Dan Lipka Web Log

The other night, while driving home from the NJ state Fair, Molly was fast asleep in her booster and she started laughing.  She was completely asleep and this wasn’t a little giggle, this was something quite joyous.  Lindy says she does this every once in a while and I saw it only once before, but it makes me wonder if other children do this.  I looked briefly online and I saw a few posts by parents (with older children) who experienced something similar.  It got me thinking about something else that Molly does while sleeping that is more common.  Once she is asleep, it is hard to wake her up.  It’s not just that I could carry her up from the car and she won’t wake up, but I can roll her over, put on her pajamas, pull a blanket out from under her; basically she is going to stay asleep.  It is like her brain has shut down the connections from her body to her brain.  Now, this isn’t the case for most grown-ups.  I wonder why her brain does this?  Does it need to focus on other nighttime activities, like dreams, growing, or recovery? Perhaps it is the most efficient way of sleeping, but over tens of thousands of years, the grownups who slept like this would be in danger from predators.  Grownups who would wake up easier could try to escape or defend themselves, while small children were at the mercy of predators whether they woke up or not.

Children do amazing things when they sleep that grown-ups don’t.  Children heal faster, their brain develops faster, their memory (of certain things) is better, they wake up happier, and other positive attributes.  It would be interesting to study children who sleep this deeply vs those who do not and see if there are any correlations to the physical, emotion, or intellectual attributes of the children.  Then compare those attributes to adults who sleep that deeply as well.

In the end, I’m just happy that Molly is having nice dreams. 

What is this chart?
If you answered… it is the number of troops the US has on the ground in Iraq than you win the prize.  And of course, the colors are for each administration.  Now this information was not easy to find, in fact it was extremely hard to find, but eventually I got it from a Brookings Institute report (well series of monthly reports).  I even managed to upload the raw data in an clean Excel file, click  Raw Data.

I guess the main thing is that Barack Obama is actually coming through on a very tangible campaign promise.  He said we would get out of Iraq and has reduced the number of troops everything month since he took over.  Not often does a politician live up to his word to quickly.

Here are some tags words in care people are looking for this data: US troops in Iraq, U.S. troop in Iraq, Boots on the ground, US boots on the ground, ground troops in Iraq, monthly troops in Iraq, soldiers in Iraq.

I have been blogging a lot lately.  If you write comments, I will write more and even check for typos.

As the debate over Heath Care gets underway (again), we are hearing the same arguments for and against it (again).  Here is my questions for all of those people who say that the British, French, or Canadian systems are bad:  Show me one poll (not a story from a person, but a poll of at least 600 people) that shows that people from any of those countries are less satisfied with their health care than Americans are.  Show me one poll that says they would prefer a Healthcare system like the US as opposed to what they have.   Show me one set of data that shows that people in those countries have worse health (that they die earlier, their infant mortality rate is higher, or any other major health indicator).

Of course there are horror stories from those countries.  But there are horror stories from this country as well.  Terrible, terrible ungodly horror stories.  People are dying unnecessarily in both countries.  Some people cannot get the health care they deserve in both countries.  But one system is better than the other.  Maybe we should ask the masses and check the data and base our decision on that.  Please do the research yourself.  Ok, if your too lazy or uninterested, I’ll spoil the ending.  The US Healthcare system is viewed by those other countries as a complete disaster and they would never, ever trade what they have for what we have.  As for our heath, I looked up our Health stats compared to other countries.  So that there is no bias towards making our system look bad, I used the official CIA World Fact Book as my source.  They listed four health metrics and this is how we compared to countries with nationalized healthcare.  Life Expediency, the US ranked last, infant mortality: last, death rate: 2nd, HIV/AIDS rate: last.  Find me some real stats that compare the US to these countries that makes our system look good.  Not stories, but facts.

Compare each countries systems here

http://www.billlucey.com/2009/07/how-the-uss-health-care-compares-with-other-countries.html

Brett Farve is the ultimate team player, now let me explain.  Two years ago, he met with the leadership of his beloved Green Bay Packers.  He loved them, he would do anything for them, even tarnishing his own image and risking his own heath.  He knew that his back-up, Aaron Rodgers, was now ready to take over the team, it was what was best for the Packers.  So Farve was going to retire, but thought that maybe he could still help his team in another way.  If they traded him to a team (in the opposite division, which never plays the packers, and has almost no chance of making the Super Bowl) than the Packers will get a free draft pick instead of nothing.  And since Farve still knew he was pretty good, he made sure that the Packers got a better draft pick if Farve got to the playoffs with his new team.  But before the trade, Farve would fake interest in going to his rival the Minnesota Vikings.  By pretending to want to go there, it completely messed up the Vikings team chemistry and screwed up their QB, Gus Frerotte, for the entire season (he ended up having one of the lowest QB ratings in the league.  He was so bad that the Viking had to turn to Tarvaris Jackson, who had a QB rating of 45 in the Viking only playoff game (which was a loss).  Meanwhile, the Packers had traded Farve to the Jets.  He rejuvenated the team and gave them 9 victories, but he faded at the end and didn’t make the playoffs.  But he did his job and got the Packers an extra draft pick and allowed Aaron Rodgers to take over the Packers in good conscious.  And then, he thought that since he messed up the Vikings last year, why not do it again.  And again he faked interest in going to Minnesota and again that entire organization got obsessed with him and threw their other QBs under the bus.  Farve never had any intention of playing for them, but waited until 2 days before training camp to dump the Vikings.  He might have to keep this secret for years, but if that is what the Packers needs, that is what Brett Farve will do.  That is until Aaron Rodgers gets hurt and Farve makes his comeback for the Packers.

A few posts ago, I wrote about how I was researching my family tree and that most of the information within family tree websites are not indexed by Google. This makes it really difficult to find distant relations, but just in case anyone is looking for someone in my family, here is it. The other post was focused on my father’s side of the family, but this is one will be my mother’s side.

I have very little information on my grandfather’s family. His name was Ernest Green, born March 4, 1918, in Bethlehem PA. His parents were Samuel and Rose Green. That’s it, that’s all I got for them. For my Grandmother’s family, I have a lot more. It started somewhere around the mid 1850’s in Zelva, Russia (which I will talk about more at the end). Tzvi (Zvi) Hersh Yablonofsky (Yablonowski, Jablonowski) was married to Faigah Liba Orland Yablonofsky. They had 13 children, although only 8 survived. Of those children that made it, there was Hyman (Chiam), Morris, Mottle, Pesach, Charlie (Szaja), Rivke, Tamara, and Samuel (Shimmel), who was my great-grandfather. Of course, the spellings of the names are prone to various changes. Many of the siblings came to the US throughout the early 20th century and for a reason that I don’t quite understand yet, they took the last name Bloom.

Now Samuel met and married Minnie (Michla) Levine (Levene, Babindur). Minnie’s parents were Dov Baer Babindur and Peche Babindur. When Minnie first moved to the US, from Grodno Russia, she lived with her half-sister Sarah Leff and her husband David Leff. Minnie also had at least one other sister, named Zaidel.

And so Samuel and Minnie had five children; Maurice, Benjamin, Sylvia, Edwin, and Florence (my grandmother). Florence married Ernest (from above) and they had four kids; Kenneth, Richard, Sharon, and Karen (my mom).

And now back to Zelva, Russia. This is the place where my great-grandparents are from. Now there is a real place called Zelva or (Zelwa in Polish). But Zelva is in present day Belarus. So the question becomes is my family from Russia or Belarus? They spoke Yiddish, so that doesn’t help. Well, regaurdless, it was a good thing they left, in WWII the Germans killed almost all the Jews in Zelva.

There has been a lot of tech news about Google competing with the Microsoft Office Suite and against the Windows Operating System.  The jist of the first part is that Google Docs (free, on-line versions of MS Office programs) will take away market share from Microsoft.  The second part is based in the thought that soon every program will be online and you can just use your browser (like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome to access everything).

I believe this is way, way, way too early to give Google any chance.  Microsoft has been working on these programs for decades and although they have problems, they are years ahead of anything Google has.  If you look at Google Docs, the features don’t even compare to Office 95, let alone Office 2007 (which has some amazing features).  Plus the idea of having business program online is still years away.  I do things in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint that use up a significant amount of my desktops resources, I can’t imagine anything online could handle this.  Imagine trying to add 10,000 formulas to an Excel sheet online.  The internet is just no fast enough yet, not even close.

As for Chrome being a new operating system, I think that there is something (although very small) to that idea.  For people who will only use the internet and online programs than it will work.  But what about the tens of thousands of programs out there that have no plans of having an online version anytime soon.  Programs like Nero, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and countless others.  If you want any of these other programs, you will need an operating system to run them and that isn’t going to Google Chrome.

I believe Microsoft has a much tighter lock of their products than Google has on its own products.  Remember what happened to AOL and Yahoo.  Google search does not provide anything unique, it just provides a better way to search the internet.  If something else comes along (and with the right marketing) it can sweep Google away.

This story will explain exactly what I mean.  I wanted to find data on AOL’s share of the internet searches 10 years ago and went about my usually Google searches.  I spent 10 minutes looking at articles and not finding what I wanted.  So I tried Bing.com (why not) and lo and behold I found a relevant article after a few searches.  Will I switch to Bing now?  Well, not yet, but I will use it when I can’t find something on Google right away.  Well, at the end of 2002, Google, AOL, and MSN all had about 25-27% of the total searches.  That was 6 ½ years ago and now AOL has less than 4%.

Almost 100 year ago, Ksil Lipka came to this country, to be joined by his wife Leah a few years later. Ksil and Leah had seven children, who each had many children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Last weekend, almost 100 decedents (and their families) of Ksil and Leah met up for a BBQ on Long Island. This was not nearly all of the decedents, but those just who could make it. It was a wonderful afternoon and I met relatives that I never knew existed. We looked at old pictures and saw the research of other Lipkas who had been looking into the family tree for years. Based on this research (and that of many others), we had created a pretty thorough family tree on Geni.com. And it goes back further than Ksil and Leah, which is one reason why I wanted to write this blog. Family tree data from sites like Geni or Ancestry.com are not indexed by Google, but this blog is (I think). So if some distant relative is searching for the Lipka genealogy, this might be an easier way to find someone (although Lipka is a somewhat common name).

Here is the link to the tree; however, it won’t let me share the details with general public, so it isn’t to helpful

http://www.geni.com/share?t=6000000004378957604

I attached a picture, which might be more helpful.

Below is the detailed breakdown of the Lipkas from the old country (Poland).

For Ksil (Ksiel) Lipka there isn’t that much. He was born in 1881 in Poland. His father was Abraham Baruch Lipka and his mother was Rachel Goldin. Ksil lived in Pultusk, Poland before coming to the US in 1913.

For Leah Lipka there is a lot more. Leah (Laje) was born Leah Kociolek in 1890. Her father was Nusen Lejb Abramowicz Kociolek and her mother was Szprynsa Kociolek (maiden name Nestempower). Nusen and Szprynsa had two other children, a daughter Gitel (who later married Yussak Daniels) and a son named Moshek (who married Celina Novalinska). Now, we also know Leah’s grandparents. Her father’s (Nusem’s) parents were Abram and Sheina Kociolek. Her mother’s parents were Moshek and Shandosh Nestempower (Shandosh’s maiden name was Abramovna).

As for Ksil and Leah, they had seven children: Jack, Reuben, Sam, Mary, Naomi, Paulie (Pesha), and Morris (who was my grandfather).

Of course the spellings can vary significantly. My cousin found a marriage record for Nusen and Szprynsa, but it was written in Cyrillic. So not only does the language have a different alphabet, but they were all illiterate back then and didn’t have any proper ways of spelling things anyway. Also, they had their regular name, their Hebrew name, and Yiddish name.

Sarah Palin, the women chosen by the Republicans to be (potentially) one heartbeat away from being President of the United States, has quit her responsibilities as Governor of Alaska. In her speech, she says she wants to help American more and can do that by not being a governor. She says “I love Alaska”, but at the same moment, she is dumping them for something bigger. Is this a run at the Presidency or does she just want to fade into the political background, write a book and cash in on her fame?

For the sake of the Democratic Party (and the country), I hope she runs for President and become an icon of Republican ideals. Simply put, she represents a Republican Party that would allow an unqualified, mildly intelligent person to become President just because she is charismatic and has a stranglehold of conservative moral values. Seriously, don’t you think a Presidential candidate’s qualifications should start with being very smart? I’ll even give George Bush credit for having a certain kind of strategic intelligence in an evil villain kind of way.

So to Sarah Palin, please stand tall and represent like-minded people. If that is the majority of the Republican Party so be it, but if it isn’t, I hope it will lead to a schism and create another party (the moral conservatives and the economic conservatives). I would love to see that, it would be more democratic (and I would even trade that for the Democrats splitting (into the moderate democrats and the liberal environmentalists)

After months of legal jibber-jabber, Al Franken is finally the next US Senator from Minnesota.   Although the process was long, I thought it was very fair and transparent.  An especially nice aspect was when the published a scan of all the questionable ballots so that regular people understand what the specific issues are.

But now the question becomes, is Senator Al Franken…

Choice A) the same person who write “Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right”.  I am currently reading this book and it is certainly not the work of a politician.  He burns bridges at every turn, he is sometime crude and obnoxious, and he seems to take criticism very personally.  Of course, this is all part of his ability to be honest, something that the Congress seems to be completely lacking.  He is also an idealist and seems to want to fight for the things he believes in, which is exactly what I want him to do.

Choice B) a professional politician, in this for the long-term.  Most freshman Senators stay quiet, try not to make waves, gain friends, and sell their soul in hopes of winning another election.  In one way, this is the path to real power (and the opportunity for real change), but on the other side, they only way to get that power is to become the type of person that doesn’t actually want change.

If he chooses A, than he will have a chance to do something, even if symbolic, to address the issues of his conscious.  If he chooses B, than he will slip into the nothingness.  Of course the nothingness in the US Senate would provide a great life for Al, with perks and money, but it leaves the rest of us idling on the side of the road.

I think that this is a one-time thing for Franken and he has no intention of ever running again.  I think he is already working on his next book and this will just feed into that.  I think this will be fun and Al Franken will be the kind of Senator he dreamt he could be when he started Air America.

Michael Jackson, perhaps the greatest entertainer of a generation, died five days ago.  This was big news because it was a surprise, because of his legacy, and because of his controversial live.  And I get that people were sad and that the news had to cover this, but it is five days later and the media is still emerging itself in this story.  First, the US is currently (as in today) involved in two wars, perhaps that should get some media attention.  Also, there was a stolen election in Iran, the NYS legislator had turned into disaster, congress is working on critical legislation, and many other important stories of the day.  However, it seems impossible for the media to turn away from Michael Jackson.  It’s not like he was an exceptionally good person.  Although he gave money to charities, I wouldn’t say he was generous (considering how money he had).  He wasn’t a leader on any social issues, although he was a major part of “we are the world”, but was great, but didn’t last.  Although he was a role model, I can’t imagine any parent wishing their kid grows up to like Michael Jackson.  And his interactions with kids were creepy at the best and horrible sinful at the worst.

So People Magazine, Entertainment Tonight, and all of the tabloid media can cover this as much as they like, but come on CNN, what are you thinking.  CNN had non-stop coverage of Jackson for the last five days and it is still the most prominent story on their website.  I used to think CNN was a good source of news, but lately I think it is just about ratings.  Of course Foxnews.com is still covering Jackson and giving him prime coverage.

Tens of thousands of Iranians are protesting the results of a corrupt presidential election. They face the reality that their actions could lead to their arrest, beatings, imprisonment, or death, yet they continue to battle. Their leader in protest, Mir Hussein Moussavi, fights along side them, refusing to accept the corrupt election results. Americans, including our President, are supporting these protests. However, when similar election happened in 2000 US Presidential election, there were no protests in the streets, people asked for justice, but they did not demand it, and Al Gore just accepted defeat in the name of preserving unity. And Al Gore’s refusal to fight, led to eight horrible years. Furthermore, it justifies the illegal techniques that some Republicans used rig the elections.

UPDATE (8 hours after I wrote the original post): “According to report on the Farsi-language Web site Gooya.com, which is run from outside Iran, sources in Tehran say Mir Hussein Moussavi, who has not been seen in public since last Thursday’s huge rally, is under house arrest.”

Although I don’t think Obama’s plan for universal healthcare is the best one out there, it is still a vast improvement over what we currently have. However, like Clinton, Obama is having problems communicating how this plan will work. Perhaps, it would be best to say that the US universal healthcare program will be like the Post Office. You can go there and receive high quality services, all run by the government. You have to pay money, but it is very cost-effective. And the Post Office has private sector competitors (like UPS, and Fedex). Without the Post Office offering relatively inexpensive priority mail options, UPS and FedEx could charge a lot more. Similarly, people can still choose to skip out of US universal healthcare and get their own private healthcare. Maybe the private healthcare is better, maybe its quicker, for whatever reason if you want it, you can have it. But if the government healthcare is just as effective (and cheaper), people will jump ship from what they have today in order to save money. Private healthcare providers might be forced to reduce their premiums. I think that many poorly run healthcare companies will not be able to compete and will go under (as the should). Eventually (and hopefully), the government will operate a efficient and effectively health care system; along side this will be several specialized, well-run private healthcare companies.

If (and it’s a big if) the government can provide an effective health insurance system, I don’t think it is possible for regular private health care providers to compete, unless they specialize. The government doesn’t have to worry about profits or pay huge executive bonuses. If they are half as good as the post office, all will be well.

Off-Topic: Firefox still doesn’t recognize “Obama” as a word and marks it as a spelling mistake.