The 'Of Interest' Blog

Touchable Holography

2009-12-07T08:06:00.000-08:00

Very cool video about interactive holographic displays. In the video below, it is shown how a person can "feel" virtual rain-drops on the hand while viewing falling rain drops in a 3D environment.

Holodeck, here we come!

NY Times Idea Lists

2009-11-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

In 2005 I ran across the following page from the NY Times Magazine. It's called the "Year in Ideas", and from the prose describing the article-collection, the magazine ha an equivalent list for every year going back to 2001. The summary from the 2008 article sums things up pretty nicely:

Welcome back to the Year in Ideas issue. For the eighth year in a row, we have compiled an alphabetical digest of ideas, from A to Z (almost), that helped make the previous 12 months, for better or worse, what they were.

The lists are fascinating, and interesting, so here they are (at least back to 2003):

I wonder what 2009's list will contain...

Curing our National Spending Addiction

2009-08-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

In last week's Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore (lead economics writer for the WSJ) wrote a very timely, and interesting, piece about how we as a society can overcome our runaway spending Congress (here).

While well written, I think the follow-up "Letters to the Editor" (here) hit the proverbial "nail on the head", offering some slight but profound tweaks to Moore's ideas.

From the WSJ:

Regarding Stephen Moore's "It's Time to Legislate a Spending Cap" (op-ed, Aug. 7): Limiting spending growth to the rate of population increase plus inflation can work for individual states, but not at the federal level. It locks in the structural deficits which currently plague us. Spending would increase regardless of the condition of the overall economy. Exempting entitlements and interest on the national debt means that welfare programs and borrowing could (and likely would) continue to increase without limit. This proposal ensures that the "cap," even if observed by Congress, would apply only to a fraction (less than half and falling) of all federal spending. Its primary impact would be on defense spending.

A far better approach would be a constitutional amendment limiting total federal spending (including entitlements and interest) to some defined percentage of the prior year's gross domestic product. This would force Congress to prioritize spending, without the easy escape hatch of claiming powerlessness over entitlements (which, of course, is a complete fiction). Moreover, it would provide Congress with a strong incentive to adopt tax and regulatory policies calculated to foster real economic growth, since only by those means could spending increase. The interests of the political class and the citizens would finally be aligned.
Laird Minor
Simpsonville, S.C.

An additional reader elaborates on some of the legalities surrounding the issues raised:

Mr. Moore's piece has a fatal flaw, the same one made by Steve Forbes in his "Flat Tax Revolution." No sitting Congress can bind the actions of any succeeding Congress.
Only an amendment to the Constitution can permanently limit what government can spend. The only way to control government is to take away the money and shut down the printing presses.

Robert Morgan Emerson
Anacortes, Wash.

So, when's the convention?

Upon further inpsection, our priorities may be a bit misplaced...

2009-07-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

As the people of Iran struggle to gain basic human freedoms, we in the western world appear to have lost interest:

Television coverage of Iran's turmoil has fallen since Jackson's death Thursday; on the Twitter micro-blogging site, Iran remained among the most discussed topics, but fell below Jackson and comments about the movie 'Transformers 2.'

What does this say about our priorities as a society? Have we become so used to freedom and democracy that we just don't care when it is denied to other people?

See here for the full article:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090627/D9930GJ80.html

U.S. Personal Savings Rate Hits 5%

2009-03-02T11:24:00.001-08:00

Caught this tidbit about the U.S. personal savings rate, which is the average American household's amount of personal savings as a percentage of its disposable personal income.

According to the article:

Savings jumped to an annual rate of $545.5 billion, the highest level since monthly records began in 1959. The saving rate surged to 5 percent in January, the biggest advance since March 1995, as households uncertain about the economy prefer to conserve their cash.

This is bad news for the short-term (since it tends to worsen the effects of the current economic downturn), but for the longer-term this is great news. It means that average Americans have more wealth (and by proxy, less overall debt).

See the full Yahoo! Finance Article here.

SC gov says he'll take Stimulus money, despite misgivings...

2009-02-19T08:44:00.001-08:00

If the governor of SC had real courage, he would have stood on his principles and followed through with his threat to not take federal stimulus money. Instead, he's being bought off.

Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union

2009-02-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

Wow! Dissent isn't easy, and sometimes it takes somebody who's been there before to know what's going on. Here's the Link: Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union

Christianity in 1000 Years?

2008-10-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a very provacative talk about the future of Christianity in 1000 years. You'll need to find the video, but it's by Kevin Kelly and named "Christianity in 1000 Years". Enjoy!

Stimulate this, America!

2008-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

All reports indicate that every American will soon be receiving a check from the Federal government for almost $600 ($1200 for families). For the low-low price of just $150 Billion (with a 'B') dollars, this "tax rebate" is supposed to help stimulate our economy, avert a recession, and make the world a better place.

How can we achieve such wonders?

It seems like the main idea behind this "stimulus" is that by injecting $150 Billion (that's with a 'B') into the wallets of regular Americans, everybody will treat themselves to a little something extra during this post new-years malaise: "Buy a new Television!", "an iPod!" or "Take a vacation!", screams conventional wisdom.

Unfortunately, today's collective financial wisdom is off it's collective financial rocker. Why? Because this $150 Billion dollars of supposed stimulus is not really our money to spend. It's borrowed money, from people we'll have to pay it back to someday.

Let's put this into personal terms. Joe is a regular worker, but he's having a hard time making a go of things. He's behind on his bills, and every six months his boss tells him that his salary is getting reduced, by about a percent or two. Joe complains to his boss that he's having trouble making ends meet, so the boss simply says, "Hey Joe, let me lend you $1200 so you can get by....but don't actually pay your bills with it. Instead, buy a new flat-screen tv because, hey, you're worth it".

Hopefully Joe would respond to his boss by telling him he's off his rocker -- "boss-man, you're crazy if you think that's good advice!"

I say that if anyone wants to stimulate the economy, they should be advocating that we (the United States) do one of two things:

1.) Pay down the national debt;
or
2.) Invest our borrowed money (a.k.a. stimulus) so that we can at least hope to stimulate something real -- business growth, other investment, or at the very least a small return on our money that could be used towards #1.

The truth is, we as individual citizens probably won't be able to stop this reckless stimulus. Worse, we can't exactly give it back to the treasury and mark "national debt" in the memo line of our check. The government doesn't allow us to designate where our tax payments go. So, the only responsible thing that we, as Citizens, can do, is the following:

a.) Vote-out any non-thinking politician that isn't advocating for the United State to to pay-down our the national debt;
b.) Vote-out any non-thinking politician that isn't actually trying to do something to get the United State to to pay-down our the national debt;
c.) Do the only responsible thing that we as individuals can with this money: Invest it.

That's why I'm not going to spend my stimulus money this year on an extra trip or a new Television or an iPhone. Instead, I'm going to allocate our $1200 between stocks, bonds, and CD's. Washington Mutual has a nice 5% return on its current CD offerings, the stock market is down badly with plenty of great buys, and the government is falling all over itself to pillage the American taxpayer's earnings by spending it on interest. It's not ideal, but why not have some of that interest flow back to an American taxpayer for a change?

Key Points:

Pay down the national debt.
Vote only for politicians that will commit to this, and do something about it!!
Invest your Stimulus money instead of spending it.
Pay down the national debt.

What say you, McCain? Obama? Clinton? Romney? Huckabee?

David Fuelling is a regular-joe citizen advocating for the rights of future citizens whose money we're collectively borrowing (stealing?) without their consent in order to finance our current standard of living.

What if companies decided to use Web2.0 logos instead?

2007-12-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

What if regular companies decided to use Web2.0 logos instead of their current branding alternatives? Over on digg.com, people like to make fun of web2.0 logos. Personally, I think a lot of these are better than the current logos. Have a look at the rest...

Is Obama a Muslim?

2007-12-20T08:00:00.001-08:00

Last night at dinner I had the chance to overhear a conversation about Barack Obama's religion. Almost half of the table thought that Obama is a Muslim, while the other half didn't really know. I chimed in that I thought he was Christian, but even then I couldn't be 100% sure. Turns out that Barack Obama is not a Muslim (though, apparently, his father was a Muslim and his paternal grandmother is).

From http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071220/D8TL2V601.html
"Kerrey's mention of Obama's middle name and his Muslim roots raised eyebrows because they are also used as part of a smear campaign on the Internet that falsely suggests Obama is a Muslim who wants to bring jihad to the United States. Obama is a Christian."