Boston completes "Big Dig"

Congratulations to Boston for completing their "Big Dig" transportation project. Although it was plagued by major cost and deadline overruns, and was marked by tragedy at the death of a auto passenger when a concrete panel attachment failed, it's finally done. And, according to this AP article, the benefits are substantial - here's an excerpt:

For those who grew up with the noise and clutter of the old Central Artery, the transformation of downtown Boston is still a wonder to behold.

The darkened parking lots under the old elevated highway have been replaced by parks, dubbed the Rose Kennedy Fitzgerald Greenway after the mother of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who grew up in the North End. Buildings that once turned their backs to the old Central Artery are finding ways to open their doors to the parkway.

Mayor Thomas Menino, who presided over the city during most of the construction, said that for the first time in half a century, residents can walk from City Hall to the waterfront without trudging under a major highway.

"When I came into office in 1993, people said your city isn't going to survive," he said. "Now we have a beautiful open space in the heart of the city. It knits the downtown with the waterfront. All those dire predictions by the experts didn't come true."

Drivers also give the Big Dig a big thumbs up.

A study by the Turnpike Authority found the Big Dig cut the average trip through Boston from 19.5 minutes to 2.8 minutes.

"Before we drive bumper to bumper, but now they are moving very well," said Gamal Ahmed, 38, who has been driving a cab in Boston for seven years. "Sometimes we are stuck, but not like before."

For Salvucci, who warns gridlock could soon return without a major commitment to public transportation, the Big Dig — for all its whiz-bang engineering — was always second to the city itself.

"The Big Dig is not a highway with an incidental city adjacent to it. It is a living city that happens to have some major highway infrastructure within it and that highway infrastructure had to be rebuilt," he said. "This was not elective surgery. It had to be done."

$45 trillion gap seen between promised US benefits and what can actually be delivered

All we need to do is scrape up $45T and we're good - I don't see what the fuss is about...

From this AP article:

The government is promising $45 trillion more than it can deliver on Social Security, Medicare and other benefit programs.

That is the gap between the promises the government has made in benefits and the projected revenue stream for these programs over the next 75 years, the Bush administration estimated Monday.

The $45.1 trillion shortfall has increased by nearly $1 trillion in just one year, according to the administration's "Financial Report of the United States Government" for 2006. And, it's up 67.8 percent in just the past four years. In 2003, the shortfall between promised benefits and revenue sources over a 75-year period was put at $26.9 trillion.

The shortfall includes Social Security and Medicare in addition to Railroad Retirement and the Black Lung program.

When the gap in funding social insurance programs is added to other government commitments, the total shortfall as of Sept. 30 represented $53 trillion, up more than $2 trillion in just a year, the report said.

"Our government has made a whole lot of promises in the long-term that it cannot possibly keep," Comptroller General David M. Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, said Monday.

Members of Congress said the increase in the unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare underscored the critical urgency to do something in light of the looming retirement in coming years of 78 million baby boomers.

That comes out roughly to about $150K per today's American - no problemo. We can get most of that back via oil revenue from Iraq, and what's left over will be handily covered via an economically stimulating tax cut. Of course, it would help if the U.S. tax paying population grew by a factor of a hundred before those bills come due...

Challenges for America in the coming decades

Let's face it, folks: America has some serious long term challenges ahead. Of course, every country has problems, but I believe America enjoys some particularly difficult ones, and Americans aren't exactly rising to the challenge as of yet. Let me list some as I see it:

• Public deficit spending. As of this writing, America's national debt is over $9 trillion. At an approximate national population of 300 million, that comes out to roughly $30K owed by every American, a large portion of which is owed to foreign governments. Furthermore, running any prolonged, substantial government budget surpluses is unlikely in our political climate, as that would be interpreted as over-taxation. It's just a matter of time before the U.S government is unable to meet an interest payment due on the growing debt, and then the party's over.
• Private deficit spending. We're selling off our assets to by foreign manufactured goods, as as well as oil. This is also related to the negative national savings rate. We must import capital for economic activity.
• Declining dollar. This is pretty much a direct result of the previous two. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for our dependence on foreign oil and foreign manufacturing.
• Rise of China. China is widely considered to be the next rising economic superpower, and we're dependent on it for our manufacturing and our financing. We're gradually ceding our economic sovereignty to China (and other foreign creditor nations), and as their affluence grows, so will their consumer markets and geo-political influence, eclipsing our own.
• Looming demographic crisis. America is getting older, and the rather large and significant baby boomer demographic has already begun to retire. This will hit the public with a big double-whammy: the large social security and medicare obligations, coupled with the loss of their working tax income. That's on the public side - on the private side, companies are seeing their experienced workers heading out the door, and are desperately trying to import replacements, both high skilled via H1B, and low skilled by lobbying the government to continue their tacit approval of illegal immigration. The heath care system will also undergo a significant strain as the baby boomers age and require medical care.
  

These are some pretty heavy problems, and it's difficult to see a painless solution...

Handy Financial Calculators for You

Here are a couple of useful financial calculators for you to check out. To help plan your savings and retirement strategy, you can use the investment growth calculator to figure out how much your retirement fund (your 401k, for example), will grow over time. You provide the initial investment amount, as well as the amount of regular yearly contributions to the fund. Then set the expected rate of return and time horizon, and the calculator will show you the growth of your fund's value year-by-year.

Next there's the amortization calculator. This is particularly useful when evaluating a mortgage, as the amortization schedule tells you how much equity you've accumulated in your home at any given time, and how much of each mortgage payment contributes to paying down the principle (hence gaining equity), versus how much goes to paying interest. The calculator will also tell you how much you'll end up paying in total interest over the duration of the mortgage. Simply set the loan scheduling information (number of payments and payment interval), then specify any two of the following three values: principal amount, annual interest rate, and regular payment amount. This brings us to another feature of the amortization calculator: it calculates for you the third piece of information listed above. For example, if you know the principal amount and interest rate, it calculates the payment amount. Or, if you know how much you want to borrow, and the amount of payment each month, it calculates the interest rate at which you'll need to borrow. Finally, if you know the interest rate and how high you want your payments to be, it calculates how much you can borrow.

These financial calculators are simple to use, but they provide very valuable information for anybody contemplating eventual home ownership or retirement.

Alternative fuels: Energy Sources vs. Energy Storage

Alternative fuels are a hot topic these days, given the ever-increasing global demand for energy, as well as the very inconvenient physical characteristics of CO2 gas, which causes it to absorb infrared radiation. There's a lot of buzz around ethanol, for example, hotly debated because of its significant pros and cons, as well other energy sources for autos, ranging from batteries to hydrogen gas to compressed air.

However, there seems to be a perception out there that these are all equivalent in that they're all "fuels", however there are important distinctions in terms of the nature of the fuels and how they're obtained. Specifically, we must make the distinction between fuels that are "energy sources" vs. those that are just "energy storage" media. This isn't a theoretical distinction, and doesn't make sense as such, but is my own contrivance to point out a significant practical distinction between two classes of "fuel".

By my definition, fuels that are energy sources are those that don't require us to provide the energy that they contain and subsequently provide to the vehicle for its locomotion. They already contain the energy to power our vehicles when we extract them. Examples of fuels that are energy sources are oil and ethanol. They're already energy rich and ready to burn in our engines. Another example of a fuel that is an energy source would be uranium, however that's not currently practical as a fuel for vehicles. Of course, these fuels are also energy storage media. (An example of a "fuel" that is an energy source but not a storage medium would be electricity from solar panels.)

Fuels that are storage media but not energy sources, per se, would be batteries, hydrogen, and compressed air, for example. Since there are no significant natural sources of compressed air, gaseous hydrogen, or charged batteries, we have to do the compressing, electrolyzing, and charging ourselves. In other words, we have to provide the energy, and these fuels simply store that energy so that it can be extracted by our vehicles as a power source in a practical manner.

Why the distinction? Because using energy storage media as fuel for vehicles is a completely different endeavor from using energy source fuels, since they do not solve the problem of obtaining the energy via a practical energy source, they only solve the problem of transferring and storing the energy in vehicles. Energy source fuels, on the other hand, have that solution "built in", to an extent. So, for example, comparing oil and hydrogen as fuels is an apples and oranges comparison.

There are a whole lot of caveats in my description here, making the distinctions not fully accurate. For example, even though fuels like oil and ethanol are energy sources, they still require energy to extract them. In regards to ethanol, providing the acreage and fertilizer, then the subsequent harvesting and distillation, costs us, so the energy obtained is not "free" as the "energy source" label implies. And ethanol is simply a storage medium of the solar energy absorbed when the corn or other biomass used to distill it grew. However, practically speaking, it's a considerably more energy rich solution than an uncharged battery, or non-electrolyzed water, for example.

As for the energy storage media, if they require the input of the energy necessary to power our vehicles, then what good are they? Well, they'd allow us to take advantage of economies of scale when it comes to power generation, from large, relatively efficient, and non-portable energy generation facilities. Also, the energy used to "charge" them could come from clean, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, wave, or geothermal energy, or from sources that are less clean than renewables, but more clean than fossil fuels, such as nuclear.

The world is ready for alternative fuels, and the technology is catching up. We just need to understand the available options and their technical implications.

China warns the U.S. about negative rhetoric and media coverage ahead of bilateral talks

U.S.-China talks are coming up this week, and each side is busy doing their pre-positioning. A quote from this Reuters article:

The United States should resolve trade rows with China through dialogue on an equal footing and should not politicize them, a senior Commerce Ministry official said in remarks published on Monday.

The warning by Chen Deming came a day after Finance Minister Xie Xuren said legislation being considered by the U.S. Congress could seriously harm trade ties with China.
....
Chen, a newly appointed vice-minister who is in line to take over the top job, said U.S. media coverage of issues such as the exchange rate, food safety and intellectual property rights had been "hindering the normal development" of two-way ties.

He said growing economic independence meant the two countries had more and more common interests that called for cooperation.

As we all know, China is a major lender to the U.S., and we use the money they lend us to buy their manufactured goods, as well as wage wars in the Middle East. Furthermore, many major U.S. companies realize that their future growth depends on access to China and its markets. Also, China is a major holder of U.S. dollars, giving them more control over that currency's prospects than I'm sure the U.S. is comfortable with.

Given the U.S.'s weak bargaining position in this relationship, it's no surprise that their position is conciliatory.

Rural Analogies and Politics

In American politics, it's difficult to miss the deep undercurrent of agrarianism and rural wisdom that the political parties' public relations teams invoke in their scripts. Why? Because they work. In our traditionally agrarian society, things like religious faith as a way of life, anti-intellectualism, and respect for men who manage livestock and talk simply resonate with the public, and create a perception of trustworthiness and familiarity, which translates into votes for their candidate. Woe be it for the opposing team to lose this PR struggle, or worse, to be painted as "smooth talking", lawyer-like, or having European aristocratic values or sympathies - these perceptions will result in the loss of the votes of a majority of Americans. Furthermore, candidates who deny having religious faith face certain defeat.

A direct manifestation of this strategy of alignment with our agrarian heritage is the frequent appearance of farming analogies in political discourse. Here are five that I can think of off-hand. I've heard many more but can't recall them at this writing:

• Carts, horses, and relative placement thereof. This is applied to situations where proposed actions or initiatives are out of order.
• Structures housing hens, and their vulnerability to their natural predators, foxes. This is applied to situations in which there's a lack of sufficient oversight, checks and balances, or other controls, and in which there are conflicts of interest.
• Applying leverage to the horns on bulls (as they're solid grasping points), so as to take control of them. Invoked when there's a difficult situation which requires leadership to take a direct and forceful approach.
• Finding small, difficult-to-spot objects in large piles of hay. Used when justifying a lack of effort or success in finding something.
  
• Wolves and sheep, and their predator-prey relationship. The sheep analogy has been applied to either the American populace as a whole, where nations or organizations considered to be military opponents are branded as the predators, or to segments of the American population, such as those that do not arm themselves routinely. This is especially useful as it taps into the listener's fear, creating an irrational support for proposed anti-predator measures.
  

It's important to remember that it was not very long ago, relative to the history of civilization, that this nation was created by the migration of opportunistic farmers, entrepreneurs, individualists, religious fundamentalists, and anti-authoritarians, and this heritage is evident in American norms and values today.

Calculating Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return

Thinking about cashing in your structured settlement or annuity for a single lump sum payment? Wondering how much to pay for a business with a predictable cash flow? When considering how much a future cash flow is worth in today's dollars, simply adding up the total amount of the payments will not provide an accurate value, due to the time value of money, as a dollar a year from now is worth less than a dollar today.

Well I have good news: instead of dusting off your finance books and wrapping your brain around the tedious math involved, you can use Sporkforge.com's Cash Flow Value & Rate of Return Calculator: it will do the calculations for you. All you need to do is type or paste a list of regular income amounts (or even negative amounts representing outgoing payments, for example future liabilities), set the payment period (weekly, monthly, etc), and specify the interest rate at which to discount future sums of money. It will then, with the push of a button, calculate for you the net present value of the future cash flow, which is today's lump sum value of the cash flow. What could be easier?

But wait, there's more! Suppose you are offered a specific value for your structured settlement payments or small business, and you want to figure out what interest rate the person making the offer would be earning on the deal, or the internal rate of return of the "investment" of the lump sum in return for the future series of payments. Simply enter the lump sum amount in the "present-day value" field, under the "Calculate Internal Rate of Return" section of the calculator, and press the "Calculate rate of return..." button. You will then be informed of the rate of return the person making the offer would be realizing.

And hey, it's free. What's not to like? Give it a spin and see for yourself.

China scoffs at mandatory CO2 emissions caps

China dismisses calls for mandatory emissions caps, saying it's up to wealthy nations to bear the burden, as they're the ones with such high per-capita consumption. I predict this will be a problematic issue.

An excerpt from the Associated Press article:

Su Wei, a top climate expert for China's government attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, said the job belongs to the wealthy. He said it was unfair to ask developing nations to accept binding emissions cuts and other restrictions being pushed for already industrialized states.

He said the United States and its fellow industrial nations have long spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while newly emerging economies have done so for only a few decades.

"China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty," Su said.

While many experts believe China has surpassed the United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, Su noted the Chinese population is far bigger and said America's emissions per person are six times higher than in China.

What's up with this new "mortgage bailout"?

As you may have heard, a plan to ease the mortgage crisis was proposed by the Bush administration and the financial industry yesterday. Here's a good article that summarizes it...

USA Today Article: Mortgage plan: How does it work? Who does it help?

They discussed this general idea on NPR yesterday, and the issue of fairness came up. Why, for example, should those who made a poor choice regarding their mortage get bailed out, whereas those who made a smart choice do not? Then again, even though it's not necessarily fair, allowing the crisis to continue could affect the economy as a whole, as we all know...

Top five types of left-lane hogs

Many of you know what I'm talking about - those inconsiderate drivers who cruise along relatively slowly in the left-hand lane of a two-lane highway, while a big line of cars collects in back of them. They're out there, ready to delay you, especially if you're in a hurry. Sometimes I wonder if they don't coordinate their efforts via radio.

Well here's the top five types of left-lane hogs as I see it:

• The "clueless" types - they don't realize the "passing lane" vs. "cruising lane" convention, they just figure there's two lanes, why not spread out & use both. They abhor a lane vacuum.
  
• The "don't give a damn" types - difficult to distinguish from the "clueless", however they do exist. A quote I read from one "don't give a damn"-type fellow about the frustrated drivers stuck behind him in the left lane: "F'em. I am already speeding. You want to go faster, go around. Oh, and flash your f'ing lights at someone else. "
• The "very, very slowly passing people in the right lane" types. They're aware of the passing lane vs. cruising lane convention, and are adhering to it, though very slowly.
  
• The "not paying attention" types (though, to their credit, once they realize they're hogging the left lane, they tend get over to the right reasonably promptly).
• The "above it all, don't know & don't care" types - these are people driving large trucks & SUVs who aren't concerned about the problems we little people think we're having, and they probably can't even see us anyway.

...Of course, there's other miscellaneous types, such as the "refuse to pass the cop in the left lane" type, a group I think we all belong to. :)

Pay phones will soon be history

"A 129-year era is set to end at AT&T," according to this CNN article - AT&T is exiting the payphone business. It's just a matter of time before they'll vanish into history. The culprit: cellphones & wireless, of course.

The list of obsolete technologies I've used is getting long: payphones, VCRs, rotary-dial phones, manual typewriters, carbureted engines, black & white TVs, pre-PC computers such as the TRS-80, etc... Does this mean I'm getting old?

New Sporkforge.com Tool: Auto Fuel Savings vs. Total Cost Comparison

I'm pleased to announce the availability of a new tool for use in vehicle comparison shopping:

Auto Fuel Savings vs. Total Cost Comparison

In it, you provide your average monthly driving distance, the cost of gasoline, and optionally the interest rate at which to discount future gas expenditures. You also provide the initial cost and average mileage of two vehicles. The tool then calculates the total cost of ownership (initial cost plus periodic fuel costs) of each vehicle, and also calculates the "break-even" point, which is the point in time where the more fuel efficient vehicle becomes more cost effective.

So, for example, if you're considering spending several thousands more for a fuel efficient hybrid or other high-tech vehicle, this tool will calculate the point at which you'll recoup the added expense through fuel cost savings.

My MacBook Initial Review

Well I'm a linux user, and for some time I had my wife use that OS as well - in fact, she used our nice Acer laptop with Ubuntu on it, whereas I used an old Gateway Solo PII laptop running Xubuntu. However, recently I bought her an Apple Macbook instead, as she was having stability & performance problems in linux, as well as the linux peripheral support shortcomings. She is not very computer literate, & mainly wants to surf the web, watch videos, use the spreadsheet, and print & scan things like labels, forms, etc.

We bought the lowest spec MacBook - it came with an HP 3-in-1 scanner/printer/copier, which is free after $100 rebate. We also bought iWork to install on the machine.

Random observations:

- Setting it up was pretty easy, though the HP driver/software installation continually locked up, & had to be force-quitted multiple times. I did a search, and found advice to go to the HP website to download the latest software. I did, and installation went fine. The printer works great.

- Not crazy about the screen - it's small & grainy looking, & has one of those anti-glare surfaces that's hard to see from an angle. Definitely a step down from the big, glossy screen of the Acer Aspire.

- Things do crash occasionally.

- The HP photo/printer management app is a major resource hog. It effectively locked up the machine at one point.

- The Mac scheme is funny & weird - buttons are in the wrong place & do strange things, the menubar at the top "becomes" the menubar for the application with focus, the system chooses which app icons to display on the bottom (I guess based on recent use), and the minimized applications are crammed in the lower right corner.

- Very slick & compact looking, feels solid. All the usb ports are on the left side, though, which is a bit inconvenient. Neat how there's no extending CDROM tray, you just stick it in the side, & it spits out when ejected.

- I really like the cool power adapter & extender scheme, & how the cord-to-laptop jack is magnetized.

- It has a BASH terminal, if you can find it (it's buried somewhere within Finder). Once there, it's your basic *nix interface. It did everything I tried, including ssh, ifconfig, etc. However, it failed to mount a remote NFS partition, which I later found out that it uses AFS (I think), so no surprise that didn't work.

- Numbers (the iWork spreadsheet) does not recognize the OO calc .sxc (?) format. I had to convert our existing OO spreadsheets to .xls. However, if you simply try to open those, it funnels you into the installed trial version of MS Office, and gives you instructions on how to buy. You have to explicitly open the document in Numbers. Numbers does however have some handy built-in templates, such as the party planner template (not sure exactly what it's called) - my wife loves it & is using it to plan our son's next B'day party.

- We also bought an external Kensington mouse which was recognized & worked fine, except that we found it interfered with my own external Kensington mouse, so I ditched mine.

- The Addresses(?) app is very handy, & makes it easy to print out envelopes, labels, etc (that is, it was easy once you figured out that the funny-looking "down" button expanded the options window to expose printing format options...).


Well that's all I can think of now. Not the perfect experience I was hoping for (& payed for), but all-in-all a pretty slick machine, hopefully it'll work out for the wife in the long run.

Captions, please.

For my very first post, I present to you a photo to be captioned:



Please provide an apt caption for this photo.