While I am on vacation, I’m having some old posts from my archives queued up for your enjoyment. If you’re interested in following the progress of the tour, a friend of mine has set up a blog and the Choir will be posting pix and text as things go.
Jim Downey
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23 February 2005
A Taxing Question
“Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
My buddy, Steve, who won $100k on Who Wants to be a Millionaire (see my piece on the show here), got into a discussion about the show and the fact that he’d have to pay a purported 43% of his winnings to the IRS. Someone asked him what questions the government answered for their 43%. I thought his response was perfect, and with his permission post it here:
What questions did the government answer for their 43%? Directly, obviously, none, but . . .
Tax money taught me how to read. Tax money bought the book Tom Edison, Young Inventor in the Hitchcock Elementary School Library in Galesburg, Illinois.
Tax money paid the salary of my eighth grade music teacher (whose name I have forgotten), who introduced me to opera, specifically Aida, and mentioned that it was written to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal.
Tax money funded Michigan State University, where my father pursued his graduate education in physics and astronomy, which allowed him to answer the question about aphelion.
Tax money paid the salary of Hal Devore, my eleventh grade history teacher, who taught me about the Depression, FDR, and the Bank Holiday.
I am far better off than I was on November 4 (the day before taping). But it is only because of the money that society has invested in me.
And if you think that this former teacher is too focused on education, I would mention that I enjoyed driving to New York on the Interstate Highway system.
While I am on vacation, I’m having some old posts from my archives queued up for your enjoyment. If you’re interested in following the progress of the tour, a friend of mine has set up a blog and the Choir will be posting pix and text as things go.
Jim Downey
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November 2004
The Call
So, I’m waiting for a phone call.
It’s a different kind of anticipation. Not the mild angst of waiting for the publisher to call about my book, which they have been considering for 10 weeks now. Not the cold-sweat anxiety of waiting to hear how a loved one fared in the surgical unit. Nor even the slight annoyance of waiting for someone who I was talking to, but got another call “they had to answer,” to call me back.
I’m waiting to help a friend win a lot of money. Well, maybe.
A week ago I got an email from an old college buddy. We’ve kept in pretty close touch, but don’t chat all that often. He was writing to ask me for a favor: to be his “life-line”. See, my buddy managed to get himself on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. And he wanted to see whether I would be available to help him (if he needed it) on the day he was taping the show. Asked me to outline my areas of expertise for him.
That’s a reality check, let me tell you. I mean, I’m a pretty smart guy. I’ve got an IQ that makes me wonder about the validity of the tests, if you know what I mean. And I’ve got a good education. But how smart am I, really? Smart enough for my friend to depend upon me to maybe win a buttload of money?
He thinks so. I have my doubts.
I told him that while I’m smart, it’s in a “figuring things out” kind of way, not in a “Trivial Pursuit” kind of way. Names are slippery things for me. Pop culture for the last 20 years completely passed me by. I vaguely know that there are such things as Football and Baseball, but couldn’t tell you who played in the Superbowl last year if my life depended upon it. Yeah, I know the Red Sox just beat the Cardinals for the World Series, but doubt if I could name even a single player on either team. I told him this. I even told him that I’ve never seen the show in its entirety, only bits and pieces in passing, but I’d try and remember to look it up this week and check it out. (Of course, I forgot.)
He still wanted me on the list. Oh, he’s got a couple of other people he can tap, too, so the entire burden isn’t on my shoulders. So this morning the nice production assistant called me and went over the routine, explained everything, made sure I’d be available during the taping. And just a moment ago they called to say my buddy made it through the preliminary rounds of the show, and was next in “the hot seat”. So the anticipation builds. If the phone rings again, I’m supposed to let it go for three rings, then answer “Hello” and the show host will come on. Then we’ll have 30 seconds for my buddy to tell me the question and the possible answers, and for me to tell him which one I think is right.
No pressure.
Well, OK, a little pressure. Yeah, got a little flop-sweat going. Why did I do this? I mean, helping a buddy out is one thing, but was I out of my frelling mind??? I don’t know the kind of stuff they ask about on game shows. There won’t even be time to put a thousand Googling monkeys to work to help me fake it. I’ll just lose my buddy a lot of money and make a fool of myself on national TV.
All right, calm down.
Maybe he won’t call. Maybe he’ll just breeze right through the questions on his own, earning his cool million, without any help. Or maybe if he gets stuck on a question, it’ll be one suitable to one of the other people on his life-line list. People who have a mastery of minutia, a memory for obscure facts and figures, who know the difference between an RBI and Fourth-and-Ten. Or maybe he’ll just screw up on of the early questions and get eliminated. Yeah, that’s a possibility. That’s my salvation!
Oops, wait a moment. I don’t want him to lose. No, really, I’m willing to live with the pressure for a few minutes more, take my chance. With luck, I’ll just dodge this bullet, but still have the braggin’ rights to say that I was someone’s life-line on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Yeah, that’s it. Think of the glory!
Damn, the phone just rang.
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Set your VCR . . . 10 February 2005
My buddy who was taped for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and asked me to be one of his life lines let me know that the show is scheduled to be on next Thursday, Feb. 17. In Columbia it’s on KMIZ at 3:30 . . . check your local listings for times in your area.
Because Enquiring Minds Want to Know . . . 18 February 2005
In case you didn’t see it, my buddy Steve won $100k on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The show was broadcast on 2/17.
While I am on vacation, I’m having some old posts from my archives queued up for your enjoyment. If you’re interested in following the progress of the tour, a friend of mine has set up a blog and the Choir will be posting pix and text as things go.
Jim Downey
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circa 1994
The Car
She was late to class, and new in town. I recognized the symptoms when she pulled up, parked the car, got out, locked it, and strode into the flow of students with narry a glance back. A single-minded set to her eyes. The new backpack. The glance at her watch as she blended into the crowd.
The sociology professor came out of his building, got into his car, and went to the entrance of his lot, only to find her car there across the driveway. He honked his horn. He got out, and walked around her car. He came across the street to the espresso shop next door, figuring that maybe it was just a customer who stopped in for quick cup to go. He came out of the espresso shop, walked back across the street, walked around The Car again, scratching his head. The crowd of students had now melted away, class having begun, and there was virtually no one in sight. He stood there for a minute or two, then went back into his building.
When he came out, there was one of the secretaries who worked in the building with him. She figured that this was a great time to get a smoke, enjoy the sunshine, look at The Car blocking the driveway. The two of them stood there, looking at The Car. The Car did not move. The owner of The Car did not come back to it. Another car came up to the entrance to the lot from the street side, wanting to turn in. This car honked. The professor went over to the driver and explained about The Car blocking the driveway. The driver of the second car got out, looked at The Car. She went over to the door of The Car, tried to open it. The driver’s door was locked.
A passing student saw this, tried to open the other doors, which were all locked. Another secretary came out, got a light and the outline of the story from the first secretary. The professor went back inside the building. He came out with another professor. They stood chatting with the secretaries, all looking at The Car. The passing student picked up his books and wandered away. Traffic was starting to back up.
Other cars came and wanted to pull into the lot. Someone from the small but growing knot watching The Car would go over and explain the situation. Traffic moved by fits and starts, since even those who didn’t want to pull into the lot were curious about what was going on. Customers of the espresso shop started to bring their cups of steaming latte out onto the sidewalk, watching The Car and all that happened around it. The professor went back inside his building a third time. A few minutes after he came out again, a parking-enforcement officer for the University pulled up. The parking-enforcement officer looked at The Car. He talked with the professor, and the other professor, and the one secretary who was still there on a prolonged break. A couple of the bystanders offered opinions and suggestions as well.
The parking-enforcement officer got on his radio, made a call. Then he wrote out a ticket and slipped it under the windshield wiper of The Car. He said something to the crowd, then got in his car and drove away. The professor, and the other professor, came back across the street and got cups of espresso, talked with the people standing on the sidewalk.
After a while a University policeman pulled up. He got out, looked at The Car. He tried opening the doors. He talked with the secretary, then the professor. Some of the people finishing up their lattes wandered over and told him what they had seen. The policeman walked around The Car again. Then he had the professor get back in his car, and guided the professor over the curb, across the grass, and out onto the street. There was a cheer from the crowd.
The policeman got on his radio, and a few minutes later the tow truck showed up. The tow truck operator got out, talked with the policeman. Then he walked around The Car, laughing and shaking his head. He got down under The Car for a good look. Then he got his trollies, and positioned them under the front end, one in front of the wheels, one behind. He strapped them together, and hooked them up to the tow truck. Since class was over, a bunch of students had started to gather around to watch the excitement.
Then she came back. Not as distracted this time, she noticed the big crowd, stopped to see what they were watching. As The Car was lifted up by the tow truck winch, she realized that it was her car, and screamed. The tow truck operator stopped. Everything was silent. The policeman, and most of the crowd, turned to look at her. After a moment, there was applause.
Filed under: Government, Humor, Music, Politics, Religion, Society, YouTube
An old friend sent me a link to a video the other day. I’ve been busy enough getting ready to go on vacation next week that I hadn’t taken the time to sit and watch it.
I wish I had – it’s hilarious. Obscene, ranting (in a musical sort of way), but very funny. Well, it is to me, anyway, though if you’re a fan of Sarah Palin I imagine that it will make your head explode.
Heh.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society
Md. Police Put Activists’ Names On Terror Lists
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”
The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”
Yeah, we can’t be having those ‘fringe people’ who opposed the Iraq War enjoying the protection of the Constitution, you know. Who the hell do they think they are??
*sigh*
Is it time to get our country back from the fascists, yet?
Jim Downey
(Via John Cole. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, Humor, Preparedness, RKBA, Society, Terrorism
Couple of weeks ago I got my notice from the state that it was time to renew my CCW permit. The whole process was fairly straight forward: go to the sheriff’s office, hand over my driver’s license and other ID, have them renew the paperwork on their end (checking to make sure I hadn’t done anything which would warrant losing my permit); then over to the Driver’s License center for a new ID.
I use a non-driver’s ID for my CCW permit. It costs me an extra couple of bucks to have a separate ID, but that way if I have to hand over my DL to someone, they don’t know that I have a permit to carry. It’s not an issue for the police, should I get pulled over or something, since the CCW info is tied into the driver’s license database. And this way, I always have a second photo ID.
So, I got to the Driver’s License center. Light crowd, and it only took me a minute to get to a clerk. Who took my paperwork, pulled up the info on her computer, and said that since none of my information had changed, the simple thing to do was just to issue a renewal with the updated CCW expiration date. Cool.
Then she asked if I had a birth certificate or passport.
Yeah, the Real ID Act.
Now, think about this for a moment. I was getting a renewal of my CCW permit. Said permit requires initially a fairly thorough background check by the State Highway Patrol, along with plenty of ID and documentation about competency. The renewal paperwork had to be processed by the local sheriff’s office, and then an additional form issued requiring me to get the new ID endorsement within a week. Nothing had changed in my file since the original ID was issued three years ago – all they were going to do was just change the date of the CCW expiration. And yet they did not trust their own system to confirm that I was who I was.
Yeah, I had my passport with me. I knew not to underestimate the stupidity of the bureaucracy. I handed it over, and the clerk scanned it for just a moment before pushing the final key on her computer that spat out my new ID. But boy, I’m sure I’d have been in trouble had I not brought it.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Art, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society, Terrorism, Travel
A thought experiment for you: Consider, if you will, at what point the absurdity of “security theatre” crosses the line from the merely annoying to the actively dangerous (to our civil liberties). How would you detect such a point?
How about with a simple American flag?
Metal plates send messages to airport x-ray screeners
One of my favorite artists, Evan Roth, is working on a project that will be released soon – the pictures say it all, it’s a “carry on” communication system. These metal places contain messages which will appear when they are X-Rayed. The project isn’t quite done yet, Evan needs access to an X-Ray machine to take some photos and document. If you have access to an X-Ray machine he’s willing to give you a set of the plates for helping out.
There are two such plates shown at the site, made up as stencils carved into an X-ray opaque plate about the size of your average carry-on bag. One says “NOTHING TO SEE HERE”. The other is an American Flag.
Now, consider, what do you think the reaction would be from your friendly local airport authorities upon seeing such an item in your luggage?
Would you (reasonably, I think) expect to be given additional scrutiny? Have your bags and person checked more thoroughly? Be ‘interviewed’ by the security personnel? Perhaps miss your flight? Have your name added forevermore to the ‘terrorist list’, meaning hassles each and every time you’d try and fly in the foreseeable future?
For having a stencil of an American Flag in your luggage?
I’d say we’ve reached that point.
Perhaps we should reconsider this.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
(Seriously – this guy is brilliant on several levels. When he shuttered his blog in January ’07, it was depressing as all hell. Catching his stuff at various other locations now and then was enough to keep hope alive. Rejoice! It is the Second Coming of Bérubé !!!)
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Google, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, Jeff Greason, movies, Paleo-Future, Peter Diamandis, Phil Plait, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, tech, TGV Rockets, XCOR
Last night I watched a movie made before I was born. By coincidence, the timing was perfectly in sync with the news yesterday.
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Over a year ago, I wrote this, about Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace (one of the speakers at the Heinlein Centennial):
Yes, dependable reusable rockets is a critical first-step technology for getting into space. But as Greason says, he didn’t get interested in space because of chemical rockets – he got interested in chemical rockets because they could get him into space. For him, that has always been the goal, from the first time he read Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein when he was about 10. It is somewhat interesting to note that similar to the setting and plot of the book, XCOR Aerospace is based on the edge of a military test range, using leased government buildings…
Anyway. Greason looked at the different possible technologies which might hold promise for getting us off this rock, and held a fascinating session at the Centennial discussing those exotic technologies. Simply, he came to the same conclusion many other very intelligent people have come to: that conventional chemical rockets are the best first stage tech. Sure, many other possible options are there, once the demand is in place to make it financially viable to exploit space on a large enough scale. But before you build an ‘interstate highway’, you need to have enough traffic to warrant it. As he said several times in the course of the weekend, “you don’t build a bridge to only meet the needs of those who are swimming the river…but you don’t build a bridge where no one is swimming the river, either.”
And this, in a piece about Pat Bahn of TGV Rockets:
And there was a lot of thought early in the development of rocketry that such capability could be used for postal delivery. It doesn’t sound economically feasible at this point, but there’s nothing to say that it might not become an attractive transportation option for such firms as UPS or FedEx if dependable services were provided by a TGV Rockets or some other company. In his juvenile novel Rocket Ship Galileo, Robert A. Heinlein had his characters adapt a retired “mail rocket” for their own spacecraft, used to fly to the Moon.
I find this notion of private development of spaceflight more than a little exciting. When I wrote Communion of Dreams, I was operating under the old model – that the enterprise of getting into space in a big way was going to mandate large governmental involvement and coordination. I’m not going to rewrite the novel, but I am reworking my own thoughts and expectations – this is probably the single largest change for me from attending the Centennial.
Well, yesterday a Falcon 1 rocket from the Space X corporation made it to orbit. From Phil Plait:
Congratulations to the team at Space X! At 16:26 Pacific time today (Sunday, September 28, 2008), their Falcon 1 rocket achieved orbit around the Earth, the first time a privately funded company has done such a feat with a liquid fuel rocket.
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As coincidence would have it, about the time the Space X rocket reached orbit I was watching Destination Moon, a movie I had added to my NetFlix queue after the Heinlein Centennial, and which just now had floated to the top.
What’s the big deal? Well, Destination Moon was about the first successful private corporation launch, not to orbit, but as a manned mission to the Moon.
It’s not a great movie. But it was fascinating to watch, an insight into those heady post-war years, into what people thought about space, and into the mind of Robert Heinlein, who was one of the writers and technical advisors on the film (with connections to two of his novels: Rocket Ship Galileo and The Man Who Sold the Moon). Interesting to see the trouble they went to in order to explain what things would be like in space (no gravity, vacuum, how rockets would work, et cetera) because this was a full 8 years prior to the launch of Sputnik. We’ve grown up with spaceflight as a fact, with knowing how things move and function – but all of this was unknown to the average viewer when the movie was made and released. They did a surprisingly good job. And the images provided Chesley Bonestell are still breath taking, after all these years.
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It may yet be a while before any private corporation wins the Google Lunar X Prize, let alone sends a team of astronauts there and gets them back, as was done in Destination Moon. But it’ll happen. When it looks like it will, I may need to schedule another viewing of the movie, and not just trust to coincidence.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 