Dan Lipka Web Log

Recently Newt Gingrich attacked a commentator, during a debate, for daring to ask him about his marital history when there are so many other important issues that need to be discussed.  I am very split on this issue.  One the one side, if a person has the best skills and experience to help in government, why should their personal life matter?  On the other side, our political leaders (especially our President) should represent the very best of this country, including outstanding moral character.  Furthermore, a tendency by someone to act immorally in their personally life could give insight into their actions in their professional/public lives.   This is were I could draw the line; for politicians in executive positions (President, Governor, Mayor, etc.), their personal life (as it pertains to their morality) should be fair game.  Bill Clinton cheated on his wife, I expect better from my President.  Should he have been impeached for this, probably not, but there should be some kind of serious punishment.   Newt Gingrich committed adultery several times, including having an affair while his wife had cancer.  Is this the best our country has to offer?   As for legislative officials (Congress, Senators, Councilman, etc), I would normally say that their personal morality is less important; however, given the ridiculous state of Congress and State Legislatures, the need to get good, honest people into office is greater than ever.  We need someone with skills in the White House, but right now I’d settle for some honest people in Congress (even if they don’t have all the experience or skills) Here is a breakdown:

Executive Positions: 65% skills, 35% character
Legislative Positions: 45% skills, 55% character
Senior Public Officials (not elected):  85% skills, 15% character

The rise of Newt Gingrich has to be great news for the Democrats.  It has caused Mitt Romney to go on the offensive and sink down an attach posture (hurting his ability to look “Presidential”).  And I just can’t see Gingrich ever being a viable national candidate.  He offers nothing new or interesting.  He is the ultimate Washington Insider and does not have a track record of big successes (although he did have some success).   His personal life (which includes multiple infidelities) will only continue to hurt his candidacy.  But most of all, he doesn’t offer anything unique.  At least Romney can portray himself as an expert on business and job creation.   What does Newt offer, besides that fact that he’s not Mitt Romney.  At this point, I just don’t see how any of the current Republicans can beat Obama.

Both Romney and Gingrich say they are going to create jobs and that Obama is destroying them.  Here is a quick chart I put together, which shows the historical unemployment rate by party.  Not for nothing, but the Republicans don’t have much of a track record.

The other day I was driving and my “transmission slipped”, or at least those are the words that sounded right.  In fact, I know very little about cars.  This was never taught to me by friends, parents, or in school.  As I wait to hear how much this is going to cost to fix, I wonder if my faith in my mechanic will prove appropriate.  But more than that, it reminds me that we provide students with very few skills that are actually useful in life.  There aren’t any classes dedicated to managing your time, public speaking, auto care, paying bills, understanding insurance, basic contract law, what do to if your arrested, how to talk to older people, morality, how to work in groups, and dozens of other important areas of life.  We may learn these things indirectly at school or at home, but why not just put it in the classroom.  Students can learn about Physics, Shakespeare,  or the Middle Ages in college.  Can we please teach life skills in school, starting in Kindergarten.   The sooner the better.

I couldn’t have been happier reading the following article from espn.com.  It was exactly what I would have recommended from my favorite football team.  Perhaps there is still a chance that they will go to the Superbowl in my lifetime.

“The Jets announced late Tuesday night that [Brian] Schottenheimer won’t return in 2012. League and team sources told senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen that the Jets have had formerMiami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano as their top choice to replace Schottenheimer in the event of a vacancy. The sources said the Jets are expected to announce Sparano’s hiring Wednesday.”

This is the reader comment most recently listed below the article “This one sentence is all this article needs. This is the greatest day of my life.”  I wouldn’t go nearly that far, but it was a good start the Jets.  Amazingly, Schottenheimer says he was voluntarily leaving the team, which is a straight out lie and can be proven.  He is still under contract for another year, if he quits than he won’t get paid for next year, but if he was fired, he will still get paid.  I’m betting that he’ll take the money.

Overall, the Jets took a big step backwards this year.  Their linebacker play was significantly down and their safeties are a disaster.   The desperate need another lineman, Shonn Green is a below average starting RB, and Mark Sanchez is the most overpaid player in the NFL (and ruins their salary cap).  On the bright side, Kyle Wilson played better.  The worst part is that they are becoming unlikable.  Rex Ryan needs to learn humility and Santonio Holmes seems to have no concept of team.   In the end, if Mark Sanchez can’t improve (and there is no reason to believe he can), it will be a challenge to make the playoffs next year.   This year’s team was actually worse than its record, they did not beat a single team that has a winning record.

The odds makers have it 50-50 that Obama wins another teams.  Objectively, I don’t see why his odds aren’t significantly higher.  History, especially recent history has shown that we are likely to re-elect a President once he is in office.  Secondly, Obama is not doing a terrible job.  In 2011, unemployment began to go down, we removed our last soldiers from Iraq, we found Osama Bin Laden, and we helped support the overthrow of Gaddafi (without any ground troops).  It is true that spending is out of control, and the healthcare plan isn’t helping anyone yet, but overall he took a quickly sinking ship and made into a the same-old slowly sinking ship it was before.   Finally, and more importantly, his competition will have serious problems mobilizing a wide-spread, national campaign.  As the republican party shifts and diversifies, it has become very hard to find a candidate who “speaks” to the majority of those on the right.   Simply put, Obama is going to face a relatively weak opponent.

Follow up: On January 21st in the South Carolina primary.  If Romney can have a strong win in South Carolina, he would prove he is a serious contender.   He could be an even stronger candidate if he chooses a social conservative (Rick Santorum) for his VP.

The unstoppable force or the immovable object?  Tim Tebow’s amazing ability to win games or the $10 bet I made  (before the season started) that the Broncos would win the Superbowl (60-1 odds).   His good luck or my bad luck?

Michelle Bachmann, with all her passion and determination, dropped out the Presidential election between 100,000 people in Iowa didn’t like her.   How is that so few people have such an impact.  There are twice that number of people in just the city of Yonkers (where I live) and yet those people don’t seem to count.  One bad turnout and its over. That is just sad.  And what about her supporters.  They donated over $5million to her campaign.  For every $8,000 she spent, she received just 10 votes.  If she really believed in herself, why not fight it out.  Now Rick Perry, who raised more than $20million is probably going to drop out as well.  The caucus and primary process is fundamentally undemocratic.  Those is other states will never even get the chance to vote for Bachmann or others who drop out.  Candidates will spend more time with those is Iowa, making promises, then they ever will in New York.  Should those people count more.  The primaries need to be done on the same day for every state.  It is the only fair process.    But now every remaining candidate is onto New Hampshire and only New Hampshire.  I wonder when they will come to Yonkers

In economics, the current account is one of the two primary components of the balance of payments, the other being the capital account. The current account is the sum of the balance of trade (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (such as interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid).

The current account balance is one of two major measures of the nature of a country’s foreign trade (the other being the net capital outflow). A current account surplus increases a country’s net foreign assets by the corresponding amount, and a current account deficit does the reverse. Both government and private payments are included in the calculation. It is called the current account because goods and services are generally consumed in the current period.

The balance of trade is the difference between a nation’s exports of goods and services and its imports of goods and services, if all financial transfers, investments and other components are ignored. A Nation is said to have a trade deficit if it is importing more than it exports.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_account

Verizon gave me 14 days to try the iPhone4s before I could return it for a different phone.  I used every day trying to make it work for me.  I even installed iTunes, which I hate, but in the end it was an easy choice to switch back to a droid phone.  Here is my final review of the iPhone4s.

Pros
Siri was kinda cool and worked well for setting reminders
The size of the phone was good
There were many new apps available (although mostly things for fun and not productivity)
The OS was generally fine and did what I wanted

Cons
No back button! (I missed this more than anything else)
No widgets (icons that are large and display actual information without having to click on it)
iCloud is only free to access music you get on iTunes
No task killer app
I had to enter my AppleID too often (I wanted to shut off that security option, but was not allowed)
No way to remove the initial phone lock (basically I want to go straight to my home screen just by hitting any button)
Smallish screen size

My replacement is the Droid Nexus, running the new OS called “Ice Cream Sandwich”.  Almost everything is great, I feel like I’m home again.  The new design is nice and everything works how I want it do.  My only complaint is that it’s actually too big and not enough buttons on the actual phone.  I want more options.  I actually liked the iPhones Mute switch built onto the phone and want more things like that.  I don’t want simple, I want awesome.

“Every single aspect of a piece of music can be represented by numbers.  From the organisation of movements in a whole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics, the way they change over time, in short, all the elements of a noise that distinguish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping a drum  — all of these things can be expressed by patterns and hierarchies of numbers….

“The things by which our emotions can be moved  — the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music  — all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.

That’s not a reduction of it, that’s the beauty of it”

Quote from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.
The future will show that everything we can perceive can be represented by 1s and 0s.

Simple question, is our brain a computer?  It is true that brains (of any animal) don’t have metal and lack the pure computational abilities of what sits on our desktop, but is there really a big difference.  Our brains use electricity to store, compute, and analyse more data than our current computers do.   The brains of children can often easily exceed the power and understanding that any modern computer possesses.

The biological brain is a warped (but true) version of computers of the future.   Our brains have code (DNA) just like any other computer, but written into that code are two important unique aspects.  Our code allows for random small changes in itself and than encourages itself to reproduces with that change.  If that change increases the odds of reproduction (given the environment) than that change will eventually become the norm (out-reproducing those without that change).   That is the fundamentals of evolution and what has transformed the “code” of the most basic single celled organism into everything we see today.

Some people believe that we will soon be able to program modern computers with the type of code that can “evolve”.  Specifically, it will allow for random changes and self-reproduction.  Computers will improve themselves.  And people can choose the environment to promote specific changes, such as allowing computers will better energy efficiency to replicate more often.  Other believe that instead of trying to get machines to have the capacity of human brains (along with their own technical abilities), instead we will have the ability to change our own code.  To modify our DNA to eliminate errors and increase production.

Perhaps, as Ray Kurzweil believes, it will be a combination of the two.  We can have a super brain, but why not have it wirelessly connected to all of the information in the world that you could access just by thinking about it.   Which leaves the question, can a machine ever have the capacity to replace our biological brain or will there be a limit to the power of transistors and RAM.  Will scientists unlock the mysteries of our brains and realize that by using soft tissue and gray matter, they can exceed the potential of any machines.   If we allow machines to evolve on their own, there are only two outcomes.  1) The computers exceed our capacity and humanity is combined and replaced by machines version of ourselves, or 2) computer cannot exceed our capacity at which time we will become cyborg-esk.  Our bodies and capacity will be greatly enhanced, but we will still be humans; our brains will be at the core of our thoughts and actions, and what are we if not the external embodiment of our brain.

After going back and forth for a month about the choice between the iPhone, the Razr, or the Nexus (still not out), I decided to get the iPhone4s.  Everyone loves their iPhone, so why shouldn’t I get in on the good times.  So I’ve had the phone for 24 hours and have been totally underwhelmed.  The biggest thing is the lack of buttons.  I don’t want simple, I want functional.   I miss the back button.  I look at the Phone and see that one button in the middle (at the bottom) and I see wasted space on each side it.  Have two buttons there and let the user’s select what they do (like a macro).  It could go to your favorite app, call someone, or play your favorite album.  On the good side, the phone itself it slimmer than I thought (although I don’t have a case yet), and the apps are ok (so far, they seem exactly like the droid market).  On the down side, there is no app killer, no remove lock, and I have to enter my apple ID all the time.  I don’t care about security, I just want to shut that off.  I tried quickly to get on the iCloud and it didn’t make sense, but I’ll revisit it.   Siri is ok so far, but I think it will become more handy.   I will wait to see how quickly I get used to the changes before further judgement.