American Madness

Well, the CIA technically unveiled it last week, but since the project began in 1957, I figure covering the story 4 days after it happens sure beats waiting 50 years to talk about it.

Anyway, last week at CIA headquarters, down in Langley, VA, the A-12 spy plane, codenamed Oxcart was unveiled to the public and put on display.

According to the CIA the A-12 has not been used in a mission since 1968 and was primarily used for spying on the Soviet Union and North Korea. In fact in 1967 the plane snapped some pictures of North Korea proving that they did not have any surface-to-surface missiles and alleviating fears of an escalation and also pictures of the USS Pueblo in a North Korean port 3 days after it was seized.

Although the A-12 was the precursor to the SR-71, many of the technologies it employed proved to be more advanced then the later planes and, although not stated anywhere in the articles, the technology of the A-12 has probably led to innovations currently in use today with modern spy planes (otherwise why would they have waited until 1988 to even acknowledge the program existed and until 2007 to declassify documents related to the program?).

The plane itself was pretty impressive, able to fly at over 3 times the speed of sound, withstand temperatures over 600 degrees and fly above 90,000 feet. From the height the plane was flying it was apparently possible to see the curvature of the Earth, while simultaneously snapping detailed land shots.

Although the plane was meant to replace the U-2 spy plane (which is still being used) it never fully did. Only 15 of these planes were ever commissioned. Of those 5 or 6 (depending on the source) have been destroyed and of the 9 or 10 remaining, one we know is at Langley and another is on the USS Intrepid. You can read some declassified CIA files about the Oxcart here on the CIA website or check out the article published by AFP “CIA unveils Cold War Spy Plane.”

I just thought it was all so fitting with Josh’s post about the cost of fighter planes and fighter pilots. I was also going to comment on the CIA taking 50 years to release any information on the project, but I got distracted and my ranting and criticism got drained out of me.

One of the latest army rah rah commercials has some young polished pilot talking about how the most sophisticated piece of machinery he’d ever driven at home was a tractor and now, in the army, he’s piloting a multi-million-dollar plane.

These commercials imply that by entrusting these soldiers with expensive equipment, the army holds them in equal worth. “I drive a million-dollar tank/plane/whatever” so I must be worth millions.

Well, that’s certainly idiotic. Army machinery costs so much for a couple of reasons: reliability and greed. There was an episode of the West Wing in which a staffer questions the need of an army ash tray to cost hundreds of dollars. A colonel (guest star Kevin Bacon, I think) smashes the tray and it breaks into a few neat pieces instead of turning into dozens of shards. The point: that these items are made much better than typical retail items in order to save lives.

But in a military whose high-level procurement officers face a simple conflict of interest (the lure of lucrative post-military employment in private industry), it’s not hard to imagine that military equipment is routinely overpriced. That million dollar plane doesn’t mean anything.

Moreover, if one wants to be truly cynical, if you were a government supplier who would you want piloting your plane? A grizzled veteran or some farm boy? The more planes we lose, the more the army will need to replace…

If anybody handed me millions of dollars in hardware to “pilot” I’d be looking around the table to make sure I’m not the sucker. Maybe I’m wrong to find these commercials insulting to the intelligence of impressionable young Americans. I think there are several good reasons to join our armed forces, but the price of the hardware you’ll be using strikes me as an appeal to callow egos…not a good reason at all.

CNET News has some good News for us.

Apparently the big 5 cell phone manufacturers (Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG) have decided to nix all of their previous phone chargers and agreed to go with a universal micro-USB charger for all of their future phones.

This is good-ish news. This means that in the future when you are at your friends house and your phone is dying, you will be able to borrow their charger to juice it up. On the other hand this means that with that next phone you buy, any charger that you currently have will become obsolete.

It will probably take a few years before anyone notices a significant difference and is grateful for it, but, somewhere down the line this may actual make life just that much easier.

I don’t consider myself age-ist, I have plenty of friends who are old. I mean I even work for some one who is in their sixties. But, you know, with some older folks, they reach a point, well, when maybe it is time for them to retire. You notice small things, they forget little details and eventually that leads to bigger details. They are out of touch with the jargon of their industry or they start tacking on -machine after a device name, like a computer-machine or a fax-machine (oh wait, scratch that last one).

Normally I don’t think of the NY Times as an old newspaper , I mean, yeah the paper itself is old, but the writers don’t tend to show too much of their age in their writing. Well, I felt that way up until today. I was reading an article from yesterday’s paper by Bill Carter titled “NBC to Offer Downloads of Its Shows.” Presumably Bill deals with either television news or computers (and a quick search shows him to be a TV guy). True, it is an older technology, but there have been quite a few innovations to it in the last 10 years. I don’t expect Bill to know about all of them, but there is a pretty big one that I am guessing he is relatively familiar with- Time Shifting.

According to Wikipedia: “Time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the consumer.” Now maybe we are getting a little technical there, basically time shifting is what you do with a Digital Video Recorder (a DVR). Not the most complicated of ideas or anything, right? Well then, how come when Bill refers to the idea and the DVR technology that allows it he calls it a “TiVO machine.”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t thinking when he popped that phrase in, maybe he gets paid by the word and needed that extra few cents, but then his editor didn’t change it. Who are these people at the NY Times? How old are they? Maybe it is just me, maybe I am getting worked up over nothing, but seriously, “TiVO machine?”

I live in Washington, DC so pretty much every third person I know is a spy. Intelligence runs like a leitmotif through every policy discussion in this town on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China and terrorism. The talking heads on the all news channels and think tank policy wonks who focus on this issue are almost exclusively former intelligence officials now outside the tent pissing back in.

Their bottom line assessment usually goes something like this: “The CIA [or insert three-letter agency of your choice] is so broken it can’t possibly be fixed. The biggest problem is personnel, everyone who ever knew anything has left and now the kids are running the candy store! You have supervisors with less than five years of experience!” There they stop their tirade. The fact that most analysts are under thirty is all that is needed before declaring victory and going home. QED. (more…)

I like random information, I think this stems from a book I received when I was a kid. Basically it was a book of lists, it had everything from the Dynamic Duo to the Presidents of the United States to the Wonders of the World to the Winners of Best Pictures at the Academy Awards. Of course I got this book in the dark ages- pre-internet. Now-a-days you can find anything you want with a simple search.

Anyway, based on this book (which I wish I remembered the name of) I have developed an interest in books like Schott’s Original Miscellany (Ben Schott). I really tend to like collections of random information, they just feed my ADD with short, bite-sized pieces of information.

That is probably why I like the website The List Universe. Hundreds of top lists about various topics ranging from Crime to Politics… Okay, well that isn’t that far a stretch- how about Religion to Science… regardles, there are lots of lists in a bunch of different categories, there is even a Widget (for Mac users) and for those who get really into it, you can contribute your own lists. There is even a list on the side of the page of the most popular lists…

*They would be Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donder and Blitzen… and Rudolph, but only on really foggy nights
Image from http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/t/to-do_gifts.asp

By now you must be familiar with services like iTunes or one of its many competitors trying to suck you dry of your hard earned cash.

Well, now there is a new player in the game: Spiral Frog. Similar in some aspects to iTunes it allows you to download music and videos over the internet from singers and groups you have actually heard of. A bit smaller then the iTunes library with only 800,000 songs available (meaning you won’t be able to find everything you are looking for) there still remains a nice selection, even of new music, such as Amy Winehouse.

So, we’ve covered the similarities to iTunes, now some differences- first (and this is the big one) it is absolutely and totally free! Yup, no credit card needed, no money asked for, kind of nice. Oh, also you don’t need any special software to start downloading, it is not exclusive to any software (though you do need an internet plug-in to make sure it all works). All kind of nice, there is, however, a catch: This service (like too many other services available on the internet today) is only for folks with PCs. Got a Mac? Well, you’re out of luck. In fact Spiral Frog strikes out against Apple- Won’t work on a Mac, can’t use the music in iTunes and, last, but not least, the songs won’t play on an iPod. (more…)

A few weeks ago, my wife and I moved into a new apartment and I signed us up for phone, cable and internet service with the only local service provider of all three, COMCAST.

In my old apartment, I had phone, cable and internet through RCN so I figured COMCAST Triple Play was pretty much the same idea. I was wrong. While the cable and internet worked fine, the phone service brought me unknowingly into the dark world of VOIP.

It was not until I stood in our bedroom watching the COMCAST installer wire up the modem and plug our phone into it that I understood COMCAST really meant the “Digital” in COMCAST Digital Voice.

I have since gone back and checked the COMCAST website and there is nothing that suggests this is anything other than standard phone service.

There is no mention of needing a modem (which is huge at about 4×6x6). There is no explanation that your wall jacks will not work.

There is no small print that lets you know that when your internet connection goes down, so does your phone service . There is also not a price break for the service. Vonage starts at 14.99. COMCAST DIGITAL VOICE, $33 a month introductory rate that spikes to $39.95 after the first year.

Truth in advertising might suggest the following things should be explained to prospective customers:

Knowing these things ahead of time, I could have saved a lot of hassle. Luckily, the nice folks at Verizon still provide good old fashioned, reliable phone service that comes out of the wall sockets in your home for $42 a month.

Last week I broke down and decided to pay $15 for access to TimesSelect. Today, the New York Times eliminated the program and made the newspapers columnists and archive free!

They had FINALLY worn me down. I’m the last one to splurge on a new item. I’ve got a television set from 1984 (the most amazing Hitachi. I doubt it will ever die and the picture is great). When I buy something, the trend has passed, the item is trustworthy, it’s future viability certain. So, shockingly, I was the customer the Times always wanted. The last curmudgeon to fall down.

TimesSelect was always an awful idea. I gave in because I needed an article from the archives and I could expense the cost.

I guess they blew it, because if I signed up who knows how many thrifty folks like myself were about to emerge from the scenery.

This makes me a two-time loser. Two weeks after I bought the second generation ipod, Apple produced one with a color screen! Do you have any idea how horrible that was? And they offered a lousy discount store credit to take back the new “old” player. Now TimesSelect. I hope that, at least this time, I get my money back.

“A customer should be able to walk into a financial institution and get any financial product he or she needs – securities, insurance, banking or trust services,” said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox.

“But Congress recognized those benefits couldn’t be achieved without new ways to safeguard investors that would be consistent with continued innovation.

Today’s historic action, coming eight years after the passage of the law, is long overdue but welcome news for investors who will now begin to see the benefits of broader services and lower costs that the law intended.”

What the … !

Hey, there’s a reason we had split banks and securities dealers once upon a time. It’s because there’s an INHERENT CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

“Hi, I’d like a low risk savings account.”

“Oh, sir, I’m afraid that won’t work. I think what you really want is a high risk stock portfolio that pays us higher fees.”

Oh, and isn’t it wonderful that we’ve allowed bank-brokers to become so huge that if they were to fail it would be catastrophic? Hey, it’s not like our government’s inability to let these institutions fail creates any kind of MORAL HAZARD. NOOOOOO! It’s all good. Bring on the bigger services at lower costs.

“A customer should be able to walk into a financial institution and get any financial product he or she needs.” RIIIIIGHT.

Well, I think I should be able to walk into a burger joint and get fitted for a pair of shoes while I wait for my order, but it turns out that those two services have nothing to do with each other.

Hell, why don’t we allow hospitals to offer health insurance coverage. I think I should be able to see an insurance broker before getting my checkup. Think of the quality service I’d get then!