What HDTV has to do with emergency communication

One of my favorite blogs, BoingBoing, previews an article from the National Journal on the broadcast spectrum in the U.S., the fight in government over HDTV regulations and the effect both have had on the ability of emergency personnel to communicate in disaster situations:

This long, excellent article on the history of broadcast spectrum allocation in America is the single best explanation of the mess that we're in today. In short: greedy broadcasters tricked Congress into giving them free spectrum for a second set of digital channels, so that Americans who bought digital TVs would have something to watch. Then they did nothing with them. Meantime, cops and firefighters and EMTs are (literally) dying for some of that squat-upon spectrum so that they can coordinate their rescue efforts.

link to BoingBoing post

Feingold returns to Alabama

Russ Feingold returned to Greenville, Alabama where he visited earlier in the year and made observations about the areas depressing economic conditions. Feingold was invited by the Greenville's mayor to observe parts of the city he missed upon the first visit, including two South Korean auto parts plants and the $18 million Greenville High School. He also shared a round of golf with the mayor. Feingold wrote an article about his initial trip on Salon.com.

original story from the Montgomery Advertiser

senatorrussfeingoldforpresidentin2008.com

This really isn't that significant, but I'm going to post it anyway. Just another indications of Feingold's intentions three years from now. He said he's only going to run if he thinks he is the best candidate that can actually win. Judging from how the rest of the field looks right now, I'd say he had better go for it.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

With rampant speculation on whether U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., will run for president in 2008, his Senate campaign made a few notable recent moves. It registered the domain name for the Web site www.russfeingold08.com as well as the .org and .net versions. And, no, he's not facing re-election to the Senate that year.

"We saw so many sites being snapped up out there that we reserved a few sites," says George Aldrich, Feingold's past campaign manager. He notes that many sites, such as www.russforpresident.com, seeking to draft Feingold, are already taken and some already have content. Others are parked by supporters in case Feingold decides to run.

link

update: Just found an in-depth C-SPAN interview with Feingold at www.russforpresident.com

March Madness

CBS.Sportsline.com

March Madness has begun, with 12th seeded UW-Milwaukee beating 5 seed Alabama, a team that made it to the Elite Eight last year. I'm doing pretty well in Dan's pool so far, although I had Pitt. beating Pacific and UTEP beating Utah. I've got Wisconsin making it to the 2nd round, but getting beaten by Kansas. Here's my Final Four:

• -Illinois
• -Wake Forest
• -UNC
• -Kentucky

Illinois over Wake Forest

UNC over Kentucky

National Championship: UNC over Illinois

The rest of my picks

I've been using SI.com's bracket to keep up with scores. It updates every few minutes and fills in the bracket as games finish.

The Daily Show - On Demand

Just in case you haven't gotten your daily fix of J-Stew, Comedy Central hosts dozens of Daily Show clips in Windows Media and Realplayer formats. One of the best ways to kill 10 minutes before class.

On a completely unrelated note: I'm looking for a place to sublet this summer with 3-5 friends. If you know of anything available, let me know.

AIM, Firefox and the O.C.

UW housing just released a way to watch TV on your computer. Called Digital Academic Television (DATV) [and a pretty lame acronym], the service allows housing residents to watch ten channels including CNN and all local channels by using Quicktime.

Although I do have a tv less than 5 feet from my computer, it is nice to be able to watch something while I'm working on the computer, or while my roommate's asleep. Also nice for people who don't have a TV. I've been messing around with it and watching four different channels at the same time, just because I can.

Feingold is blogging, kindof

Sen. Feingold wrote his first blog post on MyDD.com and then DailyKos.com Thursday. He wrote about his work on several issues such as the Patriot Act and Campaign Finance. In particular he addressed his concern with the FEC's proposal to limit the free speech of bloggers by not allowing them to link to the websites of political candidates, calling it an unfair campaign contribution. Other media outlets are exempt from this kind of censorship and blogs should fall under that umbrella.

Feingold is one of the first senators to reach out to the blogging community and has gotten favorable reactions. Both sites received plenty of reader comments supporting Feingold (many calling him to run for President in 2008). Feingold even took the time to post a response to the many comments. He also pledged to continue blogging in the future.

Just one of the many reasons Feingold kicks ass.

Doyle wants to tax downloads in WI

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, Gov. Doyle wants to put a 5% tax on downloaded material like music, books, and art.

A little-noticed provision of the Democratic governor's proposed state budget would extend the sales tax to those Internet transactions...

It's a matter of equity, said state Revenue Secretary Mike Morgan, defending Doyle's goal of having consumers voluntarily pay the sales tax on "intangible" items they buy and download from the Internet. Buyers would have to pay the 5% sales tax if they purchased those items at any Wisconsin store.

The oddest part about this is that the whole system would be voluntary. The article said that there would be no way to enforce this, it would be entirely on the honor system. Considering that I (and many other people) don't pay for downloads now, this is probably a poor way to spur Internet-based commerce in WI.

Wisconsin taxpayers are supposed to estimate what sales tax they owe on Internet and mail-order purchases, and voluntarily pay it when they file their income taxes. Compliance is "very low," Morgan conceded.

The songs on i-Tunes are already a little overpriced at $.99, I'm not going to pay the extra cash or take the extra effort to pay an additional tax.

This move makes it appear as though Doyle is against e-commerce and is attempting to tax the citizens of his state when no similar plans exist anywhere else in the country, except in South Dakota.

Wisconsin taxpayers are supposed to estimate what sales tax they owe on Internet and mail-order purchases, and voluntarily pay it when they file their income taxes. Compliance is "very low," Morgan conceded.

So what's the point? The state's budget is $53 billion and the this tax is only estimated to bring in $1.9 million. It waould make essentially no impact on the state budget, but give Republicans fuel to criticize Doyle for hurting business in WI. A bad idea financially and politically.

Also, just in terms of what's being taxed, state Revenue Secretary Mike Morgan's defense is: "Buyers would have to pay the 5% sales tax if they purchased those items at any Wisconsin store" No quite true though. If I'm buying songs from a store, I'm buying a plastic cd that holds them. If I buy a book, I'm getting a book, etc. There are material goods being taxed in these cases, wheras the internet tax applies to "intangibles". This may be something that eventually needs to be taken into account as more goods are bought on the internet, but it would have to be accompanied by some sort of enforcement mechanism, such as the tax being included in the price of the item.

I found it interesting that the J/S interviewed students in the Capitol doing the hunger strike for lower tuition about the tax. They were probably there anyway and wanted a student opinion, but it's cool that the strike got mentioned (it was actually the whole last paragraph of the article).

original article on arstechnica.com

The Sharpton Diet

NY Times: Sharpton Diet: 2 Meals a Day and 3 Workouts a Week

Hopefully he didn't ruin it by indulging in cheese and brats while he was in Wisconsin.

The Rev. Sharpton visits Madison

I just got back from seeing Al Sharpton give a rousing speech at the Union. He spoke on the mistakes of the last election, the success of the Republicans in framing the issues (especially issues that had nothing to do with the Presidential election) and the importance of activism. Sharpton discussed how the Bush administration decieved the American public as to why the U.S. went to war in Iraq and raised the question of what was/is being done to stifle Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He also spoke on how tuition hikes were resegregating access to higher education across the nation and the case at UW in particular.

The part of the lecture that I enjoyed most was when Sharpton brought up the issues that the candidates focused on in the 2004 election. The issues should have been the war, healthcare, education and other important topics, but instead much of the debate focused on gay marriage and Kerry's war record 30 years ago, neither of which had anything to do with the role of the president.

Sharpton also addressed how narrow the views of many conservatives, especially conservative Christians, have become in this country. They see gay marriage as a sin, but don't vote to help those in poverty. They take issue with a woman's right to choose, but don't take offense when public education and public healthcare remain underfunded. In Sharpton's words, "They love the fetus, but they don't care about the baby."

Several people who asked questions afterwards had the guts to challenge Sharpton on some of his views, but were soon shot down by his quick wit and negative crowd reaction. Sharpton stated at the beginning that he wasn't there to make friends, but to express his beliefs. I walked out of the theater a bigger fan of Sharpton and a little sorry that I couldn't have voted for him for president.

The Apple Empire

The comedy troupe "The Royal We" has produced a send-up to the groundbreaking 1984 Apple commercial "1984". This one mocks Apple's domination of the portable mp3 player market and makes the tech company into the "big brother" it was supposed to eliminate 25 years ago.

The Royal We 1984

Possibly the Coolest Ad Ever Made

The Honda Accord ad "Cog" is a Rube Goldberg type contraption created entirely of car parts that took over 600 takes to film. It's difficult to believe, but the entire ad was filmed at once in a Paris studio; there were no computer graphics used. At two minutes long, the ad is pretty unbelievable. You've just got to see it.

Honda Accord "Cog" ad

UK Article describing the "making of"

More Articles

Dance like nobody is watching... so that it's funnier when they are

"Gary Brolsma, 19, amateur videographer and guy from New Jersey" (as described by the NY Times) has made my week and all he had to do was sit in front of his computer and dance. His tribute to Romanian techno-pop has seen on Good Morning America, CNN and hundreds of internet sites and blogs. There's really no describing it, you've just gotta see it.

The Video: Numa Numa

NY Times Article: Internet Fame is Cruel Mistress for a Dancer of the Numa Numa

MSNBC Article: Dance to Romanian tune cracks up the world

Googleplex

I probably use Google more than any other website besides my e-mail, cnn.com and bloglines but never like this:

Google Newsmap: A reinvention of Google news. It visually sorts stories by category, country, time and importance. Plus, it looks damn cool.

Elgoog: Displays everything in google in reverse

Scroogle: Just the bare bones of Google. No other searches, no cookies, no saving search terms, no nothing.

Gizoogle, My personal favorite: It rephrases your search term as if Snoop Dogg were your research assistant.