power shortage

I decided to investigate my iBook’s weak battery. After not quite two years, it appears to have lost almost 90% of its charge (748 / 4400 = 0.17).

"IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=748,"Amperage"=443,"CycleCount"=552,"Current"=596,"Voltage"=12598,"Flags"=838860807,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400})

This translates to being able to work for 4 hours on battery to about 40 minutes.
Looks like I need to find a good source for a battery as well. They seem to run about $100.

<update: Thu Oct 6 21:55:35 PDT 2005 > just scored one on ebay for $40, new in box.

standardized tests of yesteryear

I found an old clipping last week from the Wall Street Journal letters page, sometime in the early 1980s. The writer had saved his high school entrance exam from 1911, taken in rural Indiana, and sent along a sampling.

  • In what state and on what waters are the following: Chicago, Duluth, Cleveland, and Buffalo? State an important fact about each.
  • Name and locate two countries in the following are important products: wheat, cotton, wool, coffee.
  • Write on the Panama Canal, telling who is building it, its location and importance.
  • What causes the change from day to night and from winter to summer?
  • Name five republics, three limited monarchies, and one absolute monarchy.
  • Name the classes of sentences on the basis of meaning or use. On the basis of form.
  • Write a sentence with its verb in the active voice; change to passive voice.
  • What is meant by inflection? What parts of speech are inflected?
  • Write sentences containing nouns showing six case relations.
  • Write a model business letter of not more than 40 words.
  • What is the length of a rectangular field 80 rods wide that contains 100 acres?
  • A wagon is 10 feet long, three feet wide, and 28 inches deep: how many bushels of what will it hold?
  • A rope 500 feet long is stretched from the top of a tower and reached the ground 300 feet from the base of the tower: how high is the tower?
  • In physiology, name three kinds of joints and give an example of each.
  • Give the structure of a muscle and of the spinal cord.
  • Define arteries, veins, capillaries, and pulse.
  • Write a brief biography of Evangeline.
  • What do you think the author of “Enoch Arden” aims to teach us?
  • What kind of a man was Shylock?

I couldn’t answer a lot of these now, and I am thrice the age of a potential high school entrant.

What’s interesting about these questions is the amount of local knowledge, civics, economics they cover. Knowing what cities lie on what bodies of water and what crops are grown where requires you to understand the wider world in ways many of us don’t today.

Of course, they also cover a lot of archaic stuff: who know what a rod is or how many bushels will fit in a 35 cubic foot wagon? Just for your edification, a bushel is 2150.42 cubic inches.

And a rod? Go work that one out for yourself.

Suggest some updated versions of these questions in comments, if you like.

Socialize the risk, privatize the profit

Bill “the kitten vivisector” Frist and his recent unloading of stock in the family business is about more than just the mythical blind trust.

Pump and Dump Politics:

According to Thompson Financial analyst Mark LoPresti, quoted in several of the stories, the key piece of inside information that Frist and the other insiders had that others didn’t was this:

Uninsured patient admissions were rising faster than those of insured patients

Let’s consider why it might generally be considered a conflict of interest for Frist to own so much HCA stock. The main concern would be that Frist might be in a position to use his public power to improve the financial condition of such hospitals; for example, he could push for some kind of increased coverage for the uninsured or even universal health care. He might have a public motive for doing so, but he might also have a private motive, since it would hugely benefit a hospital chain like HCA. That’s the reason for putting all his stock in a blind trust, so that he won’t know, and we know that he won’t know, whether he would benefit privately.

But when the uninsured ratio goes up, and Frist actually knows that this will affect his own portfolio, paradoxically his reaction isn’t what the normal conflict-of-interest analysis would assume. Rather than use his official power to reduce the number of uninsured, he takes a private action, and just dumps the stock. And not just any stock, this is his patrimony he’s selling out. It’s the stock of his own family’s company. But he washes his hands of it. Leaves it to some bigger sucker.

And that, to me, is telling, and it’s about more than Frist’s despicable character. Because it goes to the great paradox of what is currently called “conservatism.”

In other words, he might have taken some steps to address the shortfall for uninsured patients, against the fiduciary interests of his family and himself: hence the blind trust. But did he? No, he played the game like a crooked insider and unloaded his holdings, selling out his family and the citizens he has pledged to serve.

What a creep.

where sharks learn to attack

TNR Online | Swimming with Sharks:

Everyone who watched this summer’s race for College Republican National Committee (crnc) chair with any detachment has a favorite moment of chutzpah they admire in spite of themselves. Leading the count are the following: speaking sotto voce of your opponent’s “homosexuality” rigging the delegate count so that states that support your candidate have twice as many votes as those that don’t; and using a sitting congressman to threaten the careers of undecided voters. I can understand the perverse appeal of each of these incidents. But I cast my vote for the forged letter.

The letter arrived via fax to the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, on the eve of the crnc convention in June. The three-day convention is attended by student delegates from across the country who, after enduring a four-month campaign filled with importuning, backstabbing, and horsetrading, vote for a chair. Most campaigns culminate with the handpicked establishment candidate inheriting the two-year, $75,000-a-year position without much of a fight. But, this year, the establishment candidate, Paul Gourley–the handpicked successor of the last chairman, who was the handpicked successor of the chairman before him–faced a vigorous challenge from an insurgent, Michael Davidson, a smooth-talking 25-year-old Berkeley grad.

Since the fax appeared unexpectedly in the final days of the race, it created an unmitigated frenzy among the conventioneers. The letter announced that the chairman of the Missouri delegation had completely replaced his state’s official slate of delegates (who all happened to support Davidson).

This is how the other side learns how to win: they cheat, they lie, they are willing to stab their fellow-party members in the back to win — whatever.

It’s interesting to me how, well, Darwinian, this all seems, with “survival of the most ruthless” as the guiding principle. Maybe I am thinking of Lord of the Flies.

This is the party that claims to be moral, to be forthright and honest, to have an ethical compass that never wavers.

The Seattle Times: Why can’t we be more like Finland?

A rhetorical question, answered in the article: a homogeneous population allows consensus more readily than a more diverse one. But the real answer is that they chose to make them themselves what they are: open, fair, and economically vibrant. What choices are we making?

The Seattle Times: Why can’t we be more like Finland?:

Finland has largely remade itself over the last 35 years, revamping its education system, transforming its medical-care structure and creating a new high-tech sector that, thanks to cellphone manufacturer Nokia, has become an international player. Today Finland is regularly cited as among the world’s best in a variety of indices and comparisons. For example:

• The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, ranks Finland’s the most competitive economy in the world.

• Yale and Columbia universities rank the nations of the world in a “sustainability index” that measures a country’s ability to “protect the natural environment over the next several decades.” Finland ranks first.

• Statistics kept by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that Finland invests more of its gross domestic product in research and development than any country except Sweden.

• According to a global survey by Transparency International, Finland is perceived as the least corrupt country in the world. (The United States is tied for 17th.)

• Finns read newspapers and take books out of libraries at rates as high or higher than all other countries.

• Finnish 15-year-olds score first in the industrial world on comparative tests of their academic abilities.

• Finland trains more musicians, per capita, than any other country.

But consider: what segment of Americans self-identifies itself the most representative American? White, northern Europeans, the so-called heirs to the Judeo-Christian founders (yes, I know it’s bulldust, but don’t quit reading just yet), living largely in the South. Yet, what group most vociferously oppose the very ideas that Finland (and other nations) have adopted that make their societies more equitable and more dynamic and competitive? Hmm, the same people who think America is the greatest place on earth (largely because they live there) consistently oppose the ideas that could actually make their boasting a reality.

Why does the 82nd Airborne hate America?

A few bad apples?

New Reports Surface About Detainee Abuse:

Two soldiers and an officer with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.

A 30-page report by Human Rights Watch describes an Army captain’s 17-month effort to gain clear understanding of how U.S. soldiers were supposed to treat detainees, and depicts his frustration with what he saw as widespread abuse that the military’s leadership failed to address. The Army officer made clear that he believes low-ranking soldiers have been held responsible for abuse to cover for officers who condoned it.

Or a systemic, routine culture of abuse and humiliation?