: are we trying to govern by religious principals?

For this particular case, the cross is a memorial for fallen soldiers of foreign war.  It was not commissioned by the government.  It does not play a part in actually governing the people.  It does not tell people that they must worship Jesus in order to remember these fallen soldiers.  If I'm in a foreign land and I see a shrine commemorating an ancient disaster, I don't have to understand, or agree with, the religious significance of the shrine in order to appreciate the memorial.

The next case I want to repeat here is the one involving gay marriage.  Again, the fact that so much money is being wasted by government on this issue is sickening.  I think the federal government needs to come to it's senses and provide leadership to the states on how to handle this so that we can move on.

The resolution:  Government's role in marriage is to enforce a contract between two people.  That's it.  If that contract is between two men, a man and a woman, a woman and three men, it doesn't matter.  As soon as government starts dictating what marriage is, they start governing by rules established by religion.  It doesn't make sense.  In my caveman days, a small government created to take care of community issues would be worried about clean water, protecting the land and food they depend on, and mediating and deciding conflicts amongst the people.  There's no reason my caveman community would need to declare that only certain people could live together.  There would be no point in that.

Speedo Training I: Day 3

We're on day three now of this competition and I weighed in at 181.5 lbs this morning.  Not exactly on pace for my 2lbs this week.  I'm especially worried about this because I'm leaving for Las Vegas Sunday morning and I'm not sure if weight is one of those things that's supposed to "stay in Vegas".  I'm going to try pretty hard, but I don't know if there will be opportunity to eat well and I don't know how much time I'll have for exercise.  If I can come back Wed at 180, I will be very happy. 

Plastics and Buildings

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning on the effort required to fix the dome of the State Capitol building in Denver.  Seems like years of rust and corrosion from whether are making it unstable.  So now the taxpayers are looking at a significant bill to repair the thing.

Not my main idea here, but it's really frustrating to me that our lawmakers need these ornate buildings to work in.  It says we're all about appearance and not so much about substance.  I want to see some state build a capital building that is purely practical.

Okay.  So since we've already inherited old buildings that we're not likely to tear down.  Why not protect some of them with a layer of clear plastic.  Wouldn't it preserve a lot of buildings in whatever state they're in?  I know this isn't practical for entire buildings, but things like a dome seem like they could have their life extended by a coating to keep the weather and other elements away.  Also, would a coating like this add strength to buildings that may not be very strong?  What about coating buildings in earthquake prone areas like this?

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Speedo Training I: Day 1

Ok.  I weighed in at 181 this morning.  I have 8 weeks to basically get down to 175 or 170.  I'm pretty sure if I get down to 170 I'll win and I'll be at a great weight for me.  I think the Overweight label goes on me when I get to 180 as a 5'10" male.

I'm planning on completing 5 weightlifting and 5 cardio workouts each week.  Some days I will combine these and some days I may have a dedicated weight lifting or cardio workout.

I'll also try to eat "reasonably".  I don't think I need to actually diet and I think that often leads to bad things.  Usually my biggest problem in losing weight is that I'll eat ridiculous amounts of food.  I would be embarrassed to actually publish what I ate some days.  I'll try to keep a log of what I'm eating.

Just for some background on my current health state:
-  I feel athletically better than I have in years.
-  Bench Press:  110 lbs for 3 sets of 12.
-  Squats:  110 lbs for 3 sets of 12.
-  Pullups:  4 (this is twice as good as the 2 I could do a year ago.)
-  Running:  I ran 1 mile in 9:50 seconds.  This is better than I have ever run a mile.

Speedo Training I

The gauntlets have been laid down.  My best friend Isaac and I have decided to try and lose some weight together.

The stakes:
The loser will have to buy a jersey of the winners choosing.  This will likely be a Broncos jersey for me and a Chargers jersey for him.  The loser will then have to wear that jersey for the entire day both times the Broncos and Chargers play.  There will be pictures to document this.  In addition, the loser will have to change their Facebook profile image to be one with the jersey on.

The rules:
-  We are starting with a weigh in April 7, 2010.
-  Final weigh in is May 29, 2010.
-  A loss in weight of more than 2lbs in 1 week will reset the initial weight down by the amount over the 2lbs lost.
-  The competition will be void if the winner does not get below 175 for me or 199 for Isaac.

I have setup a shared Google spreadsheet to track our progress.  It's rather unimaginative now, but maybe it'll improve as the competition goes on.

Fundraising in Schools

When I was a kid, I remember having to do fundraisers for my elementary and middle schools.  I'm not sure what exactly that taught me, but now that I have kids of my own, the subject is really irritating to me.

I think in general education is a very important subject to Americans.  There is an ideology at work that I think most Americans would agree with.  Everyone should have access to education, and no publicly funded schools should receive more or less money based on their social status, race, or any other factor.  I think many people would even say that children of illegal immigrants should receive education even though opinions as far as other services for illegal immigrants are usually negative.

The problem I have is that you still end up with public schools that are much better off than others.  One reason for this is that schools are constantly asking kids to participate in fundraising activities.  The money these kids raise is not coming from a general pool of people that is available to everyone.  This money is coming from those kids families and friends.  This generates a distinct advantage to schools in affluent or upper middle class areas as their families and friends are likely to shell out more cash for that child's fundraising.  In effect, this process is creating a social structure amongst our public schools that ensures that rich kids will grow up better educated and poor kids will receive a poorer education.

I believe that either this practice should stop, or that we should require all fundraising to schools to be put into a pool for the district or state.  I believe this is the same practice used for property taxes.

Immigration and the Economy

I'm pretty sure none of what I'm saying here is ground breaking, but I'm surprised people don't talk about this more often.

It seems to me that economies are built from the ground up.  So, you need tons of minimum wage workers, then you need a lots of trade workers, and then some specialized technical workers, and then a very few executive type workers.  I know I'm oversimplifying here, but the point is that you need to make sure your base is solid or the rest of the pyramid will not fill out.
What I see in the US historically is that there has always been a healthy level of immigration to our country, whether that is legal or illegal.  This immigration produces a large number of minimum wage workers that help support our economy.  I think that because of this historical immigration, the US economy has always been one of the strongest in the world.  The funny thing is, that as soon as the economy shows signs of weakness, the government goes after illegal immigrants and tries to deport as many as possible to theoretically improve the job market for US employees.  My theory is that many of the people who are deported are not actually replaced and overall, this hurts our economy.  In addition, when economies are down, it's not the minimum wage jobs that we really care about, it's the trade jobs and specialized technical jobs that are most important to us.

Company Travel Policies

Image via Wikipedia

I'm curious about what other people do for this, but from what I can tell, my company is pretty normal as far as sending people on trips and then reimbursing expenses.

I recently went to Europe and then spent at least an entire day compiling receipts, organizing them, entering them into spreadsheets, and requesting reimbursement.  What I find interesting about this is that my wasted time in requesting reimbursement is valuable, and I can only imagine how many people across the company are doing this every day.  Are we saving money?  Is the employee stress and attention to expenses worth the effort?

The Solution:  I think instead of worrying about every little expense, receipt, and justification, set a per diem for employees for meals, and then have them keep track of major travel expenses and hotel only.  This way, the costs for the company are set as far as meals go before the trip is even taken, and the employee should not end up spending much time working on expense reports instead of making the company money.  Each destination should have a specific per diem and if an employee can eat cheaper than that, then they benefit.  It's a win-win.

What does your company do?

Bad Marketing and Pharmaceuticals

Ok, really what I'm talking about is clever marketing, but I also consider it somewhat evil.  What I'm referring to is cholesterol lowering drug makers.

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I was recently diagnosed with high cholesterol (very surprising since I'm vegetarian, but that's a different story).  I start searching around for how to lower cholesterol and I mention it to a few friends.  And you know what I hear over and over again?  "High cholesterol is in my genes."  "You might not be able to do anything about it if it's genetic."  I understand that this may be true in some cases, but what the marketing departments
 at these big drug companies have done is instill a belief that cholesterol isn't your fault.  You are probably pre-disposed to having high cholesterol so you'll probably need medication.  I think this also has the effect of dissuading some people from trying too hard to lower their cholesterol through eating right and exercising.  Overall this is brilliant advertising and these drug companies are probably making $Billions as a result, but I think they're doing us a disservice and are being somewhat evil.  Pay attention to what you believe, it could be marketers giving you your opinion.

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• Lower Your Cholesterol Diet - On SlideShare (slideshare.net)

Good Quotes

I've always wanted a site where I could find great quotes that are well organized. I've also wanted a way for me

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 to submit my own quotes that other people could rate and use and that I would get credit for.  Someday I'll build that site.  Until then, here's my quote of the day:

"All those not in favor of world peace please raise your hand so the rest of us can beat the crap out of you!"
-  Ben Gomez  1/26/2010

Democracy fails us

So, I generally like democracy and I love living in the US, but there are some things that Democracy is very slow to fix or do right.

One good example is the way the US deals with the global warming problem.  Because of the self serving nature of Democracy, it is really slow going in fixing any problems we might be causing.  People are generally concerned and want to fix things, but it seems like nothing is really happening.  I believe that if we really wanted to do something, we could.

If we were to add a $2 or $3 tax to each gallon of gas in the US, I would wager that our emissions as a country would plummet to the levels we need very quickly.  However, politicians are not going to support this because they care about being re-elected (self-serving) and the people that vote all care about not having to pay too much (again, self-serving).

I know we would need support from the rest of the world to really solve the problem, but at least we could do our part and be a leader in the world.

Advanced Space Travel

In thinking about the heat that we have in the center of the Earth, it seems as though we have a huge supply of energy that isn't going away any time soon.  The gravity from the Earth causes all the matter in the world to compress towards the center creating large amounts of heat. 

Eventually this is going to be useful as we figure out how to use it.  One way that may be especially interesting is for space travel.  I know, there's no way to take the energy with you.  But really, what we could do is actually make the entire Earth a space ship and use the energy that it creates by it's own gravity to drive the ship.  Some day this may become a reality, and while taking Earth to distant galaxies may not work out or be advisable, it might be a good idea for a nearby planet. 

Sexuality in the United States

This is probably my most uncomfortable post so far, but I have an idea and I want to put it out there for people to help me with it.

So, I find it interesting that we have Gyms in the US where people are okay being naked in front of other people.    And if you think about it, many of those people could very well be homosexual, but I don't know many people that are bothered by that.  There probably are, but I haven't met them.  My theory is that everyone is comfortable with the fact that checking out other people in the locker room is completely inappropriate, so it's just not done.  Same thing with underage sexuality.  Men, or at least decent men, have a built in switch that just doesn't allow for the chance of checking out underage women because it's accepted as inappropriate.

The thought is that if we can trust some segments of the population to not be inappropriate, then it seems like co-ed locker rooms would be an extension of this thought.  In addition, it would go against, rather than support, the idea that it's okay for Men to check out or look at women inappropriately whenever they get a chance.  Right now it's assumed that a heterosexual male will stare, if not closely examine, and enjoy seeing women naked.  What if our society could get beyond that?  What if we got to the point where it was never acceptable to "check out" a woman?  Imagine the implications for social interactions, fashion, advertising (media generally exploits the fact that men will drool over any half naked woman they see), and any other aspects of public sexuality.

Maybe it's not possible, but it's an issue that I think a modern society should think about and possibly address.  Not that I think locker rooms should go co-ed tomorrow, but just thinking about it brings up some interesting ideas.

What's Wrong with America

I just got done reading a length article on the "decline" of America.  Very interesting but quite long.  I'll try to summarize here and then provide some analysis.

The article's main points:

• America has been thought to be in decline at many times throughout it's history and America continues to respond with resilience, flexibility and rebirth to drive it forward into growth and vitality while people continue to lament the impending doom of the country.
• America has specific and significant advantages over other countries around the world:  Attracting talent, our University system, and resources.
• Our infrastructure is getting older and is hardly sufficient for the needs of today, much less the needs of future generations.
• Our government system is old, inflexible, and cannot accomplish significant projects.  He also mentions specific problems with the system such as the fact that California has 69 times more representatives in the House than Wyoming yet they both have the same power in the Senate.
• Everything can be fixed if all decisions are made by thinking about that decision as if you would wake up tomorrow and it would be 75 years later.

The sections on the constant doom and gloom and how America responds to it is interesting.  One thing I noticed from my own life is that people in my company seem to have this same view of how the company is doing.  Yet the company keeps getting stronger.  Maybe my company, and possibly many others out there are microcosms of the entire American culture.

On declining infrastructure:  It may be true that our current systems need maintenance, but I believe in some cases, a collapsing infrastructure might give us a good opportunity or possibly motivation to invent something better, more efficient, less expensive, or easier to maintain.

He never really makes a good point about how the House and Senate are setup.  I believe they were setup with the balance as it is for a reason, and it still seems to make sense to me.  You want higher populations to get more say, but not to be able to dictate the course of this country.  It seems like a good setup.  In addition, he talks about states containing 12 percent of the population having enough votes in the Senate to block a bill.  However, the states are mostly irrelevant since the important affiliation is whether those Senators are Democrats or Republicans.  I'm not sure I've ever hear anyone discuss the possibility of Wyoming and Montana gathering a few more states together to block a specific bill.  It seems to always be a party vote.

My Solution:  I think technology is opening up some new avenues for Democracy that could be interesting.  One example is the idea that we could involve far more people in the process using the internet without increasing the costs a lot.  This would be a good step toward a real Democracy instead of a Representative Democracy.  Even if getting everyone to perform all the functions of legislators is too big a task to start with, it could be fun to build a system where many people could collaborate to write better bills to be presented to the legislature that come from the people.  Imagine a bill authored and edited by 1000 people scattered across the country making it into the House for a vote.  To extend that idea, what if we created a new pseudo branch of government made up of all the people in this country who had the ability to vote on a bill and send it to the White House, or to amend, or block a bill.  I know, there are lots of details to work out there, but I think the details could be worked out.  If I get much response on that I may expand on it in future postings.