Conservative Donnybrook

The 2009 Geneva Motor Show is underway, and if the pictures are any indication, there was much to tantalize the eyes of car enthusiasts. Meanwhile, General Motors released a statement today that without further infusions of cash from the federal government, it is doubtful whether they will remain viable as a going concern.

I might suggest that they look at what some of their competitors are doing and ask themselves if they are anywhere close to providing the same sort of a product to their customers. Take for example this concept unveiled by Italian car designer Italdesign-Giugiaro who has teamed up with the venerable Frazer-Nash.

You probably wouldn’t guess it from looking at the photo, but the Namir (Arabic for Tiger) is a hybrid car. It gets 39km per liter of fuel or about 91.7 miles per gallon. It has a 50-liter tank (13.2 gallon) that gives the vehicle a range of 1950km on a tank of fuel or an astounding 1200 miles per fill up. You will have to stop to pee before you have to stop for gas. Along the way, you will enjoy the thrill that comes from commanding a 370hp powerplant with a top speed of around 187 mph while emitting less than 96.5 grams (0.213 pounds) of carbon dioxide per mile.

General Motors, on the other hand, offers this.

The Chevy Volt is a hybrid car designed to run up to 40 miles on a single charge of its batteries without using any gasoline or emitting any CO2. Once the batteries are exhausted, the Volt can be driven on E85 fuel from which it extracts 50 mpg for a combined maximum range of 640 miles. The Volt boasts a top speed of 120mph (for a limited time) and will arrive at 60mph from a standstill in an achingly slow 8.5 to 9 seconds. That, my friends, is not exactly sprightly. I’m not sure what that translates to in terms of horsepower, but I wager to say that it is significantly less than the Namir’s 370hp. Given the complete dearth of power, the most surprising thing about this vehicle is that it is not a Chrysler product.

When one sees what GM’s competitors are doing, it can hardly be described as mysterious why General Motors is struggling to maintain its hold on the automotive market and why it stands before the taxpayers with its hand outthrust asking “Brother, can you spare a dime?” Or $30 billion.

Two HUGE news stories were anticipated today.

The first and potentially most serious of the two was the impending destruction of the planet. Seriously. We were all supposed to die as the planet was sucked down a man-made black hole created by a massive particle accelerator that was switched on last night at 3:30 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. It seems the French and Swiss, completely fed up with American aggression and arrogance, decided that they could take it no longer and, if everything went right, they’d take everyone else with them. On the positive side, I was looking forward to the prospect that I would not have to repay my student loans. And so, like the Maginot Line before it, their carefully worked out plans made a vague pffffftttt sound as they looked on in dismay. It sort of reminds me of the moment when Deep Thought proclaimed that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42.

Of course, the other earth shattering (although less so) news that was expected today was Ron Paul’s enigmatic “Big Announcement.”

With much fanfare and anticipation, but lacking clowns and fireworks, Ron Paul announced today that he thinks we should vote for a third party candidate because the two major parties are not significantly different. THAT was the “Big Announcement.” I believe I just heard another pffffftttt sound. Luckily, it was just a pffffftttt sound because if anyone had actually learned that his proposal was to form a, I’m not kidding here, “League of Non-voters” to combat the scourge of an evil two-party system which systematically excludes the voice of the fringe candidate, like Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, it probably would have sounded more like hysterical laughter and mocking.

The formerly Dutch city of New Amsterdam (more commonly known as New York City) is considering placing windmills on bridges and skyscrapers. Just saying…

The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and parent company Xerox are experimenting with a type of paper and a complimentary printer that would produce documents that fade away after 16 to 24 hours. … Users don’t have to wait for the paper to fade either. By running it through the special printer made for this paper, the printer will erase the old image before putting the new one on. … The same sheets of paper can be run through the printer hundreds of time … 

PARC, of course, is the research group that invented Ethernet, object-oriented programming, the GUI, and the laser printer, all in the 1970s. 

Some of you may have already been tipped off to this site, but for those who haven’t, NBC and News Corp. have partnered to create a website called hulu.com. On this site you will find entire episodes of classic television shows like the original Battlestar Gallactica, Arrested Development, The A-Team, and Air Wolf. They also have a limited number of movies and newer television shows.

Most important, they have nine of the original 26 episodes of Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot!

Now, if they could only get Ultraman and Space: 1999.

The modern reality of telecommunications is that a phone call which originates in Poland and terminates in Indonesia may very well pass through switches in the United States. The special intelligence court which is in charge of authorizing domestic wiretaps ruled last year that communications which were routed through these U.S. switches were domestic communications and subject to the warrant requirements set out in FISA regardless of where they originated or terminated. In response, Congress quickly authorized the attorney general to initiate wiretaps where the government reasonably believed that at least one of the parties was outside of the United States and that the target of the wiretap was not the domestic party. This was called the Protect America Act and it expired on February 17, 2008. Congress has failed to renew this act.

George W. Bush has been stamping his feet, blustering and pleading for Congress to renew the act and threatening to veto anything less than a permanent reauthorization of the act. The question though is whether the act is truly necessary. Victor Comras frames the question pretty well in his post on the counterterrorism blog:

Few pieces of legislation before Congress carry such gravity and importance when it comes to the twin goals of protecting our national security and preserving our civil liberties. Such matters should be considered with gravity and thorough deliberation. And there is much in this act which deserves further deliberation. Many of its current provisions were adopted previously under an atmosphere of high tension and great pressure from the White House. The only pressure now is that President Bush threatens to veto any further temporary extension of the current act. A temporary extension would certainly have kept in place sufficient authority to keep tabs on the potential terrorists within our midst as Congress worked through the act thoroughly.

Why is it troublesome to obtain a warrant if the government wants to listen to somebody’s phone calls? If they are foreigners, such a warrant will be only a matter of asking. If the person is within the United States, there must be probable cause to believe they are involved in terrorist activity. But, this standard is appropriate. Persons in the United States are by right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effect to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

To allow the government to tap a person’s phone simply because he is making an international call would be to amend the Constitution by legislation or by executive fiat. If he is calling a person who is suspected of terrorist activities, it is no hardship for the government to have obtained a warrant allowing calls to this person (including the call originating in the U.S.) to be monitored. Likewise, if the person in the United States is a suspected terrorist, a warrant is obtainable. If neither are suspected of any wrongdoing, then the government has no business eavesdropping on their conversation.

My short answer is: If the special intelligence court is relatively lenient in its standard for suspicion, there is no need to renew the Protect America Act.

At 10:29 pm last night, the United States declared its unrivaled supremacy over every other nation on earth when it successfully destroyed a defunct satellite in a decaying orbit. Navy personnel took aim on the satellite’s fuel tank (and as any young boy would know, that would be the most fun place to shoot anything), fired and scored a direct hit. One thousand pounds of toxic hydrazine fuel went – well, it would have been sky-high if the satellite had been in the atmosphere. I’m not really sure what you call it in space.

At the moment of impact the satellite was traveling at more than 17,000 mph. Which is probably about the speed that Putin’s stomach slammed into his Adam’s apple. Ronald Reagan’s dream of protecting the West from the menace of nuclear annihilation is within grasp. The project that Ted Kennedy ridiculed as “Star Wars” and a waste of taxpayer money justified itself over the Pacific Ocean yesterday evening. The American people are safer tonight than they were at 10:28 pm last night.

What’s even more remarkable is that the shot almost was called off because conditions were not “ideal.” Even better, it appears that some of the debris may rain down on Chinese heads for the next day or so. Hopefully, this system can be deployed to protect our allies in Europe and the Middle East soon.

The United States Navy should be proud of their work last night.

Apple just posted another quarter of stellar results and Macintosh sales continue to accelerate.

Macs, of course, lately enjoy a reputation (along with the iPod and iPhone) as the hot accessory of choice for young, self-satisfied urban hipsters–this is typified by Apple’s “I’m a PC”–”and I’m a Mac” ads, which are probably more honest advertising than Apple intends: the Mac guy is so smug you want to punch him in the mouth, just like in real life. (Counterexample: Me. I confess to owning a Mac, but am decidedly un-hip and, hopefully, un-smug.) The PC guy, meanwhile, is played by the likeable everyman-humorist John Hodgman, who is awesome.

Where was I? Oh yes, Macs selling like hotcakes. But it wasn’t long ago, you’ll remember, that everyone had given up on the Mac, Apple was posting massive losses, and application developers were abandoning the platform in droves. Continue Reading »

For those interested in the next-generation HD format war, it looks like Blu-Ray might have just won it. I hope nobody got an HD-DVD player for Christmas!

AOL is pulling the plug on the browser that ushered in the World Wide Web’s ubiquity. Well, lately it was just a rebranded version of Firefox, but still.

There’s some buzz in the blogosphere about the rollout a new solar panel manufacturing process by a company called Nanosolar that promises to dramatically reduce the cost of solar energy. (Here’s some rather breathless coverage from Popular Science.)

Matt Yglesias expresses skepticism about some of the more optimistic claims, but then writes:

…the point remains that renewable energy is not some outlandishly expensive hypothetical alternative. … And if the rich world decisively commits itself to renewable electricity, the number of firms trying to find cost-effective ways to deliver this sort of electricity will skyrocket…

Presumably, he’s talking of the “rich world” “committing” through government action and regulation. But if such strides are being made in cost-effectiveness, won’t government action be less necessary to promote the uptake of renewable energy? It is worth noting that Nanosolar received a $20M grant from the Dept. of Energy, but over $110M in private venture capital.

Jonathan Adler at Volokhs seems to have it right:

… if such power sources are cost-competitive, the transition will occur without need for government subsidies and mandates.

Anyway, perhaps we should heed the wisdom of Homer Simpson here: “And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.“

So you may have heard that Google is preparing a competitor to Wikipedia called Knol. It seems like a good idea and I hope it succeeds. Knol will differ from Wikipedia in that single authors contribute articles, and then share in any advertising revenue that their content generates. Therefore, many articles might be contributed to cover a single topic. Presumably, there would be some kind of user-rating or popularity ranking so that, say, a respected meteorologist’s article on “Tropical Storm” could appear above or more prominently than an eight-year-old’s on the same topic.

Wikipedia articles work great for many subjects, particularly areas on which there is little controversy over underlying assumptions or key facts (e.g. here or here). On such topics it tends to be quite reliable and offer a lot of good information, despite the bad rap it gets. (Although, caveat emptor, of course, considering its open-editing model.) But on some biographical, historical, or political topics, it tends towards outright bias, on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand hemming and hawing, or disjointed articles that employ separate sections on advocacy and criticism. These articles can also suffer from behind-the-scenes hot tempers, fragile egos and nasty arguments which probably deter knowledgeable potential editors from attempting to contribute.

Hopefully, Knol will offer a good alternative for subjects that don’t lend themselves to creation-by-committee. For such articles the Knol model seems superior in that authors can offer interesting, idiosyncratic and coherent articles, from a particular point of view–think Paul Johnson or Howard Zinn versus World Book Encyclopedia. And Wikipedia clearly needs competitors, considering some recent problems with its elite, secretive clique of paranoid super-editors.

The Register reports on a controversy among Wikipedians that has caused a continuing kerfuffle among the online encyclopedia’s community of editors. Apparently the site that purports to “democratize knowledge” is increasingly dominated by an insider group whose decisionmaking process utilizes the not-so-transparent method of the secret e-mail list.

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia’s core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site’s top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

I don’t wish to engage in indiscriminate Wikipedia-bashing; despite its many flaws it’s an immensely useful tool that I refer to often. But its quality will surely be compromised if current and potential editors are deterred by the behavior of a secret cabal of elite Wikipedians.

Does it matter? Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has claimed (as reported by Aaron Swartz) that the vast majority of the encyclopedia’s content is produced by a tiny minority of its users:

“[I]t turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users … 524 people. … And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits.” The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from “people who [are] contributing … a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix … or something like that.”

If so, then the encyclopedia isn’t so dependent on occasional or anonymous editors after all. But is that really plausible, given its thousands of detailed articles on every conceivable subject? Aaron Swartz did his own analysis of Wikipedia’s editing statistics and persuasively argues that, in fact, Wales got it exactly backwards: most content comes from anonymous or occasional users, while the most active editors engage mostly in cleanup and housekeeping.

When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing things like changing the name of a category across the entire site–the kind of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

If Swartz is right, then the actions of this secret insider clique are even more imperious and arbitrary, given that Wikipedia is so dependent on “outsiders” for its content.