It goes to eleven

Today's Wall Street Journal printed a story about Governer Schwarzenegger's request of the population to discontinue use of fireworks because of the possibility of them causing forrest fires.

Okay, that sounds fair enough, so what's the problem?

"His request is worrying the state's sellers of fireworks - virtually all of which are noinprofits and charities, as mandated by municipal laws.

Many schools, churches youth sports leagues and other groups rely on fireworks sales for a significant chunk of their income."

This sounds exactly like the government scheme where taxes are levied on tobbaco products in order to pay for healthcare for kids. One difference, however, is that these charities aren't forced to sell fireworks as their sole source of income.

The guy is using some dangerous techniques. I have to believe that Rush Limbaugh would lampoon the poor guy, but the basic concepts are certainly applicable to anyone driving anything. Most people aren't going to drive with the windows rolled up, the AC off, and no fan, much less take a 25 MPH curve at 50 MPH, but it's really simple to stretch the tank for a few more miles. Tired of dropping all that money at the gas station? Getting good gas mileage isn't only dependent on the car: it's mostly dependent on the driver.

In a previous post I pondered about why one could get 50 MPG 20 years ago but today it can only be done in a hybrid car. This article explains a lot.

In a related note, learn about hypermiling. Here's the wikipedia article about Hypermiling.

I have always been confused by the question about if 12 noon was 12 AM or PM. The same goes for midnight; is that 12 AM or PM? Until now I have been able to get by with using the terms midnight or noon to avoid the problem.  Everyone knows that those terms mean.

Recently at work I was confronted by the problem of having to deploy software patches to servers between midnight and 1 AM.  Simple, right? Not exactly, because the damn software forces one to set all of the time fields xx:xx, including the AM or PM.

To put an end to the issue, I hit Google for an answer. I figured I'd find the answer, write it on a piece of paper, and stick it to one of my monitors so I could refer back to it next month.  That's where it got complicated.

An initial quick check of Google gives basically 3 different answers:

1) 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM are not valid concepts.

2) 12:00 AM is midnight

3) 12:00 PM is midnight

Wikipedia's entry is no help.  This entry at Greenwichmeantime.com is worthless. Coolquiz.com is totally useless.

This post has a section that shows:

00.00-11.59 is am
12.00-23.59 is pm

This makes sense, but the problem is that the software application isn't going to let me use 00:00, AND it's going to make me pick AM or PM.  sheeseh.  Crappy software.

After all this reading, now I'm even sure if 12:01 AM or PM is the (almost) the beginning of the new day, or if that's lunchtime.  Urgh.

After more reading, I think I have the answer here that shows that 12:01 AM is the start of the day (just after midnight). Going back to my original problem, I can deploy patches at 12:01 AM or 12:05 AM and know that this is just after midnight. Then I can be assured that the server is going to install the patches at night and not at lunchtime.

The root of this problem, I have always believed, is that the new day should start at 1, not 12.  Who the hell thought that the day should start with the LAST number and not the first one?  The top of the clock should be 1, not 12.  But of course me thinking this only clouds the real truth in my own mind. It's just stupid that the day starts, for example around 12:05 AM and then as the day drags on you have 12:57 AM then 1:03 AM, 4 AM, etc.

Why in the heck does it jump from 12 to 1?  That's the real root of the problem in my mind.

Using military time on the 24 hour clock makes sense.

I finally did find a good article at nist.gov that confirms my thoughts. It provides good information but starts off by saying:

This is perhaps the trickiest time question of them all. The best answer is that the terms 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. cause confusion and should not be used.

The answer to my question is given in this sentence:

If you are making schedules, times such as 12:01 a.m. (one minute after midnight), or 11:59 p.m. (one minute before midnight) also can eliminate ambiguity. This method is used by the railroads and airlines.

How ironic it is that in our modern society we have to resort to a complete workaround for something as basic and important as time.  Yes, the military does it right!

This morning on the drive to work, I was listening to a talk show caller who was originally from communist Vietnam and had been living in the US for 30 years or go. He described some aspects of life under communism and the talk show host advised the man, who was very articulate, to go fourth speak and spread the story of his life in order to warn people of the problems and failures of communism.  He went on to state that one of the greatest threats to American society was the loss of stable families.

After hearing the man's story, I thought of how reading the Wall Street Journal taught me that we live in a world of change.  Then out of the blue, something struck me suddenly and I realized that my revelation pulled so many things together. I realized that because we do live in a world of change, we cannot assume that the wealth and freedom we enjoy here in America will always remain. Because things are always in flux, it might be true that we are on the downside of great prosperity here. I have learned that much change happens on such a large scale that we can not see it until only after it has happened, and I fear this is happening to us.

I don't want push doom and gloom, but we must work hard to resist the people that would seek to tear down this country by promoting like taxes, welfare, racism, laziness, and above all, indifference toward government and dishonest politicians. We must work to see the big picture of the direction of our country. Unfortunately, I believe that modern society has created a large group of people who care not about any of this.

The revelation that the world changes isn't big news, but the concept that our prosperous lifestyle in America will likely change is big news. It's big news especially to the populace who are slowly lead like sheep by the politicians. It's big news to people who enjoy a good life but are ignorant of the efforts to tear down their freedom, one small law at a time.

Perhaps my revelation is only startling to me. I don't know. But when my mind connected the concept of constant change to the concept of our existing prosperous society, it was scary because in mind it made very, very real the possibility of a dark change in the long-term future.

I do not believe we will all wake up tomorrow and see a horrible world. What worries me is that our liberties have been chipped very slowly away for 40 years by a growing government and a population that cares less and less about the facts and truth of what the politicians do. If there is a downturn it come slowly which will make it even harder and longer to reverse, if at all possible. What worries me is that one hundred years from now Americans will look back to 2006 and talk about how great things were.

Did any great nation at the height of its prosperity ever foresee its end?

Elvis and Led Zep?  What's not to like about this from Dread Zeppelin?!

msnbc.com provides this report about a trial recycling program at Best Buy:

Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don’t poison the nation’s dumps.

By selling electronics which will eventually end up as trash, it could be argued that Best Buy did contribute to creating waste, but Best Buy is under no obligation to provide this program. The author's jab of, "...the electronics easte it helped create" just bothers me, even if there is truth. Why? Because I know the agenda of these people.

My main gripe with the article, however, is that there absolutely no mention of what exactly will happen to the trash after Best Buy receives it. Does the reporter think that the world is all perfect and pretty and the trash will magically disappear without any impact to anyone?  Probably, otherwise they might have dug deeper to learn the truth, whatever it is.

The reality is that trash of this nature can often take one of two routes: It is disposed of by an intricate process of disassembly and recovery of materials in a manner where toxic chemicals are contained as much as possible. This is expensive.  One other route is that the trash is shipped to poor countries and it's torn apart there with often great impact to the environment as the materials are burned or otherwise released into the environment as people seek the quickest and easiest ways to get at the raw materials.

So msnbc.com, which is it?

First the article takes a jab at a big electronics retailer, but then falls flat in seeking the real truth of the matter. Typical.

Thanks for the shallow, two-bit story. This is no surprise.

I read Postsecret every week. Here's an interesting one:

The postcard says, "I hope energy costs continue to rise-- People will never change just because it is right."

This caught my attention for several reasons. First, we have an environmentalist admitting that they want energy costs to go up, because this is seen as a means of reducing consumption and therefore 'saving the globe'. That's fine but ironic that the person wanted to make this statement anonymously. Why did the person feel the need to hide? To me, that shows the fraud of their ways.  Second, the statement admits that people won't change their ways just because some greenist wants them to. This suggests that people are either lazy, or don't buy into the environmentalists' agenda, or both.

Finally, I have to agree that no matter how flawed and ignorant of the free-market this statement is, I agree with it to a certain extent. Specifically, if people would cut down on buying cheap crap from China that they don't need and start saving money instead, maybe they'd be a little better off. I believe in a free market system, but personal responsibility is something that many people have forgotten about.